One of the most revealing questions I ask people is about their highest perspective, that place where their deepest values, devotion, and sense of worth stem from.
Some use the word God. For others… the Universe, Nature, Consciousness, their Truest Self. Or simply a deeply held sense of what is sacred and right. No matter how we speak of it, this highest place for us has enormous power in how we see ourselves.
I notice when people give me clues that they may go into this territory. Words that evoke a sense of greatness or purpose. An energy that feels somehow sacred.
What I’ve learned from a few years of coaching: that place isn’t always as loving as you think it is.
Two Reasons I Go There with Clients:
- The first is perspective. When we invite someone to see him- or herself through God’s eyes, to look from their highest vantage point, above the noise, the daily stress, they often see something they couldn’t see before. Something clearer. Something kinder.
- The second reason is more tender. Surprisingly often, we discover woven into the higher perspective is a tinge of “could do better.” Looking at ourselves from the highest place, we see perhaps the “more” that we wish for ourselves. Feel a familiar unspoken disappointment, a longing at least for what is yet to come.
This moment, when that top-level disappointment is revealed and felt, is loaded with opportunity.
I have seen tears flow as the person realizes, not only that they have an inner voice shaming him- or herself, but that it is coming from their most sacred place. It’s almost impossible to argue with a voice you’ve placed in your most sacred space. We just take it as truth: “I should be more, better, faster, softer, or whatever.”
The opportunity is to heal this all-too-familiar sense of being a disappointment, to remove its power.
Where Does This Voice Come From?
Most of the time, it traces back to childhood. A parent. A teacher. A sports coach. Someone whose opinion felt absolute, someone you couldn’t push back against as a child, and whose criticism settled so deeply that it eventually moved into the highest room in your inner house and never left.
As adults, we carry that voice without always realizing it. We just feel the weight of it, as low confidence, as hesitation, as a chronic sense that we’re somehow not quite enough.
And you can choose to remove it from that seat of power.
No Need to Change Belief System
To be in dialogue with someone’s sense of the sacred is tender work. We are not in the conversion business. We don’t come with our own better belief system that, if only it were adopted, would make all people happier.
It often happens, however, that the person sees the critical voice they have placed in their most holy place is a false god, not their true highest perspective. We want to help them deepen their connection with their truest ideal–whatever that is for them.
What Happens when People Do This Work?
Some of the most closed-off, shut-down, hesitant people I have ever worked with have unlocked something breathtaking once they freed themselves from this false, shaming voice.
When someone dethrones a shaming voice, the space opens up for… the word I keep coming back to is: gorgeous. There is something genuinely luminous about a person who steps out from under that shadow and finally lets themselves be seen.
A Practice for Today:
As you go about your day, notice the moments when you feel a quiet sense of disappointment in yourself, perhaps a feeling that you’ve fallen short, that you’re not doing enough, that you’re behind somehow.
When you feel it, pause. And ask yourself honestly: Is this a false voice occupying my highest place? A borrowed voice I treat as unquestionably true?
You don’t have to answer it all at once. Just noticing is enough to begin. Then take a moment to feel that there is a whole other voice there. One that encourages you, has faith in you. A perspective, source, or God whose gorgeous love you feel in your very bones.
Enjoy!
David Lesser