Are You Connected to Yourself?
What is self connection? How can it be regained once lost?
“We’re talking a lot about feeling disconnected from other people. What about your connection with yourself?” I made this observation to one of my clients during a recent session. In that conversation, and in my life more broadly over the past three years, it has struck me that loneliness and isolation aren’t merely the result of being disconnected from loved ones and friends, they can also manifest as a result of losing touch with vital parts of ourselves.
All that said, what does it mean to be connected to yourself, really? To speak about self connection is to attempt to touch something that can be felt but not explicitly seen. It feels most readily defined by its absence than any single definition. When I left my job as a growth equity investor several years ago, I would have been hard pressed to come up with a coherent concept of self connection, but I do think I could have told you with reasonable certainty that I definitely did not feel connected to myself.
As I navigated the next chapter of my life and career, I remember engaging in a soul searching exercise of sorts where I asked friends and family to respond to the questions: What shows up when I do? What qualities do I bring to the room? The answers that came back were largely derivates of words like “driven” and “ambitious.” Admirable qualities to be sure, but they also struck me as hollow and limiting. I remember thinking “Is that all that I am?” I’d begun to have the recognition that to continue define myself on such narrow terms would leave me with regrets defined by an absence of satisfaction and meaning. I searched for answers about who I was by trying to take the long view of looking back. What did I want the people to say about me at the end of what I hope will be a long life? Ambition felt like it had a place in that answer, but I hoped that people would see me as someone who was much more multifaceted.
If I have learned anything over the past few years as I’ve attempted to expand the words and identities that define me, it is that the full garden of who we are has to be tended to in order to thrive. What was true for me, and is often the case for many of my successful and ambitious clients, is that we only make the space for the capital “W” Work self. The Work self gets overwatered and, with narrowed attention, we fail to recognize all the other parts of the garden of ourselves that are losing their vitality. There’s the self that is a romantic partner, the self that is a sibling, a son or daughter, a friend. There are the selves that reflect our passions, the selves that make us feel connected to spirituality, a higher power, or a sense of awe at something greater than ourselves. There are the selves that prioritize our own vitality and health. There are the selves that reflect the more childlike qualities that live within us and bring out a sense of wonder, play, and curiosity. We take for granted that these parts will not always be so robust without our commitment and attention. We take for granted the ways in which they sustained us.
In a literal garden, overwatering has significant costs. Amongst other things, it can lead to oxygen depletion whereby soil pores become so clogged that oxygen is no longer able to reach plant roots and soil organisms. Furthermore, the excess water can carry away valuable nutrients that plants need to survive. In my case, overwatering the Work self robbed the other core parts of me of oxygen and nutrients and, after awhile, the whole garden began to suffer. Just as the garden functions as a microcosm of natural ecosystems that operate based on a delicate balance of complex relationships and interdependencies, so too is the garden that contains all of our selves. To risk the collapse of crucial pieces, big and small, is to risk significant harm to the entire system.
These days I think that my family and friends might have different answers when asked to describe me. I have a hunch that words and phrases like “creativity,” “writer,” “empathetic,” “golf nerd,” “good listener” might fill those conversations. In tending to the other parts of my garden, I have found that the thing that once felt so absent has come back once again - I feel in tune with who I am and also who I want to be.
But how?
I cannot give you a simple how-to guide or set of steps to follow to reclaim a sense of self-connection. I strongly believe, as the name of this blog suggests, that almost nothing works that way. Ultimately, I think that reclaiming a sense of connectedness with who we are comes down to a series of choices and a commitment to watering the entirety of our inner gardens; choices that add up over time to being more than the sum of their parts. The dying garden is not brought back to life overnight after-all.
I’m talking about choices like spending quality time with a partner over answering more emails, taking the impromptu Friday off to hang with mom and dad, going for a long walk to watch the sun rise, making a point to seeing old friends as you age, carving out time during the week to do something you love just for fun, approaching work from a place of curiosity rather than obligation. For the ambitious amongst us, my guess is you naturally default to making plenty of space for the Work self (I clearly admit to also being guilty as charged). Our task is to intentionally and regularly water the other parts of the garden and to view that task as important and vital for our wellbeing.
This is not to say that prioritizing the Work self is bad on its own. It’s taken me pretty far in life with promotions and raises and career prestige, but I realized that it could not sustain me alone forever and, what’s more, that I didn’t want it to. In bringing back the dormant parts of myself back to life and planting new varieties, I’ve realized that it didn’t have to be an either/or. It turns out that my Work self is better when it’s not the only thing I’m tending to.
I think your gut reaction to this simple test is telling: Do you feel self connection’s presence or it’s absence? Where you feel absence, I invite you to look at the parts that are being overwatered. What parts of yourself need your dedicated time and attention to come back to life?