Ego consciousness often drives me to agonize over whether others are truly happy with and want to be with me. If I plan a special event for a loved one, I can spend the whole night obsessing over whether they really like what I’ve done for them—instinctively believing that their satisfaction with the event is a reflection of whether they’re satisfied with me. Because my subconscious is primed to find clues that I’m never good enough or doing an adequate enough job, I can misinterpret their response as a sign that they dislike the experience and, by extension, think less of me. Feeling hurt for these imagined reasons, I’ll usually end up sulking in a corner or accusing my loved one of being ungrateful.
Of course, not everyone identifies with the habits of an Overachiever. If you relate more as a Caretaker, your subconscious believes that you’re valued only when you are caring for others. When you feel threatened and are in a state of ego consciousness, your subconscious will continue to scan your interactions to assess whether you’re adequately tending to those around you, believing that your self-worth is dependent on doing so. You might constantly ask if others are okay, look for anything you can do for them, or overanalyze their reactions to the services you provide, needing to know if they really liked what you cooked for them or truly appreciated you for organizing their medical or financial care. Your ego story makes it impossible for you to stop showing up to care for others and putting their needs before your own, since your subconscious will tell you that you’re unworthy if you don’t. Though showing up to care for others is part of an emotionally supportive relationship, when you continually put others first, it can prevent you from tending to your own needs.
Devin is a self-professed Hero Worshiper who constantly looks to others to show and tell her how to think, feel, and act because she’s so unsure of her own inner voice. She grew up in a strict religious home with a mother who always prided herself on being a “good” and moral devotee. Her father drank almost daily, consuming several beers after work and many more on the weekends. Usually mildly intoxicated, he would often make mean or sexually inappropriate jokes in public—otherwise, he played the role of the happy-go-lucky family guy, showing no upsetting feelings. Because he never became angry or out of control while drinking, Devin’s mother tolerated his behavior, which was never directly discussed in the family. Instead, everyone participated in a cycle of denial, pretending that dysfunctional and hurtful things weren’t happening, even lying at times to cover up her father’s often inappropriate behavior.
Whenever Devin tried to express any unpleasant feelings to or share uncomfortable observations with either of her parents, she was reprimanded for not being able to take a joke or told to keep quiet like a “good” girl. She quickly learned that there were some things that shouldn’t or couldn’t be said to others. Afraid of feelings or thoughts that could be perceived as “bad,” she continued to look to her parents to inform her how she should act and feel. She developed a harsh inner critic that, fueled by the rigid sense of morality she grew up with, constantly judged her thoughts and desires and sometimes expressed itself outwardly in the form of self-deprecating jokes or self-critical put-downs.
As Devin was growing up, her ego story became “I have to be good to be loved.” Defensive of her “good” person image, she avoided interacting with anyone who challenged it. She judged herself harshly every time she thought or felt negatively about someone or something. She regularly felt guilty or punished herself whenever she wanted to act in ways that felt natural or instinctive but that contradicted what she thought was appropriate according to her conditioned values. Because she believed that she was never good enough or smart enough to make decisions on her own, she often overexplained or defended herself on the rare occasions when her words or actions ran contrary to the opinions or desires of others.
Now in her forties and married with two children, Devin remains deferential to others, believing she’s too unworthy to trust herself to meet her own needs, let alone navigate the complexities of her life or relationships. Consistently playing the role of the Hero Worshiper, she continues to idealize others around her, just as she did her parents, while overlooking signs of issues or flaws in those she loves. Although many in her hometown know her husband is having extramarital affairs, Devin continues to ignore the rumors and evidence, driven by her ego to avoid all painful experiences. Denying the reality allows her to focus on what a good father she thinks her husband is to their young children, so she’s started to avoid family and friends who think or say otherwise. As reports of her husband’s infidelity have increased, so have Devin’s attempts to control her family’s picture-perfect appearance. Distrusting her intuition that has urged her to address the issues in her marriage, she rejects anyone who suggests the reality of her husband’s infidelity, fighting to retain a false sense of safety in her idealized life.
EMPOWERMENT CONSCIOUSNESS
No matter what our conditioned self believes, the greater the awareness we have about our ego story and the more distance we create between ourselves and these narratives, the more accurately we can see the things happening within and around us. Other people may continue to behave in the same ways, but when we’re able to witness our ego, we’ll be able to spend less time in the grips of its fear-based reactivity. We can begin to question the automatic assumptions that continue to drive us to behave in conditioned ways when we develop what I call empowerment consciousness.
With empowerment consciousness, we develop the ability to witness our ego’s instinctual thoughts, challenge the belief that we’re not worthy, and make new choices about how we want to act that will eventually help us to create a new, more empowering belief. Empowerment consciousness helps us recognize the times when our ego story is causing us to have reactions that are based on our past experiences, not grounded in our present reality. When we’re able to realize that we’re experiencing these ego-driven thoughts and feelings, we can let them pass and choose to assign new meanings to what we’re currently experiencing. Though there are many others, here are two examples of new ways to think about our current experiences:
The only reason I feel like I have to drop everything right now and save my loved one from their crisis is to try to make myself feel worthy. I don’t have to sacrifice my own needs and am worthy even if I can’t support my loved one right now.
My ego story wants me to believe that my colleague is being critical of me, and I want to open myself up to the possibility that they’re actually being considerate and caring rather than critical. Because I was routinely criticized as a child, my subconscious is trying to protect my hurt inner child and keep me safe by making me lash out. I can now make the choice to act differently.
PRACTICING EMPOWERMENT CONSCIOUSNESS
While our ego stories will be unique to each of us and many of us will have more than one, the steps below will help you witness and separate yourself from your ego’s reactive cycles.
Witness your ego story. Becoming aware of the stories or narratives you have about yourself enables you to recognize the times when you’re letting your ego story run the show by making assumptions and becoming reactive with others as a result.
Question your thoughts. When you know you’re in an ego-conscious state with others, take a time-out to examine your thoughts and feelings. Do they really represent your reality, or is your ego story distorting what you think and feel? For example, if your partner hasn’t texted you back for several hours, and you spiral into thinking that they don’t care about you, you can question the validity of those thoughts and consider other possibilities for their lack of response that have nothing to do with your worth.
Reparent your hurt inner child. Your ego story was created by your subconscious to help you cope with the unmet needs that caused you to believe that you’re not worthy. Reparent your hurt inner child by telling yourself that you’re safe now and are worthy in every way. Remember, if your nervous system is in an active stress response, it’ll be important for you to reparent yourself by continuing to practice daily the acts of self-care we talked about in chapter 5 to create nervous wellness and soothe your nervous system dysregulation.
Rewire your ego story with affirmations. Believing that you’re worthy when you’ve thought otherwise for years isn’t easy, as this belief is physically programmed into your mind and body. Affirmations, which are positive mantras about ourselves or experiences, can help rewire your neural networks, even if you don’t believe them at first. Telling yourself that you’re safe and worthy fires different neurons in your brain that, over time, can become new neural networks that are easy and instinctual for your brain to follow. Examples of possible affirmations include:
I am safe and loved regardless of how I feel.
I am able to take care of myself even if I need support at times.
I am worthy of love and connection.
I am an intentional creator of all my life experiences.
I am lovable exactly as I am.
I am worthy exactly as I am.
I am safe and secure in my relationship with myself and others.
I am most powerful when I cocreate with others around me.
I am connected to my emotional world and able to safely express myself.
I am an active participant in how I create and respond to my life experiences.
The more we use affirmations to rewire our beliefs, the more empowered we’ll feel to be our authentic Self with and the more confident and grounded we’ll feel within our relationships. Over time, as we consistently practice mind consciousness and become conscious of our subconscious, we give ourselves the opportunity to decide how we relate to and connect with others rather than reacting instinctually from a place of pain and hurt. We give ourselves the opportunity to respond from our heart, our internal reservoir of love and compassion, using practices we’ll explore in the next chapter.
7
Unlocking the Power of Your Heart
Follow your heart, not your head.
You’ve probably heard this advice before, maybe even hundreds of times, and I’m going to guess that as a reader of this book, you likely agree with it. But have you ever taken the time to consider whether you actually do follow your heart? Many of us believe that we do, but most of us—including me for much of my life—tend to follow our thoughts. We spend most of our time paying attention to our thinking mind, not to our physical heart exploring the deeper desires, dreams, and wants that live there. We make our decisions with our “logical, rational” brain, overlooking the pull we may feel in our gut or the flutter in our heart that is telling us something different.
While our thinking mind is described as “logical” and “rational,” our choices are often not reasonable at all. When we let our conditioning drive our actions, we remain disconnected from our inner wisdom. Unable to access our intuition, we end up overthinking our way through life, endlessly weighing our choices, sometimes too paralyzed to make any decision at all. Detached from our heart’s inner compass, we’re more easily influenced by external messages from the media, our peers, and other outside influences. We keep repeating the same solutions to familiar issues, unable to see new possibilities or break out of our old dysfunctional habits. Unable to determine what we really want and need, we end up feeling dissatisfied, disillusioned, or confused about how to navigate our relationships and surroundings.
To reconnect with your innate inner guidance, you’ll need to learn how to tune in to the deeper wisdom that resides in your heart. Your heart isn’t just an organ that pumps blood throughout your body. Your physical heart—the one beating inside your chest right now—is also where your intuition lives. It’s the most energetically powerful organ in the human body, emitting an electric field that extends well beyond your physcial being. your heart transmits the individual energy that makes each of you unique—what I call our soul or essence. If you want to make choices in your relationships that align with your soul or authentic Self, you’ll need to be connected with your heart.
Many people view their heart as the physical center of themselves, where they would point if someone asked them to identify their core. Most of us also believe that our heart is the hub of our emotions. Around the world and throughout human history, the heart has been synonymous with love, along with identity, intention, and intuition. In English alone, dozens of idioms describe the heart as the center of our emotional and intuitive self, with phrases like “the heart of the matter,” “with all my heart,” “from the bottom of my heart,” “follow your heart,” and “heartfelt emotions.”
The historical and cultural emphasis on the heart is not arbitrary. Over the past several decades, research has shown that the heart is more powerful than we ever thought. We now know that our heart communicates with our brain, transmitting nerve impulses, hormones, pressure waves, and electromagnetic energy that impact how our nervous system functions. Our heart’s signals are so strong, in fact, that other people and animals can feel our energy. If I were to place an electrode in a cup of water a few feet away from you, I would be able to observe your heartbeat in the gentle movement of the liquid.
If you don’t understand what it means to be connected to your heart, I can relate. For years, I didn’t, either. When yoga instructors or other healers talked about dropping into their heart space to make decisions and find peace or clarity, I didn’t really get it. It wasn’t until I took a trip to Bali—or, more accurately, stayed overnight in the middle of the Balinese jungle—that I began to understand what it means to be connected with my heart and why it’s so important.
After I completed my doctorate, my parents gifted me some money (financial rewards for academic achievements were a common display of love in my family). Lolly and I decided to spend it on a shoestring vacation in Bali, driving around the island on a moped and staying in inexpensive guesthouses. Toward the end of the trip, we splurged to stay at a popular retreat center not far from where we were staying in Ubud, an inland part of the island surrounded by rice paddies, ravines, and temples. The facility was serenely beautiful, with windows that opened up onto fields so green they looked blue. During our first day there, Lolly and I visited the reading room, and each of us selected a book. Drawn to it by its cover and title, I picked up Gregg Braden’s The Divine Matrix: Bridging Time, Space, Miracles, and Belief.
In the book, Braden, a well-known spiritualist, uses science to support the presence of an energy web that connects all humankind. Within minutes, I was captivated by his concepts. I devoured page after page while lying on a daybed as the wind carried in the soft scent of hibiscus and the chirp of birds through a set of open doors. Two days later, when we checked out, I had already finished the book.
After we returned home, I ordered several more books related to the ideas I had learned from Braden. Somewhere during that deep dive, I was introduced to the idea of heart-brain coherence. Heart-brain coherence, more simply known as heart coherence, is a scientifically quantifiable, psychophysiological state that occurs when our heart and brain operate efficiently together and our heart sends energetically rhythmic or coherent messages to our brain and vice versa. I hadn’t heard of it. Immediately, I wanted to learn as much as I could, and I began my journey toward heart consciousness.
