7. How experiential learning opens up our Authenticity

Hi my sweet! Aunt JD coming to you with some ideas about authenticity and how we can learn to trust our authenticity instead of guarding it from being hurt. I’m thinking about your authenticity right now. How attractive and inviting it is. How shiny it glistens from your insides to light up the room and my heart. It is such an exquisite gift you have to give to the world, this authenticity of yours. Let’s continue to unleash it! How about we get to today’s question.

Today’s Question:

If our authenticity means we’re fully integrated in our Essence qualities, yet we’ve been trained to be in defensive strategies, what’s the fastest way to integrate the two?

Whooohooo! This is a doozy of a question. We integrate our selves fully into our authenticity through experiential learning. I know, I know, I had never heard of it before either. I had no idea what experiential learning was or how to activate it within myself for so much of my youth. And it really affected me, slowing down or completely clogging up my ability to activate my authenticity all the time. 

You see, I was taught, like most of us, that once you hear the concept, you have it and can integrate it into your life. Not so fast, I learned. Understanding the concept consciously has very little impact on rewriting you Unconscious Procedural Manual. These two aspects of you can learn to communicate with each other through experiential learning. 

Your Unconscious Procedural Manual is a memory system in you that runs all your procedures like drinking from a cup and flipping someone off, so you don’t have to think about the steps in each of these each time you do them. Although, I’m realizing it would probably be better for all of us if we had to think through the steps of flipping someone off before we do it! Giggle.

Your Unconscious Procedural Manual also holds all the training you received about your sense of self from your FOO (family of origin). So if your parents were in defensive strategies a lot instead of their Essence, you will have a lot of programming in your manual which questions your worthiness, lovability, value, and capability. Our defensives strategies need to be right sends the message that others are wrong (unworthy, unlovable, inadequate). You can transform these trained-in sense of self memories through experiential learning which integrates the concept into Unconscious Procedural Manual.

Experiential learning requires you to have a new experience so the old stuck experience can transform. One fast and effective way to have a new experience is through Validations and Simple Truths. When you Validate the aspects of you that didn’t get validated, like your bangaranga Essence qualities inside, you can feel transformation happening in your body if you pay a little attention to it. Transformation feels like some stuck constricted places inside letting go and opening up, feeling lighter. Trying on the truth.

You can also feel the transformation of your Unconscious Procedural Manual when you speak Simple Truths to yourself and then notice how your body responds. Any time you take a moment to notice how your body responds, your having a new experience which transforms your mind and body into a new experience. 

Simple Truths and Validations are the same thing with an occasional distinction. Sometimes Validations give value to the difference between the training we received growing up and the truth about us. You’ll find lots of examples of how to use Simple Truths and Validations in some of my other posts and in my book Transform: Tune In to Turn On Your Authentic Self. For now, let’s hone in on the experiential part.

According to Dan Siegel, an expert in Interpersonal Neurobiology, Integration is linking differentiated parts into a functional whole. He says, “Integration connects various aspects of mental processes, feelings, and bodily sensations.” We’ve been exploring here how our trained-in powerlessness beliefs and defensive strategies disintegrate us into either/or thinking instead of both/and thinking. You can read more in depth about these in other posts. For now, we’re zeroing in on how to have new experiences so our old un-integrated experiences can transform back into the awesomeness of our authenticity. 

To reprogram your Unconscious Procedural Manual with Validations and Simple Truths, we need to validate what didn’t get validated in you as a kid. How many times were your internal Essence qualities of commitment, consistency, fortitude, dependability, resoluteness, independence, and inquisitiveness validated so you knew they were inside of you and not just a product of your behavior? We all needed our caregivers to see in us what we didn’t know how to trust was in us, so we could believe we had goodness and powerfulness inside of us. The absence of this kind of innerness-of-us Validation imprints a not good enough feeling in our Unconscious Procedural Manual.  

Your Procedural Manual can register a new experience that is different from what happened to you in the past every time you Validate your own experience. For example:

Validation: Yes we were trained to believe that who we are is our behavior and not our Essence qualities inside. 

Notice how your body responds. It will relax and let go in places and it might tighten up in some places. To the tight places speak this Simple Truth: 

I feel you tightness in our belly. I know you need to be understood. You’re afraid focusing on our own inner goodness will make us selfish or conceited like we were taught. 

Once again, notice how your body responds to being seen, valued, understood, and comforted.

Simple Truth: I’m realizing focusing on our inner Essencey resources allows us to feel more empowered to be ourselves and lift others into their own powerfulness. Selfishness tries to make us feel superior to others.

Notice how your body responds. Look for openings in your chest, spine, and belly. Also look for any bracing or twisting inside. Always a sign that an aspect of you is scared of the truth for some good reason. Give this part some Essence attention and listen to see what it has to reveal to you about it’s trained-in beliefs. 

Validating Truth: The truth about us is, our Essence qualities are benevolent qualities within us that also know how to get shit done!

Notice how your body responds. Let your insides try on for size your inherent goodness!

You just practiced some experiential learning! If you read through it too quickly to get the concept and move on, be kind to that part of you that still believes knowing the concept is enough. Validate it and appreciate it for wanting more info instead of more experience. That’s all it knows until you teach it how valuable letting yourself have the experience and witnessing yourself have the experience is. It transforms your Unconscious Procedural Manual which integrates the new experience as the new truth in town so the change happens at the most foundational level of you. Then, it’s in you and available to use in your daily life.

Sweet Essence! Oh my goodness! I get so excited thinking about you and how you’re experientially learning to integrate deeper and deeper into your authenticity. I imagine all the ways you will integrate this into your daily life and begin to notice all the transformations you can ignite in your interactions with others and the world. Just think, if you’re transforming your own reactions so that you can be freed up to do more creating in the moment, you can feel the power of your authenticity to impact the world around you. You become a beacon of Essencey light shining out from yourself and reminding all who cross your path that they have that Essence spirit inside of them too. Go shine Baby shine!