Dare: Start This Inner Journey To Have Your Priorities Clear

Whoever is clear about their own priorities decides better. However, to achieve this, it is necessary to start a delicate inner journey with which to promote adequate self-knowledge.

Taking that trip inside can allow us to better lead our lives, have control and be aware of our weaknesses to transform them into strengths. We suggest you reflect on it with us.

Look at ourselves

This, which, on the surface, may seem somewhat simplistic, actually involves various processes that not everyone knows how to start or promote. Defining others, criticizing them, explaining how they are, what they do, what defects they have or what those around us lack is simple.

However, when we look at ourselves we do not speak so lightly or easily. Explain how we are, what are our cognitive biases, what are our ways of managing emotions, facing problems or facing our limitations …

This is not something that is learned overnight. It requires time and, above all, the will of someone who is capable of humbly looking at himself to see the good and also the bad.

What is it that we call “interior”?

We will begin by answering that question that we have asked ourselves on more than one occasion. What is actually that which we call “inside”? What extends behind that wall, that door or fence that precedes our authentic being?

The answer is not very poetic, but still fascinating: our brain.  Our identity, the subtle fabric of our self-esteem, the corpus of our self-concept and even our greater or lesser tendency to a specific emotional state is orchestrated by an exceptional commander whom we are getting to know more and more.

All the fabric of our personality takes place in the brain. It is he who archives our experiences and memories, he who activates fears, who makes us drunk with dopamine, serotonin and oxytocin when we fall in love and he who, after all, often slows down our ability to be happy.

Your brain doesn’t care that you’re not happy, it just wants you to survive!

This data may seem somewhat bleak, but knowing it can offer us a power tool. A first root from which to start growing.

Estanislao Bachrach, PhD in Molecular Biology and former researcher at Harvard University, tells us something very interesting: apparently, your brain doesn’t care whether you are happy or not, all it wants is for you to survive. In fact, it is programmed to resist change.

He will prefer routines, automatisms and those comfortable spaces that are contained in our comfort zone. What extends beyond that border, that line of fear is little more than a threat.

Hence, we whisper almost constantly that of “Do not do it, better known bad than good to know”, “stay, do not risk, lest everything go wrong and we lose everything” .

Overcome fear

This approach turned out to be very valid in the past. Not taking risks, not straying too far from our social group, undoubtedly allowed us to protect ourselves from predators and other risks associated with our habitats.

However, today and as curious as it may seem, the only enemy we must face is ourselves.  The true predator that relentlessly roams our personal territories is the mind itself.

It is she who separates us from our interior, she who makes us forget our priorities and anchors us to our comfort zones. Therefore it is necessary to make changes. Cross the border of fear and take a trip to our interior.

The weary explorer’s exercise

We could analyze here, one by one, all those reasons why we cling to that comfort zone.  However, we suggest you carry out this exercise that, in some way, will allow you to reflect on various aspects.

• You are an explorer and you have been trying to cross a river for a long time. You are wearing good walking shoes, comfortable clothing, binoculars, and a broken compass. For some reason that you do not quite understand, that device has long ago stopped marking the north and it is very difficult for you to continue on your way.
• Your second problem is very specific: on your back you carry a backpack so heavy that, with each step you take, it leaves you almost exhausted.
• Sometimes you get in your spirits and jump from rock to rock in a vain attempt to cross the river. But it is impossible: you slip, fall and soon despair.
• The exhaustion is extreme and, sometimes, you even ask yourself that your life will always be like this: an eternal search for something unattainable, the eternal prelude to a wait where nothing new happens.

The burdens that you must release from within

Until a day comes when you decide something. Something very simple. You choose to stop and unload your heavy backpack from your back.

• When you do it, you are surprised by something very specific: it is full of huge stones of dark colors and strange shapes.

When did you put them in there? You do not remember. Some are sharp and they have the tonality of other people’s expectations. Those that you try to fulfill every day even if you don’t like them.

You withdraw them.

• You keep removing stones, and now, you discover other very sticky ones. They represent your almost obsessive need to please others by forgetting about yourself.

You withdraw them, you don’t want them anymore.

• The following are very old, and shape the fears and limiting attitudes that others have inoculated within you through your education, your first friendships, your first youth experiences. Of those failed loves, of those first bonds that marked you and not for the better.

You withdraw them, as they bring back bad memories.

• The ones you take out later are a little smaller but they are, without a doubt, the heaviest. You find it curious.

However, when you touch them, you instantly identify them: they have the shape of your insecurities, of the labyrinths in which you have entered yourself. Of your fear of facing that bond that hurts you and that brings you storms when you crave days of calm.

You withdraw them, you don’t like them at all.

Finally, and very, very at the bottom of your old backpack worn by time and therefore weight, you find a real treasure. They are precious, luminous and beautiful stones like pieces of ancient stars fallen from the sky.

Under the stones is what is inside you

There are your values, there are your virtues, your priorities, your greatness, your good memories and the voice of your wise conscience, the one that you hadn’t listened to for so long.  You do not hesitate to touch them, to caress those beautiful stones one by one.

Afterwards, you carry them with delicate care back to your backpack, well protected, well guarded. In doing so, you realize one thing: your compass works again. It already marks the north again and you can cross that river to find your destination.

Feel free to reflect on this story, and try to apply it to your current reality.