The Most Important Thing - Relationship With Yourself

It is very normal to be involved in all kinds of daily activities, routines, relationships, duties, and responsibilities. I would go further and say that being all over the place and filling every second of our lives with something productive has become the norm in today's fast and demanding society.

Usually, people brag, "I have so many things going on, my schedule is very tight, my next free slot for meeting you for a coffee is in a month." Being occupied and very active has become something idolized and a source of pride.

Of course, it is necessary to provide society and the people around us, as well as enterprises and institutions, with value to earn a living and a respectable place among peers. However, there is a certain point at which this “high activity attitude” becomes strongly counterproductive, and a high toll is paid at the expense of mental health.

Cosmetic changes on the surface really do not help. You can go to a spa or travel to an exotic island but still feel frustrated, and the “leisure time” can become even more stressful than sticking to the habitual daily plan. The real question is much more existential and needs attention before a real shift is possible. And for me, this question sounds like: “Is my life a unique journey full of exploration and vivid personal experiences, or do I live as a functional part of a system fulfilling obligations and norms given to me by the external world and maybe even not truly understanding their purpose?” Often, the purpose becomes fulfilling the dreams of others by selling our own most precious commodity—time. The choice is yours and only yours to make, of course—you are your own first guide and responsible for what you do and where you go.

We spend every second, minute, and day with ourselves, and what is happening internally—what our sense of reality is and how we feel—defines much of our life quality. If being part of a system and fulfilling duties in such a way as you do now is what you feel you truly want, then it is definitely great. In that case, the internal interest matches well with the external expression and activities. Unfortunately, it is often not the case.

How can you find a direction and anchor that can give you some clarity and certainty while navigating through your life? The answer is “the relationship with yourself.” Why is it so crucial? It does not matter whether you have a million or billion dollars in your account, whether you have a castle to live in, and whether you have friends around you—if your most foundational aspect, time and being yourself, does not bring you contentment, all that you possess doesn't matter so much.

While being an example of “wearing several hats at once” and having a schedule brimming with loads of tasks, what might get lost is the time and potential for forming a harmonious and enjoyable relationship with yourself. Why is it so, and where does it get lost?

We, as human beings, are tightly connected with the context in which we participate. If you are committed to a task, diverse cognitive activity and associations might be missing, and just one specific, narrow area of mental potential dominates your brain activity. In other words, it is just one specific “map” of neural activity that is triggered by this task, and becoming accustomed to staying in task-specific neural networks can foster cognitive rigidity over time. If most of your waking time is filled with such fragments, then it becomes your default mode to be committed only to activities that do not enable a wider and more congruent use of your mental potential and brain activity. This is why the urge to always be active and occupied in tasks may narrow and fragment the meaningfulness and quality of life you experience. Of course, many unconscious processes happen simultaneously, and the whole brain is active, but awareness is just the tip of the iceberg and reinforces the formation of neural patterns through neuroplasticity.

The relationship with yourself can only grow better when you spend time with yourself.

Taking time just for yourself, even as little as fifteen minutes, can make a big difference if done regularly. Without this little “gap” in the tight and busy schedule, it is very unlikely that a deep, conscious shift can ever be made. If you start out for the first time, you might encounter common obstacles.

Before I can describe these obstacles, a fundamental difference between the “being occupied” mindset and “taking some time for myself” has to be understood. As I wrote before, every commitment, activity, and mindset represents just a fraction of who we are and all the neural networks we have built and automatized over time. If you sit down, do nothing at all, and just pay attention to your thoughts and mental activity, you give your mind permission to be just the way it is and lift the restrictions imposed by a certain task. What happens, if you are not used to this state of mind, is that your mind may sort of panic; your self-talk may turn into accusations, skepticism, or something else. Most likely, the habitual thought patterns start telling you to do what you usually do at that time or in that place.

All this is OK. This represents how you have trained your mind and your habitual relationship with yourself. Pretty interesting in a way, isn’t it? This phase is completely fine. Let your mind be and jump around. But at the same time, just observe, become aware, and do not take it personally—it does not help to think that the way your mind works and what it does is bad in any way; it is not. Taking habitual negative thoughts personally and emotionally makes them ‘bad.’ Observing them to decide what to do with thoughts that do not serve your well-being labels them as ‘obstacles to deal with’ to improve your time with yourself rather than internal ‘flaws’. While observing your thoughts without personal intervention, you can clearly see how what you have repeated has become dominant in your thought patterns.

Now, to give more credibility and foundation to what we go through, let’s open the subject of awareness a bit. Awareness is related to the engagement of multiple brain regions, whereas the prefrontal cortex (PC) has a key role. It is the most developed and complex part of the brain and is responsible for higher cognitive processes. The fascinating part of it is that the PC is capable of forming connections between most of the other parts of the brain. Therefore, it can create a sort of broader picture and understanding of events, thoughts, and emotions.

For example, if somebody is angry and lashing out emotionally, the brain activity is mostly driven by the amygdala (part of the limbic system), and the involvement of the PC is most likely suppressed. If the PC were to participate, the person would have thoughts like, “What happens tomorrow if I am that angry?”, “What does it do to the relationship with that person I lash out at?”, “Is it good for my health?”, or “Am I being just and kind?”. Every one of these questions represents a different part of our mental capacity, and through the active use of the PC, a multiplicity of views is possible.

The PC is also able to inhibit the activation of strong, ingrained neural networks and facilitate the reinforcement of fragile but more effective and relevant ones, which can grow and become dominant through consistency.

So, if you sit and contemplate, you give yourself a chance to view yourself and your mental processes from several angles and perspectives, thereby growing and expanding your understanding of self and the integrity of your mental states and exploring what is the reality of your relationship with self. It is a way to move towards balance and self-acceptance and therefore improving it.

The experience of facing yourself through observation is influenced by the way you have been treated, the way you have treated yourself, plus the unknown factors. So do not expect this to be an easy encounter. As your overall feel and internal congruence form an important part of the basis for the quality of life experience, becoming aware of the internal processes cannot be skipped when taking control and moving consciously toward improving your time with yourself.

The next article is a research on the question “what is the relationship with self?”