Let’s Go In by Zoë Coyle

When you feel threatened or stressed how do you behave? Do you rant and dole out blame? Do you withdraw and seethe with righteous resentment? How do you cope with feedback and/or conflict? What’s your bonkers behavioural drug of choice? Did you learn and reproduce the patterns of your parents? Or have you marched 180 degrees from their choices desperately hoping to evolve?

It’s so very important to recognise yourself. To take responsibility for understanding who you are, and why you are. And yet so many of us think self-inquiry work is self-indulgent or for the deranged. Leaving us to walk around hurting, and inflicting pain, because we are either disinterested or unaware of our blind spots.

Self-obsession is boring to be sure. And I’ve had my fair share if sitting across from people as they’ve droned on, trapped in the tiny sphere of their self-absorption, but that’s not what we’re talking about now. We are talking about serious minded and brave work, the excavation of our patterns, motivations, behaviours, conditioning, privileges and desires. We are talking about leading an examined life.

You are stuck with you for the whole of your life. Let curiosity guide you inward. As the great thinkers and spiritualists teach us, there we will find great riches.

The Examined Life: How We Lose and Find Ourselves by Stephen Grosz