"If you can tell the world who you are and what you believe without breaking stride or hesitating, you are happy with yourself." - Neale Donald Walsche
I attended a large networking meeting last week with lots of varying types of businesses and people and one of the speakers was talking about and explaining how online networking had helped him go from redundancy to having his own lucrative business that he really enjoyed running in a relatively short period of time. While he wasn't the greatest public speaker that I have encountered, there was something about him that made me want to give him business and that made me like him: he was congruent. He had balance.
What do I mean by Congruent? Or balance? I mean that this is a description of how you are when what you do, say, and deeply believe are all aligned. Congruence and balance is a sort of 'deep honesty' about who we are as individuals, and it is attractive and it is appealing. People are powerfully attracted to congruent individuals. People who have balance.
Congruence is not only something that is about how others perceive you. It is also important in how you perceive yourself. If you want to make a powerful change in your life and you really want a particular thing but keep on doing something else, then incongruence will exist in your own perception of yourself too. This can cause loss of balance.
So how do you go about becoming congruent? Or having more balance?
Ok, firstly, figure out your values, then honour them; values are what is important to you. Examples of your values include helping others, having security, enjoying freedom, continuous learning, experiencing love, having a family, etc. You may know some of these right away, areas where you already have balance may start to pop up, while others may take some digging. One way you can find out what you value is to identify something you really want, then ask yourself this question;
"What will that give me that I wouldn't otherwise have?"
When you have subsequently answered that question to yourself, ask it again.
Ask yourself; What do I want? An example response might be : To reduce my weight.
Then you ask: What will that give me that I wouldn't otherwise have?" The answer might be: A body I can feel comfortable showing off.
Then ask again: What will that give me that I wouldn't otherwise have? The answer may well be: Freedom.
To get the most from this exercise, you need to take the question as far as you can until you get the simplest answer and the question can be asked no more. When you go as far as you can, you end up with a core value: what it is that's really important to you. In this example it was freedom. Knowing this can begin to install balance.
Secondly here, pay attention to your body. That also needs balance.
Your body and your neurology have been developed over thousands of years to provide you with very accurate and real feedback about congruence and balance. If you are at a dinner party and you are smiling and chatting nicely and being charming but all the time you are thinking "I cannot stand these people" that uncomfortable feeling in your body and thought in your mind is an incongruent signal - a lack of balance - a sign that you're 'out of tune'. When you have a deep sense of peace and joy, genuine balance, really truly enjoying the company of those people, then that is a sign that you are aligned and are subsequently going in the right direction. One way to achieve greater congruence is just eliminate all activities that lead to incongruence. Maintain balance.
The speediest and most natural way to do this is to do and engage in things that you love to do and/or really enjoy doing. These things help to balance you.
When you do what you love, enjoying your life and then letting go of all the other stuff, you get to spend more and more time experiencing a sense of joy, fulfillment and happiness. As well as being great fun, this is also highly attractive - people really like to be around someone who is doing what they love! That includes you being around yourself. You will love yourself a lot more when you are enjoying what you are doing when looking to achieve your goals for personal development.
One of the things I love doing is running the various training courses that I do run regularly. Things like my self-hypnosis courses for example are one of the most powerful approaches that I have encountered for helping people to live congruently, with balance and creating the lives that bring them joy and happiness. When I'm running training courses or seminars; to experience other people making powerfully progressive changes to heighten their own experience of themselves for themselves, ensures that I experience that sense of deep congruence and balance that comes from being fully myself. This sense of being truly yourself is the most powerful 'life-compass' there is in my opinion.
The 'attractive' power of congruence and balance works just as well for your own goals. We can all think of examples of goals that we want to achieve where 'The Values' may include words like 'people', 'integrity' 'Health' 'Happiness', but where the actions and behaviours we are taking don't support those values of the goals. On the other hand, you may have encountered people that their behaviours match their values. This person is congruent, (and has balance) and that congruence (and balance) sends an unconscious message to people and to yourself, your own mind, that says "You can trust this person to do what they say they will". So continue to check with yourself;
- Are your own personal values clear to you?
- Do my actions and attitudes fit with these values?
Have a think about creating some congruence and balance in your life.
Copyright 2005 Adam Eason. All Rights Reserved.
Adam Eason is an author, consultant, trainer and motivational speaker in the fields of hypnosis, NLP, personal development and human potential. His website is filled with information, stimulating articles, resources and uniques products.
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