Typical Avoidance Behaviors

Do you know someone who expresses several avoidance behaviors? Or are you worried that you may be exhibiting some avoidance behaviors? Read on to find out more information on typical avoidance behaviors.

 

Avoiding Certain Situations

 

This is the most accessible type of avoidance to spot. Situational avoidance is when an individual will avoid specific locations, situations, or people because of poor past experiences or anxiety. If you have that one friend who always asks who will be there before they agree to attend an event, they are probably trying to avoid the situation.

 

Cognitive Avoidance

 

This one isn’t as easy to diagnose in others, but this is one you may see in yourself. If you are experiencing cognitive avoidance, you may find yourself repressing certain memories or refusing to think of certain situations. A sure sign you are cognitively avoiding something is if you start thinking about something and then tell yourself not to think about whatever subject you were thinking about.

 

Perfectionism

 

Perfectionism and other compulsive behaviors such as obsessive-compulsive disorder can be classified as avoidance behaviors. These can manifest in several different ways for different reasons. But if you find yourself obsessing over ensuring something is done perfectly, this could be that you are trying to avoid facing or thinking about a problem or emotion. 

 

Changing The Subject

 

This is another avoidance behavior that is easy to spot in your friends and family. If you are having a conversation and find that the person you are talking with changes the subject, this could be because they are avoiding the topic. Of course, changing the topic one time isn’t necessarily avoidance. Still, if they continually change the topic when a particular subject is brought up, this is a sure sign of avoidance. 

 

Inappropriate Emotions

 

Sometimes, when you don’t want to face a certain behavior or emotion, you will replace it with a different feeling. For example, people who feel sad about something may avoid the emotion by becoming angry at the slightest occurrence. Although this is easier to see in yourself than others, you can spot this avoidance behavior in a friend when their emotions may not match the situation. 

 

These are the most common and easiest avoidance behaviors to see, but this certainly isn’t all of them. When you think someone (or yourself) may be exhibiting avoidance behaviors, it’s important to investigate further to discover what may be going on beneath the surface. 

 

Why Do We Avoid Certain Tasks?

Do you find yourself dreading a particular task in your life every time you must complete it? Do you often wonder why you avoid that task? There are several reasons humans avoid completing specific tasks, and the reason why this is can vary from individual to individual.

 

You Don’t Think You’ll Have Fun

 

One of the main reasons people avoid certain tasks is that they don’t believe that they will have fun completing it when they think about that task. Or maybe they’ve performed the task before and didn’t have fun. Humans generally want to avoid doing things that lead to unhappiness. This is especially true when the task at hand is perceived to be especially difficult or complex.

 

Fatigue

 

When you are overly tired, you will generally avoid certain tasks. Even if they are tasks, you usually have fun doing. This is because you are tired and need to get some rest. If you find yourself avoiding tasks because you feel exhausted, then it’s time to get some rest and try to approach the task again later. It is tough to focus when you are fatigued, which could lead you to become distracted as an avoidance tactic for certain tasks. 

 

You Don’t Think You’ll Do Well

 

Fear of failure is another big reason that people will avoid certain tasks. Often, they are afraid of looking bad or at the embarrassment, they may experience if they can’t complete the task. This fear of failure is quite common and one of the easier ones to overcome as it can usually be remedied by working on self-confidence and self-acceptance. 

 

Medical Conditions

 

If no matter what you do, you just find you can’t complete certain tasks, there may be a medical diagnosis behind your procrastination. Several conditions, such as anxiety and depression, can lead to the avoidance of certain tasks. Although this may sound bad, generally, if the underlying condition is treated, you’ll find that it’s a bit easier to find your motivation to complete tasks. 

 

The reasons on this list may be separate, but they all boil down to a lack of motivation. If you find yourself avoiding a task because of one, or multiple reasons on this list, you need to realize you lack motivation. Once you realize this, you can find the cause to motivate yourself in the future better.

 

3 Types of Avoidance

If you are one of those who commonly avoid tasks or certain situations, it could be for several different reasons. But before you can work on solving or completing a task you’ve been putting off, it’s essential to narrow down what type of avoidance you are using to avoid something in your life so you can know how best to combat it. 

 

Emotional Or Cognitive Avoidance

 

This type of avoidance usually happens internally and can’t be seen by anyone other than the person experiencing the avoidance. When you, emotionally or cognitively, avoid something, it means that you avoid thinking about it. This can mean either blocking out the thoughts when they come to mind or repressed memories that are incredibly stressful. Emotional avoidance is especially prominent after someone has experienced a trauma and is very common in people living with PTSD. Sometimes this type of avoidance requires medical intervention to resolve. 

 

Situational Avoidance

 

This type of avoidance is much easier to see among your family and friends. Situational avoidance is when you specifically avoid a certain person, place, or thing which may remind you of something which makes you unhappy. This frequently happens in friend groups when certain group members have had an altercation and don’t want to go to events where they may see the person they have disagreed with to avoid causing problems. You may also notice this type of avoidance in a friend who constantly changes the subject when a particular topic comes up in conversation.

 

Protective Avoidance

 

This type of avoidance is where you may go out of your way to protect yourself from feeling a certain emotion or experiencing something again. For example, someone who was the victim of a robbery may obsessively check the locks on all the doors in the house to ensure they are locked. This type of avoidance can be one of the most dangerous as it can quickly escalate to more serious conditions such as obsessive-compulsive disorder or an eating disorder.

 

Conclusion

 

If you find yourself avoiding certain tasks, thoughts, or people, it’s time to evaluate why you are doing so, keeping the three types of avoidance in mind. Once you have discovered just what you are avoiding and why only then can you work towards fixing the issue and getting professional help if you find that you can’t overcome your avoidance tenancies alone. 

 

Self-Realization—An Important Aspect of Personal Development

When you are trying to develop your personality, there are several things that you need to look at, but probably the most important thing is that you should have the correct realization about yourself. You should know who you are. It is only when you have a complete realization of yourself that you can plan to make improvements.

 

Each and every one of us has their own strengths and weaknesses. You have them too. You may be a very confident person, but at the same time, even if you don’t admit it openly, you surely have some shortcomings. If you are trying to develop your personality, the first thing is that you have to come out of this denial. Denial leaves no scope for improvement, because you become shortsighted about your weaknesses. Overcome the denial and accept to yourself what your limitations are. When you do that, it is as good as telling yourself that these are the aspects where you have to improve.

 

At the same time, you have to realize the things that you can do very well. There will certainly be a host of such things. And there will be one special talent at which you excel. This is the talent that defines your profession, or maybe your passion or your hobby. This is the one thing that you can pursue for your entire life, and keep becoming better at it. This is what you need for your professional, personal and creative growth, and it becomes the focus of your life. You may have a flair for writing, or maybe you can build websites, or probably you are good at sales, or perhaps you can handle a truck very well. All these are special talents. Realize what talent you have and keep improving upon it.

 

Understand your personal limitations as well. Do people think of you as a good, friendly person? Do you have many friends? Is your spouse happy with you? Do you keep your children happy? Are you prone to temper outbursts? These are the things you should know, and work upon them. The main thing is that you should understand that you have follies in you and improve.

 

In conclusion, if you are looking for personal development, you have to have a pragmatic view of your faults and your talents. This tells you which direction you have to take your life into. 

 

Work At Home Parent

Nearly everybody is a parent, and everybody works, perhaps from home! 

 

A businessman or businesswoman who carries on business at home might do so for a lot of reasons, despite reasons it gives one the flexibleness to plan their time between business and loved ones. The reasons may be numerous, but which parent would forego the chance of working their own hours all the while spending time with their youngsters and family at the same time meeting social obligations. This class of entrepreneurs, the work at home parents, likewise saves a lot in terms of time and revenue.

 

The chief objective of a work at home parent would be to integrate their business time with parenting duties without a loss in income or opportunity.

 

The integration of entrepreneurship with parenting may be accomplished by bringing together the utilization of time and space, accommodating parentage in business and flexibleness.

 

Once your business acquaintances come to know that parentage is a priority with you, they'd of course accommodate with you in taking time for caring for youngsters. As the youngsters grow, taking their help to perform little tasks would surely help in a work at home parents’ business. It would also help in youngsters growing.

 

Flexibleness: Working your own hours will help a work at home parent perform and work well since they may work at times suitable and in shorter spurts than in a continuous process.

 

The practice of integrating entrepreneurship with parenting has been in practice for a while since the times of merchants and artisans. These classes of entrepreneurs worked closer to their houses, with youngsters loitering in the background. Only the historical conditions like technological revolution distanced the youngsters away from their parent’s workplaces. All the same the recent trends of dual working parents (due to economic compulsions) brought about a void in parentage, which in turn brought about the concept of work/life balance making work at home parentage a viable and judicious proposition.

 

Important Steps for Goal Setting and Success

To be successful in every field of life, you need to set your goals first of all and then plan and act. You need to set an admirable and important target. It is most beneficial to specify your objectives clearly. This is an essential part and allows you to direct your life like a movie. 

 

You have the freedom to select your own goals accordingly to your likings and no one can define the objectives for you. This simply involves moving from one stage to another. Everyone would like to achieve his targets within the minimum time. It is true that occasionally many idealists and aspirants may not be able to accomplish their goals and may fail.

 

Here are a few useful tips for setting the goals in a realistic way. 

 

1. Think deeply about the goal you set for yourself. You should think and analyze what you want to achieve in your life. This is what you do not possess presently. You have to think reasonably and in a realistic way what you truly want and cannot follow something blindly. People mostly think about where they are at present and not where they want to be in future or what they want to attain. Those who have aspirations will start to take the decision more seriously and concentrate on their resolve.

 

2. Decide about your goal: The most important part in goal setting is to think about your goal and try to find what you really want to accomplish. Will you actually like that outcome? If that is going to take many years to achieve, are you ready to bear the discomforts for a long time. It should not be that you are moving towards something without actually thinking about it.

 

3. Set your goal plan: When you set the goal, you plan and think deeply about the outcome. You will definitely need to make a plan to achieve it.

 

4. Act on plan: The next important step is the action on the plan contrived by you. You have to execute the plan to achieve what you perceive and to fulfill the dreams. Any dream will remain a dream unless you act to make it come true. Your success will be dependent on the amount of your effort and determination. If you have set bigger goals, naturally you have to exert more.

 

5. Endure and be consistent in your effort. It is no use to set lofty targets, if you cannot work harder to achieve them. At the same time, it is crucial to be persistent in your actions otherwise you may be carried away from your target. It is important to be a good accomplisher more than only being a good initiator.

 

Develop Your Personality For Your Career

Personal development today is a common word, which crosses many minds and heard from many mouths; but the question is what does it mean? 

Personal development is in the literal sense all about the process of furthering oneself; in simple words it is to invest in self-growth. We actually carry on this process all our lives without maybe thinking of it as a process. Education about oneself and for oneself is the basics for Personal development. So, if we trace back time, the first day of kindergarten would be our introduction to the basics of personal development.

 

Personal development preaches an approach that is positive to help individuals to overcome different issues that are related to social or personal life and also more often than not career life. The complex strategies involved are based on techniques that are self-oriented and allow any individual to reconsider one’s ability to take care of any challenge life puts upon them. Any procedure in the field of personal development has to start with a belief point that that particular individual is capable enough to achieve that particular goal. Till the goal is designed objectively and to be more precise the rationale behind it is needs to be based on realistic consideration. 

 

A lot of individuals are many times overwhelmed with career failures; at such times a personal development specialist surely helps such individuals regain confidence. These specialists provide something similar to counseling that help in providing adequate ways to rediscover confidence and also control their skill set. When these strategies for development are implemented, it can usually help the personal skill set of the employee and fulfill the job requirement. 

 

However, these sessions taken for personal development must not be mistaken for psychotherapy as the two fields have a very similar approach. The difference being that personal development won’t cure the issue but help to provide alternative solutions to the issues that take control of one’s career. 

 

One must also be aware that specialists providing personal development have designed a variety of methods that an individual can self-apply in improving his own career via self-coaching. Meditation, relaxation and other such exercises are a part of such self-coaching strategies; they help one to detach oneself from the issues and let go the negatives in one’s mind and help to perform in the job better. 

 

How To Set Goals!

How does one set effective goals? Firstly, do not confuse desires and wishes with your goals. A lot of times people want some accomplishment or situation and thing and name it as a goal. Once they do not get these, they are often disappointed. Just penning down your desires is not a part of setting goals. Goals that are perfectly put together have one or all the following aspects:

 

1. Good goals are specific. Goals like being healthy are too generic. It is better to have a specific goal like you decide to walk 3 times weekly in order to lose weight. 

 

2. They're realistic. It’s not that something is impossible; it is just that when you set unrealistic goals, it will lead to failure. 

 

3. They're written down. Written down goals are more real and it helps to influence your mind subconsciously, and will have a greater impact if you review these on a regular basis. 

 

4. They're measurable. Make a goal of how many pounds you plan on losing? Put a figure to the amount of money you want to make. Keep a picture of that perfect relationship you want to have.

 

5. They're motivating. Set a goal for the correct reason and give it a good start. Goals that are good excite you when you think about and visualize the benefits to accomplishing them. One must also learn skills for re-motivating and rewarding oneself when any progress is made. 

 

6. Good goals become plans. Take any goal and make specific steps to achieve it.

 

7. They have specific deadlines. Give yourself an end date. Set a target and stick to it. 

 

8. Good goals consider personal factors. You can never succeed if you think you do not deserve it. You need to set goals that teach you personal development along the way to achieving them and personal development a part of the major goal you want to achieve.

 

9. They're followed by action. The best way to motivation is to start with some movement to reach the goal. Slow and steady wins the race. So start slow and then progress. 

 

10. They're not written in stone. Every goal evolves naturally. You need to become more practical when setting your goals, make sure you keep your likes and dislikes in mind. Be what you wish to be and do what you want to do.

 

Ways to Develop Self-Discipline

1. Take consistent little steps:

 

The steps to bringing discipline to one’s life are similar to growing up in life; both require consistent small steps. One cannot achieve success in being disciplined overnight. A lot of people try this overnight method and fail miserably and out of frustration return back to their undisciplined life. It takes time to develop discipline and one needs to be determined. You could begin this with the smallest thing possible like exercising for 15 minutes everyday or getting up 10 minutes prior to the time you do now. It could be reducing the number of cigarettes you smoke in a day, even if it is reducing the number by one every week. It would eventually mean having a single smoke a day and then no smoke at all. The basic rule is to take smaller steps and try reaching your goal. 

 

2. Try not to procrastinate:

 

It is a good idea to place things on a list and then decide on taking action on achieving these immediately. Try to set a deadline and promise yourself to stick to the plan of action till you achieve the goal. Try to avoid procrastination. Procrastination makes the path to discipline take longer. Once you are successful with little goals, it strengthens inner resolve; helps set more goals and helps in achieving them. 

 

3. Every day changes: 

 

It is a good idea to start with smaller things to move towards discipline. It can be as small as waking up at 5am to do your study or waking up 15 minutes earlier than usual to perform some exercise. Every day must be taken into account; if a day is skipped the discipline level falls and it will weaken your determination to achieve the goals you have set. 

 

4. Visualize your final achievement:

 

Take time to sit and visualize how it would look the goals are achieved and remember it will only be possible if you take these smaller daily steps. If you know what it would take to achieve a particular thing make an outline and take actions to immediately set out to achieve these things. The visualization process helps you to focus and maintain the goal even if you get distracted with other things. 

 

5. Get someone to coach you: 

 

If you could get someone to record your progress, it would definitely help. It could be a professional or a friend. Having a coach has a lot of positives; firstly, for example, you’d be less likely to procrastinate. 

 

Positive Psychology - Finding the Right Path

Giving a boost to and improving your emotional intelligence is similar to trying to improve one’s physical condition with the help of practice and exercise. There are exercises that help to train you and help you manage your emotions better and have more control over them. Practice is a must; it is very rare that you can expect to achieve success or be good at it immediately. 

 

It is practically impossible that you walk on to a tennis court for the first time and you win a game especially if you have never played the sport. One can never achieve great results in cognitive restructuring, mindfulness and meditation if one has not practiced them before. Controlling one’s emotions is not an easy task to achieve. However, the exercises could be practiced anywhere; it is possible even when you are sitting in a chair at your dentist’s clinic or during waiting in a line at the grocery store. 

 

The first step to getting a grip on one’s emotions is to start developing a complete positive psychology towards life. For a lot of years, researchers ended up spending resources and energy to find solutions to problems and solving abnormal aspects in people. Today, the difference is that it has switched to developing and finding individual strengths. This is a major shift in the psychology field and it usually helps in understanding, focusing and awareness of human strengths. Hence, it helps everyone to consider one’s own life and helps in gaining new perspective to his or her own identity. It is always a good idea to concentrate on your positives and not worry about your weaknesses, as those are areas where you are vulnerable. When you allot more time to your positives and try and completely exploit those areas it is easier to apply them in your job and also in your personal life. 

 

It is of utmost importance that you focus on the things you are really good at and you channel your energies and all efforts in that area. This forms the basis of the basic principle in positive psychology. Once you positively believe that you have a hidden form of talent to manifest and cultivate is when your talent, skill and passion begins to increase. There is nothing more rewarding than doing something you are good at. Once you begin to walk on a path that you believe is the correct one, a powerful positive emotion is activated. 

 

What Is Personality?

It is a daily process to assess and describe the behavior of individuals around us. Although many times we do not understand this we on a daily basis discuss and predict the behavior of various individuals around us. This is nothing but very much what psychologists who deal with behaviors do. The difference being that when we assess personality informally it tends to focus more towards the individual and the psychologists, instead, tend to use rules to devise analysis of the given individuals’ personality. When personalities are researched various theories are developed that help to explain why and how certain traits in personalities develop.

 

Components of Personality

 

There are various theories for various personalities and different ways to understand what exactly one means by the word personality. A short introduction can be in simple words described as; personality comprises of characteristic patterns, that of feelings, behaviors and thoughts that make any person different from another. Personality generally arises from the deep core of any individual and more or less remains constant through the journey of life. 

 

There are a few fundamental characteristics traits that differentiate one from the other: 

 

Consistency – Behaviors are usually recognizable due to their regularity and order. Any given individual might act similarly in a given situation repeatedly.

 

Physiological and psychological – It is true that personality is a byproduct of psychological changes but a lot of research also says that biological factors could also influence the making of a personality. 

 

Impact actions and behaviors – It is not just the movement and response of an individual to the environment that is influenced but the certain way an individual acts. 

 

Theories of Personality

 

A variety of theories are derived till date on how a personality is developed. All of these theories belong to different schools of thought and have come from various psychological theories. The major ones include:

 

Type theory is the oldest perspective. This one concludes that very limited types of personalities are due to biological influences.

 

The trait theory views personality to be the end result of characteristics that are genetic and internal in nature. 

 

The behavioral theory concludes that it is the result of the reaction between the environment and the individual. These theorists usually get their conclusions after analyzing measurable and observable behaviors. 

 

The humanist theory emphasizes the individual experience and free will that result in the development of any personality. 

 

Personal Growth Means Understanding

 

The most important lesson an individual must learn who is aiming at personal growth is a simple one; that no one particular formula will define one’s path to success. Each one of us has a different priority and goal. That implies that individuals must have different attitudes and activities that make them achieve that feel good factor. We at the same time also have weaknesses and strengths that come to us naturally as a package deal with our personality. 

 

Understand What's Important to You

 

Every kind of personality has a unique idea of what success means to them. Personal success can be achieved if the goal is self-knowledge. A lot of times individuals adopt somebody else’s definition of success and are striving to achieve it; in the process they are unable to detect what truly is important to them. Although there is no harm in having influencers and role-models in one’s life, it is of high importance that one must recognize and understand that the idea of that particular person or belief and an individual belief will have a difference in perspective. It is highly possible that an individual feels unhappy and exhausted when trying to achieve the definition of success someone else defined for him and ignores the message from their own psyche. The major step when trying to achieve personal success is to realize what is really important to oneself.

 

For example, are you an ISTJ (introversion, sensing, thinking, judgment) personality type? You will react differently than other personality types. 

 

The individuals who fall into the ISTJ type of personality are hardworking, analytical, methodical and serious. These individuals store the gained knowledge from past experience and then apply this to handle new problems and manifest new ideas. They work on a given problem till they find a given conclusion. 

 

They get uncomfortable if the idea is unknown to them completely and prefer theoretical solutions. When they have a new situation to deal with, they have no past experience to refer to and hence they feel lost. ISTJs usually make great managers and are very capable in their jobs. They are many times reluctant to bring in changes or new systems unless they have a past record that it would work. They value and internalize the structure and rules of the environment they reside in and do not approve of any behavior against the code of conduct. They believe in using their past experience to benefit the institution they belong to. 

 

So, you can see that you really need to find what is important to you and not go by some other persons view as it may not match yours. 

 

Personal Development Plan

So now you have finally made the decision to make changes in yourself completely and begin to alter life as a whole. When something deep within you stirs your spirit. That peculiar inner gnawing you feel that urges you to make a change in order to better the position of yourself in life increases to a point that you make a decision to take some action! You are completely ready with a list of things you need to change and have a plan on how you’d like to change these. Hold on! Are these thoughts properly organized? Have you made a note of the smaller steps that would lead you to eventually achieve that desired goal? 

 

You need to get in place, what in the commercial world is known as PDP, Personal Development Plan in order to get a blueprint on how to make changes and reach the desired goal. Get out a sheet of paper and first put down all your desires. Make sure you think carefully and note down all the changes you can think about. Once this is done get another piece of paper and write the following headings:

 

·       Personal Growth/Personal Development

·       Finances/Career

·       Home Life/Relationships 

·       Health

 

Below every heading list at least five desires from the first list you made and set them in priority. These would become your goals. 

 

Below is the example of goals a person working in a busy office might have: 

Personal Growth/Personal Development

1. Trying my best to stay calm in a stressful situation.

2. Gaining extra experience working with IT. 

3. Improving recall memory ability.
4. Learning to photo read or speed-read.
5. Boosting my own self-esteem. 

It’s necessary that every goal is not just realistic but also challenging in nature. Also necessary is that you set a time deadline for its achievement. Now get another sheet of paper and think and jot down techniques you could use to achieve the set goals in the calculated time frame. You will be pleasantly surprised at the amount of information that your brain can actually put onto that paper. 

 

Once you have a list of ways written, pick out the best ones. Now make a ‘to-do’ list for everyday for every separate day of the week. Make sure you include the smallest step on this list that it will take in achieving the goals you are setting. Make sure when you complete these small steps; you congratulate yourself and also measure your own progress at the end of the day. 

 

The Value of Spiritual Self-Discovery – 1

When people embark on a journey of self-discovery, they usually focus on the physical and emotional side of their personality. Rarely do people consider the importance of spiritual self-discovery, even if they identify as spiritual side to their personality. When we take the time to explore the part of our psyche that we sometimes call spirit or soul, we discover a unique and different aspect to our personality we may not even have realized existed. 

 

We are people made up of physical, spiritual, intellectual and emotional dimensions. We experience the world and the experiences we go through in the world, by looking at them through these dimensions. This is not new. We know that humanity has always considered these dimensions. Roman and Greek mythology, Roman astrology and ancient religions are all testimony to the very real role that spirituality has played in human development.

 

We perhaps identify best with the moment we see a magnificent sunrise, or an amazing act of nature that leaves us in a state of bewilderment and wonder, recognizing there are things in our life that are beyond our ability to control. We have a conscious or unconscious desire to know this power and it is what we can term spirituality. 

 

When people think of spiritual wellbeing, they usually think of God. Whoever or whatever they conceive “him” to be. Some consider him a supreme being and others consider him as “the man upstairs” a belligerent father figure. Still others reject the concept of any sort of being, and find their spirituality in the earth, or in nature. 

 

So how do we discover the spiritual side of our personalities? Some people discover it through embracing formal religion, others discover it through yoga or some other form of meditation that causes them to focus in on themselves and still others go on a journey of self-discovery and call this a religious experience. 

 

Some have compared this spiritual awakening with a heightened sense of experiencing. As we allow our inner selves to experience life at a deeper level than just what seems obvious around us, we begin to relate to things in a different way. 

 

In whatever we choose to embrace the spiritual side of our personality, when we do focus on spiritual self-awareness, we usually discover we come alive in our personality and this has an effect on how we relate to self and others. 

 

The Value of Spiritual Self-Discovery – 2

We have established that to embrace our spiritual side we need to acknowledge it exists. As we embark on a journey of spiritual self-discovery, we often find aspects of our personality and our character we didn’t know about before. Most people find it awakens something inside them that they describe as “completing them” or “filling a hole” in their lives. 

 

We subconsciously or consciously make bargains with “god” when we find ourselves in a position of need. For many people, this moment maybe considered a moment of spiritual awakening. This is for most people, the time when they stop asking for proof of a higher being and start talking or acting as if there is one. 

 

 Once the situation has resolved, for many, life continues without any more thought of “god” until another crisis and then the automatic response is to turn thoughts once again to help from something or someone outside our conscious control. For others though, that moment of self-awareness and spiritual awakening, stimulates something in them and they start to question reality, as they know it. People who go through a spiritual crisis or who choose to change religions often experience this moment in a different way. They may find themselves rejecting their existing and questioning relevance. The end of such questioning for some people may lead to the choice of a completely different spiritual path. 

 

Some people think of having faith or a spiritual awareness is like following something blindly without proof. Whilst in the early days of a spiritual awakening this may seem an uncomfortable place to be in for many people, once embarked on, most people come to accept there are many things in our lives we accept without proof. We know for example that humankind will live and die, or we will feel sleepy and need to sleep at night. Our experiences train us to believe that things happen and we anticipate them happening.

 

When we embrace spirituality, we are embracing something that enables us to find our place in the universe. We all ask ourselves, “why am I here’ and “where am I going.” Whatever we call our spiritual reality; these are two fundamental questions we ask ourselves. Spirituality helps us to discover the answers to those questions. Spiritual self-discovery can be a journey that embraces our true humanity. It provides us with a sense of personal “completion” and wholeness.