You Are the Expert on You!

No one knows you as well as you know yourself. You possess a wealth of information going back perhaps to before you were even born. You know exactly what makes you tick, what you are attracted to and repelled by, what energizes you and deflates you, what is good for you and not good for you. While others can talk about you, or advise you, seem to reveal you to yourself and possibly provide the framework for self-discovery, you are the one with the answers. You already have all the knowledge you need to know yourself completely. You are the expert on you!

Why does it matter that you are the expert? Because it is the starting place for you to be happier than you ever dreamed possible – to unravel every bad feeling you ever had to get to a place of feeling wonderful. To be a strong, self-empowered, grounded, happy individual. When you know you have the answers, you know exactly where to go when you are anxious, angry, grief stricken, confused, hurt, terrified, scared, nervous, heartsick, jealous, depressed, suicidal, sad, forlorn, down in the mouth, phobic, terrified, bereft, or any other unhappy feeling you may have. You know exactly where to go when you don’t even really know how you are feeling, but you know it doesn’t feel good. Or when you feel your behavior is self-defeating or just falls short of what you know you are capable of. You know exactly where to go when you have beaten up on yourself. Or when you are so far away from your feelings, that you are feeling numb or “not yourself”.

And you know exactly where to go, when you are feeling okay, but you’d like to be happier, more joyous, excited, enthusiastic about your life.

For example, say you are feeling uneasy and we’re not sure why. If you believe something outside of yourself can make you feel that way, that is where you will look for the answer, or you may just accept that you have to feel uneasy and you can’t know why. But if you know that you create the feeling of uneasiness based on your beliefs, you can look at your own thoughts to find out exactly what you are thinking and why.

Only when you know that you have the answers, can you really start to listen, really listen to what you have to say in a new way. So many of us have gotten into the habit of ignoring many of the things we say in the sanctuary of our own minds. “That’s just me, you might say. Just me, chattering away.” We certainly have a sense of what is going through our minds and selectively tune in and out. We may be extremely comfortable with the awareness that the chatter is there, even relying on it as a kind of framework for who we are. And while we may experience this constant stream of thoughts as who we are, we are not necessarily taking responsibility for what we are thinking. Or connecting our way of thinking to how and what we feel. It’s almost of as we attribute our thoughts to someone else. As if we hear our thoughts in a dreamy half awake state, lulled by the soothing sound of our voices, but unconscious of the content. In this way, we treat our thoughts as some sort of irrelevant cerebral download or stream of consciousness, defining who we are, without our awareness or consent.

When this happens, we end up going through life in a fog, not really taking inventory of what flows through our thought processes. We relinquish responsibility for the way we think and relegate our own thoughts to oblivion. In this way, we also relinquish our expert status and hand over knowledge of self to others or no one. Our thoughts become something not to tamper with. As if we were not qualified to deal with them on our own.

So the price for ignoring and disowning our thoughts is high, but we have the power with every new moment, every new thought, to turn inward again to where the only answers that matter lie: ourselves. Regardless of where thoughts come from – from our conscious or subconscious brain, or whether they are instigated from inside or outside of ourselves - if they are in our head, we own them. But only by acknowledging this, can we deal with them effectively. And we can only effectively own our thoughts when we are willing to love and accept the way we think. What if you knew that everything you think, can lead you to a state of well-being – to perfect happiness? What do I mean by that? In order to get to the truth about ourselves, we have to start with where we are, knowing that only by accepting our current state of mind, can we move on.

Accepting and loving our state of mind is the same thing as accepting and loving ourselves. Who would argue that that could ever be a mistake? We do, actually, every time we get unhappy. When we are unhappy, we often block out thoughts because they are simply unacceptable to us. We are constantly weighing and judging ourselves, including our thoughts. It is part of the process of being unhappy. Isn’t it wonderful to know, then, that it is completely within our control to turn our attention back to ourselves? We always have the ability to turn back to ourselves and ask why – Why am I unhappy?

We all wish for someone to watch over us, to provide love and guidance, to provide that magic potion to make it all go away, to make us feel better. The truth is you are that someone because you and only you have the answers. You and only you are the expert on you.