What are my beliefs surrounding strength? I have some thoughts but I’ve not summarised and explored them before. This is hardly an all-inclusive dive, but lately it feels so important to look at what I currently hold as my truth and what I might like to shift that truth towards.
At this present moment the idea of strength brings resistance in me. I find the idea of strength distasteful. Being a strong personality? Ick. Even physical strength feels uncomfortable. Not that its implied opposite- weakness- is any more palatable.
But what about strength particularly feels so maligned?
Power is a byproduct of strength- power over people or nature. I think that this is where things crumble for me.
Strength to me feels like a call to aggression, intimidation, manipulation, and destruction. It feels like anger in the service of eliminating the experience/experiencer of a dysregulating situation, rather than disbanding the dysregulating situation itself. It feels sharp, unrelenting, unmerciful, and desperate. It feels like a threat to survival.
And what feels like a more important factor in my resistance to strength within myself: the stronger the self, the stronger the attracted attacks on the self.
So softness and ‘weakness’ feels safer. It feels sustainable and it feels so much more tolerable to be a position of connection to realms outside of this physical one- the divine, rather than curate aspects of this unappealing physical version of strength. Nobody wants to attract an energy toward themselves that they find distasteful- even if it means being ‘safer’ or appearing more competent. Weakness doesn’t feel like a better concept… but when this dichotomy is unexplored, it feels so much better than being called to do something that feels so wrong within my body.
I’ve been exploring alternate definitions of strength and I’ve found feeling strong in ways that nourish me can be powerful medicine that rebuilds confidence and competence. Bringing these ideas to awareness has helped me. Strength includes: AUTHENTICITY, INTIMACY, DEVOTION, ENDURANCE, and DELIBERATE ACTION.
Authenticity is the ability to show up with a practised set of values and with an awareness of what is important to the self. Desires, ideals, recognition of patterns and behaviours. Knowing oneself deeply- intimately.
Intimacy is the ability to show up with Authenticity in a relationship with another aspect of the Universe. Knowing oneself allows you a template and a process to better understand those around you- people, animals, environment, etc.
Devotion is the ability to show up in whatever situation the present moment presents with unconditional love/acceptance. This ability is strengthened by the practices of exploring and improving Authenticity and Intimacy.
Endurance is the ability to be patient. Contemplative. This is strengthened by practice in being able to regulate your dysregulated nervous system. By noticing and practising how emotions feel moving through the body and what to do to compose yourself again. By practising and releasing what stuck memories feel like when they move through the body. Endurance becomes a practice of perception, of recognition, and then returning to stillness in order to move in deliberate action.
Deliberate action is the ability to calm oneself enough to move through a present moment in awareness, not from a place of habit, routine, pattern, or programming. This is the place where we can begin to find solutions that benefit all- I call it the Third Path. The solution doesn’t benefit one side, or the other, and it also isn’t a compromise where nobody is happy. This is a true solution that brings peace and unconditional love/acceptance to all sides. I thoroughly beileve that there is a Third Path in every single seemingly unsolvable situation… there are just pressures that keep the parties from being creative and that keep the parties dysregulated and stressed (time, money, etc).
When we are dysregulated we are unable to think expansively, collaboratively, or creatively which is why it is so important to calm the body down through practices that are developed when we are in calmer and more controlled moments.
This is the strength that feels real and true to me. This is the power that I can get and stand behind. This is what I feel so good about building within myself. This is the leader I want to support and to become myself. This is the life I want to cultivate. This is my strength practice.
