“The world will ask you who you are and if you don’t know, the world will tell you”.   This saying is pretty self-explanatory right! There is power in knowing who you are and where you’re going, in knowing your strengths, your weaknesses and in realizing your gifts. We better understand this through the process of Self-development, defined as the “process by which a person’s character or abilities are gradually developed”. Development implies a permanent change in the structure of your being including but not limited to: your body, mind, and spirit.  The three most important processes of self-development are vision, creation and intuition.  These feminine traits allow you to create the blue print for building the self-fulfilled life you want to lead.

 In the Golden Era from where the science of yoga originates, Feminine Energy was recognized as being central to the process of self-development. This was due to the understanding, that the prominence of the SELF-aspect in self-development is predominantly “feminine” which is internally reflective in nature.  Feminine Energy creates energy while carrying the force and the strength to which transformation thrives.  This is the reason why tapping into feminine energy is essential for being successful in Self- development. Today the strength of  feminine energy is considered; weak, inferior and even worse irrelevant.  This explains the absence of feminine energy in discussions about growth, and personal development. This also explains why women often feel like they have to take on more masculine traits in-order to succeed. This thought process has many consequences for women because we often find it hard to step back into our femininity causing imbalance in other areas of our lives; a sacrifice that women do not have to make. Feminine energy is as powerful as masculine energy. As women we have the power to change the narrative but we must first accept and acknowledge this power. Women can only compete with masculine energy while in feminine energy. Creating a harmonious balance where her strengths can really shine, but if she chooses to use masculine energy to compete with masculine energy he will often win because men do masculine energy better than women. Please do not get side tracked by my use of the word compete. When we say compete think of the Yin and Yang symbol, two forces opposite but equal creating a perfect circle. When one side is overly occupied it automatically pushes the other person into the other space because there always has to be continuous balance, a defect within this balance will cause conflict. Embracing feminine energy is not about competing with men, its about creating an environment that empowers women to get what they need in healthier ways. The lifelong process of Self-development requires patience, understanding, and many other feminine traits. Traits that we want to embrace while participating in self growth.

Self Development allows us to assess our skills, consider our aims in life and set goals in order to realize and maximize our full potential.  For women realizing the power in our own feminine energy will enable our personal empowerment.  This will awaken in us the extraordinary fountain of feminine transformational power and with that the skills to create unlimited possibilities.  The process of Self–Development is often underestimated and over looked. This is especially true for women, who are often asked to sacrifice their own needs; including their personal growth in order to care for their families. Women often find themselves supporting their men and his desires for purpose while ignoring our own desires for purpose. A sad truth especially when you understand that we are human before we are women and the human need for understanding why we exist does not escape us just because we are women. Women are also the teachers, care givers and we will raise the next generation. The process of raising a child includes supporting the physical, emotional, social, and intellectual Development of the child.”  WE CAN EITHER FILL THEIR CUPS OR NOT, and we will better know how through Self-Development.

 In Self-Development we work to develop the four planes of our existence-physical, emotional, mental and spiritual. All four planes are important to self-development and neglecting one aspect of our existence can lead to dysfunction, delusion and destruction of our own self-image and worth. We will definitely talk about these 4 aspects of existence in detail later on in other articles. For this article though, let’s talk a little bit about how Self- Development allows us to understand an essential aspect of our mentality, which is our thought process. The way we perceive reality effects everything in life. Thought process is the way your mind converts words or images into ideas in a sequence, by combining ideas into harmonious thought, abstract thought, logical thought, or reasoning. This allows for coherent and logical thinking. Learning how to control this process will strengthen your emotional IQ because it controls how you mentally process every situation, and how you make and accept your decisions. Thoughts turn into decisions and decisions turn into actions, actions turn into situations and situations have the power to shape your views for the rest of your life. Experiences have the power to create very damaging patterns that stick with you forever. Your reaction to these patterns will impact how the world sees you.  It starts with your mind; thought process is nothing more than the pattern of thinking that resulted in a decision, which resulted in action, which set in motion a series of events. Kind of like the Domino Effect, difference is your strategically placing the dominoes in a position to get you the most favorable outcomes. That’s all, so if it’s that simple I can control it right? YES! How? By using a skill called “Think about Thinking,” or TAT, this skill works with all problems that involve serious thinking. This skill is fairly simple. One of the easiest ways to effectively TAT is by meditation. All you have to do is find a space where you will not be disturbed. Then Think about your opinions on a certain situation, and rather or not they’re valid.  What you can ask yourself is “why do I feel this way?” Is it because of past experiences, invalid thoughts, or fear?  This will help you dissect your thoughts and how you process them. Next think about the feelings you have associated with the situation. Are they based in logic or emotions? You can determine whether something is based in logic because there will be factual evidence, emotions will be based solely in how you feel with lack of evidence to support them. Lastly, think about the best options to solving the problem with the least amount of casualties.  “Now with just that small bit of information on thought processes I feel better about how I can manage events in my life!” Ok then so here is some “Easy A” homework think of a problem your facing in life that needs to be solved and use the skill TAT. Comment and let us know if it helps!

Figuring out how to allocate time to self- development can seem tasking to say the least, an example of something I did was “Cocoon”. We are all familiar with this word, insects like the caterpillars use a cocoon as a form of self-protection, while it transforms into a beautiful butterfly.  This tactic is very beneficial when developing emotionally and mentally; the reason why is because one of the most draining factors affecting our energies is our physical one and how we use this finite energy source will impact our quality of transformation. This is very important because if you do not put yourself in a state of solitude you will be distracted by all of the mundane events and situations going on around you. So creating a safe space in our lives that allows us peace and stillness will amplify the process of mental and emotional self-development.  This gives us the time we need to really care for ourselves.

The value of self development is substantial and vast.   We can use self-development to increase consciousness and awareness of self and interactions outside of self in order to maneuver through life with optimal efficiency. If you can learn to evaluate experiences and/or interactions before, during and after the fact you can learn to manipulate situations in order to have better outcomes. You can figure out the cause and therefore what actions caused particular events to result in certain unhealthy or unfavorable outcomes by thinking about your thought patterns, decisions and actions.  But this will take certain skills that can only be mastered through deliberate Self-Development specifically Emotional Intelligence. An example of deliberate self-development is reading books on ways to improve how you emotionally react to problems.  Improving your Emotional Intelligence could possibly be achieved over time without purposefully working towards it but, it will require appropriate experiences for creating a space for growth in this area. While this is possible, your leaving it up to chance and it may never happen.  You could end up spending the rest of your life struggling with managing your emotions ruining relationships in the process. This is why actively pursuing self-development is so important. Life has an expiration date and self-development allow you to make the most of this short experience called life.

 Now every situation cannot be controlled but how you react to EVERY situation can definitely be managed. How you manage situations effects your mental health and inevitably how far away you get from the you you’ve always wanted to be. Self-development has helped me personally control my feelings, actions, motives, and reactions to the problems that inevitably happen in life. As we all know the world is harsh, and I personally never believed them when they told me I have no control over my life.   I may not have full control but I have some control especially over my person.  We can either be crash dummies or we can grab the wheel and drive gracefully to our final destination.