Does it ever seem like you are like a passenger in the car that is your life – and someone or something else is in the driver’s seat as you careen down the road? Do you feel driven to do things but are not quite sure why? Is your external environment not working for you but you seem powerless to change it? It is easy to get hooked on things and beliefs that simply drag you along. Here are three common oversights that can cause you to become unconsciously aligned and identified with thoughts and things that can run you ragged – and how to unhook from them.
Not Seeing The Thoughts Behind The Things
What is it about loosing a physical possession (like a house or a car, a ring, a book) that feels so devastating? Much of the time the despair is not so much caused by the loss of the physical item itself – but what the item represents to you. If you view your house as simply a form shelter or your car as merely ‘transportation’ then there are lots of alternatives that might serve you just as well if not better. But if you see your house or car as a major part of who you are (e.g., an expression of your style, your status, or your link to a fondly remembered past) then the loss can become very difficult.
A key step to unhooking from ‘things’ is to realize that their importance to us is often more about what they represent to us than what they really are or what they provide. It is your thoughts and associations that give your things meaning. And the stronger your attachments to, or identification with, the things of this world – the more off balance you will be if these things are taken away from you. I heard a quote once that said, “Hold lightly not tightly to the things of this world.” This can be a valuable perspective if you want to keep from being driven or disrupted by external events and circumstances.
Getting Personal Needs Confused With Survival Needs
We all have physical needs like the need for food, water and air that are key for our survival. But we also have personal needs – for example a need to be accepted or to feel safe. Sometimes these personal needs become so important to us that they begin to feel like they are necessary for our very survival. Even a need like the “need to be right” can come to feel absolutely essential. When we identify so strongly with our personal needs that we begin to confuse them with our survival needs, we feel driven to do whatever it takes to get them met - and that’s precisely when we lose control. It is not the need itself that it driving us – it is our deep identification with the need and what we think the need is tied up with – our survival.
Here are three things you can do unhook from a personal need that is starting to feel a little too important:
- Name the need that is driving you. If its name is not air, food, water or shelter then it is probably not essential for your survival. It is not the need that is driving you it is what you personally believe is at risk. Be willing to take a deeper look at what really is at stake – if it is not actually your survival what is it? What does an unmet need feel like when it is being experienced or expressed by you?
- Ask yourself – What am I willing to do to get this need met? Walk around naked? Lie under a truck? Maybe what you are willing to do is not quite so extreme – but take a good hard look at what you are doing – and what it is costing you – to stay so tightly aligned with this need.
- Ask yourself, “What would be different if I was not so attached to or identified with this need? What thought or perspective might serve me better? What would I have to change in my thoughts, language or behavior to proactively get this need met in a way that is positively fulfilling and not damaging to me?”
Most people identify so strongly with their jobs and roles they allow them to become self definitions. But you are not what you do – the roles you take on (e.g., husband/wife, mother/father, advisor, friend, student, sibling), or the jobs you do (e.g., banker, accountant, lawyer, IT Professional, Manager, Executive). The roles you assume naturally shift over your lifetime and you have the power to enhance your skills and change your job or career path with education and training. None of these things that you ‘do’ are the constants they seem to be nor are they synonymous with who you are at the core. Their loss or change of focus is not the end of you. Stepping back from an overwhelming identification with titles, roles and activities can give you back a sense of personal depth and continuity that transcends any activity you do.
The Bottom Line
We all have a natural tendency to identify with things we own or want to possess, beliefs that seem to resonate with us, roles we play that serve to define our relationships vis-à-vis others, and jobs that seem to define our place in society. Such identifications by themselves are not necessarily bad and do serve to bring us a sense of aliveness and connectedness. But such identifications also have a dark side and the potential for driving our behavior and disrupting our lives by the very nature of their unconsciousness. When something we have unconsciously become deeply identified with is lost or taken from us we suffer psychological deaths and distress and often try to hold on long after the identification has served its usefulness. Dr. Patrick Williams offered a quote that can help shine the light of consciousness on the nature of ‘identifications’: “We are dominated by everything with which our self becomes identified. We can dominate, direct, and utilize everything from which we dis-identify ourselves.” Thus the more we can become aware of, and take a step back from our identifications, and disengage from their distracting influence on our sense of identity and wholeness, the more we can take back control of our lives and our sense of inner peace and freedom.