Ground in to Level Up

HomeBlogGround in to Level Up

One of the things I enjoy about my work is the ability to speak with enough people about the foundational shifts going on in their lives to see collective patterns and trends that run through each of their stories.

A big one that has been influencing my work a lot over the past six months is what I’ve begun calling “The Need to Come Home.” The way I have been explaining this is a timely development that has arisen from many years of conditioning and practice around “grounding” ourselves to outside sources.

The need to ground to ourselves is not so much a new awareness, as much as it seems to be a new and significant need for people to understand and find this place of home NOW to prepare for the way the world is currently evolving.

The practice of grounding externally believes that if and when I have this job or career or relationship or amount of money in the bank, then I will feel safe and secure.

This has always been an illusionary goal. As we know, these are the things we cannot control in life when it comes to protecting them from the influence of change. In other words, we can get the job and then lose it. We can build the successful career and then something can happen to take it all away. We can have the relationship that changes and fades, and the money, well, we know that can go, too, in the blink of an eye.

Todd Savvas, a spiritual teacher I follow recently put it this way:

“It’s about feeling settled and in the right place. External elements always shift and change, so your foundation can’t truly be reliant on those factors.

The only place to find true foundation and groundedness is within, which is about your relationship with your soul or truest self.

The only way to feel authentic inner contentment is to work on making YOURSELF your home, your rock, your safe place. From here, everything surrounding you will align.”

A current statistic is that over 40 million Americans suffer from anxiety. I believe, at the core, this stress arises from a deep, overwhelming fear of not being safe and secure.

So many of us are out there operating from an inner drive to HAVE in order to BE. Telling ourselves, “I must have this thing to be safe, happy, fulfilled, enough …”

The biggest problem, other than the constant change that affects what we are chasing is that this belief is fundamentally untrue.

We don’t need to HAVE anything to BE who we are.

I guess we could argue we need life, but depending on your spiritual beliefs, that might not hold true either.

For those of us here, now, drawing breath, there is absolutely nothing required of us to be. We are now, in this moment, being.

I can BE and not have that job or career or relationship or money.

When we use language that suggests otherwise, we are honestly operating from an illusionary state.

So, my question is not “what do you need to feel grounded and secure in life,” but rather, “how do you need to be for groundedness and security to be your reality?”

A few areas where you can begin creating a stronger and more grounded sense of self are the following:

  • Build Trust – when you don’t trust who you are and how you operate, you are going to have a hard time grounding within to find a sense of safety and security. Building trust starts with being honest with yourself about everything you hold within you. It then involves aligning your truths with approaches to handling them and being that are in integrity with who you are.
  • Be Aware & Present – when you are always looking for that “next fix” to distract yourself from your own thoughts, feelings and inner voice, you will not be able to know, connect with or own your true self.
  • Practice Neutral Observation – we all bring our “stories” to the table, which can keep us functioning from a state of illusion instead of from a place of being with “what is.” You notice a whole lot more about yourself and others when you learn to separate what’s yours from the experiences of the present moment.
  • Listen to & Honor your Gut & How you Feel – this is not about the emotions that arise from a triggered state. Acknowledging and having reverence for your heart and gut in “neutral” moments allows you to act from a place of discernment and not from an eventual state of judgment or criticism, which is always about choice to be with something that is misaligned with you.

Of course, one of the truths of life is we cannot have a bird’s eye view of our own lives without the help of others. To truly dig in and develop yourself around the practices mentioned above, I encourage you to reach out and work with a trained professional who can help support and guide you.

One of the most important things for me, as an Identity and Performance coach, is the alignment of true self and mission. You cannot know what you are truly here for if you don’t, first, identify who you are, what you offer and what you honestly need to sustain yourself.
To Level Up in life, whether that be to break through a conditioned and self-imposed ceiling, evolve as an individual or become more enlightened as a soul, the first step is to Come Home and build a solid state of knowing that who you are is who you want to be and what you create in everything you think, say and do IS your Legacy in the time you’re here.