You don’t need to become anything. Absolutely nothing. You just need to be. And when you are simply your essence, your soul, what you truly are, GOD GIVEN ORIGINAL, then and precisely there IN THE zone are all your maxima. All of them.
All those who persistently try to be smart, modern, interesting, attractive, or become the best version of themselves are always making an effort to play that adopted role, that imposed and adopted identity. Others can see and feel that effort, that obvious falsehood. Some even sympathize with the fear and suffering that the person behind that identity is desperately trying to maintain, as if it were their last defensive position. No Pasarán! You won’t be able to go further. Defending your identity and an improved image at all costs, to avoid facing the truth, FACING YOURSELF.
The key question is: How to return to your primal self, to your essence, your authentic self, the original, so that the new “me” is actually the “old good” me?
It is much easier to come to yourself when you isolate and withdraw. When you don’t have the hectic daily rhythm in which you mostly function on autopilot. Of course, if you even have the conditions for that. Many people don’t have those conditions. The United Nations published a report stating that in many countries, the psychological pressure of COVID 19 home isolation has turned into increased domestic violence, mostly against women and children. The number of newly admitted patients to psychiatric clinics has risen.
Why is it easier to undergo this painful transformation from a conditioned person to an old/new person in isolation? Why the period of isolation is conducive to returning to yourself? Why do even monks in monesteries retreat to a hermitage, to a cave, to complete solitude? Why is it easier to find yourself in (complete) isolation? In silence, which sometimes lasts a bit longer.
Why do I claim that Peak Performance for companies, leadership growth, analysis and improvement of results, or creating a new strategy, are always achieved on a retreat somewhere in nature, away from civilization, and certainly away from the company’s headquarters and the city?
The answers to all these questions are the same. When you isolate yourself, you no longer play your imposed and adopted role so diligently. When you at least slightly remove your mask (or masks), it is easier to return to yourself, because you are much closer to yourself then.
In isolation, there is no need for status symbols. No need for a BOSS suit and a Porsche. No need for a Louis Vuitton or Hermes bag. For a very short time during the each serious crisis, the terror of brands disappeared. A particular question is what kind of compensation for the feeling of inadequacy is achieved by such status symbols. We can discuss that some other time when I write about the solutions offered by my SAIL method.
In isolation, there is no need for pretense or acting. There’s no need to impress anyone, convince them of anything, or recruit new members into your fan club.
When you’re in nature, you’re more natural. You are SAIL and feel different. You are in tune with nature, you are its bare part. You have little or no need for a mask. Your own, adopted one, not this surgical one.
This doesn’t necessarily mean traveling somewhere very far, to the Himalayas or to an ashram in India. Great distance does not, by itself, directly provide an advantage in finding the old/new you for everyone who doesn’t know what to do with themselves and is unsure about their hallway. Just moving away from your home, from your city, is enough to start. This temporary departure from your stress zone, from the environment where you regularly wear a mask and in which ego imposes certain behavior patterns like defense, explaining, proving, and all the other patterns that continue to superglue the mask to your face.
All of this is accompanied by relaxation and a lowering of brainwave frequencies. In the alpha zone (from 8 to 13 Hz), it’s much easier to start returning to yourself. Lower your hands from the boxing guard, admit, first to yourself and then to others, what’s wrong, what you want to change, what you don’t want anymore, and in which movies you no longer want to play even supporting roles.
If you have the opportunities and desire, use this time of isolation to meet your original, primal self, which is the old/new me. It only takes a little energy to return to yourself and fall in love at first sight with your true self for life.
And when that love takes you in its embrace, you will love everything and everyone. JUST DO IT.
Ivan Kokeza