The Healing Journey: Realness Isn’t About Feeling Good All the Time

by Oli Anderson, Transformational Coach for Realness

A Successful Healing Journey is About Growing REAL and Showing Up in Life as it Actually Is

There’s a bizarre idea floating around in the world of personal development, spirituality, and mental health that goes something like this:

One day, if you do ‘enough’ healing or inner work – and all of the journalling, breathwork, shadow work, and maybe a few cold showers, gratitude exercises, and long stares into your belly button that come with it – then, you’ll finally ‘arrive’.

And when you arrive, everything will be wonderful.

It will bring you all of the following benefits:

You’ll feel great all the time.
You’ll never get angry.
You’ll never feel anxious.
You’ll never be disappointed.
You’ll never doubt yourself.
You’ll never experience loss.
Your relationships will work flawlessly.
Your business will flourish.
Your bank account will expand.
Everyone will like you (no, make that LOVE you).
The universe will recognise your spiritual credentials and arrange reality accordingly.
Etc. etc. etc.

In short, you’ll get to spend the rest of your perfect life floating serenely through life on a cloud of bliss whilst maybe taking a moment here and there to look down upon the rest of us and wondering why we haven’t figured it out yet.

It goes without saying that this all sounds absolutely wonderful but there’s one small problem with the whole idea:

It isn’t real and if we’re interested in REALNESS, then reality has to be where we start.

Let’s dig a little deeper:

Your healing journey is about accepting things as they are so you can work with them in a real way.

Healing Doesn’t Mean Everything Feels ‘Good’ All the Time

Mental, emotional, and spiritual (if you wanna go there) isn’t about feeling ‘good’ all the time or floating around blissfully on that cloud for the rest of your life but about how well you can handle REALITY and whilst remaining grounded and true to yourself.

This is what I call REALNESS and it doesn’t promise you a life without problems but does give you a better relationship with the person who has to deal with those ‘problems’ (you).

Whilst it’s definitely true that working on your inner ‘stuff’ can change your life dramatically by helping you to become less reactive, more self-aware, more emotionally intelligent, and more capable of making healthy decisions etc., it isn’t a magical panacea that makes every negative or ‘bad’ experience disappear once and for all.

Healing doesn’t turn you into the centre of the universe and so you don’t become so spiritually advanced that reality has to give you what you want when you want it like life is some kind of magical vending machine.

Nor does ‘healing’ help you to become become omnipotent and omniscient – all-powerful and all-knowing – so that you can perfectly predict everything and make sure nothing ever goes ‘wrong’ again.

In fact, the belief that this is where you’re eventually heading might be a sign that you’re still caught up in the EGO which is the exact thing you’re trying to ‘heal’ from – whether you know it or not – because the ego just wants control, certainty, and perfection in a universe that offers anything but.

At the end of the day, the ego just wants to believe that if you just figure everything out, you’ll eventually be able to manipulate reality so perfectly that nothing painful, disappointing or inconvenient will ever happen again but that’s not healing…it’s just an attempt to stop being human.

(Which is why we can say that “the ego is the opposite of reality“).

You’re Not Supposed to Become Perfect

Not everybody likes hearing this but your healing journey (or whatever you wanna call it) really only starts to get you anywhere once you’ve reached the point where you understand something rather humbling but achingly true:

You’re broken and perfectly imperfect just like everybody else, you live in a reality where things don’t always work out, people will disappoint you, relationships will end, and you’re going to die one day.

You’ll make mistakes, you’ll behave badly, you’ll misunderstand things, and you’ll make the ‘wrong’ decision despite having the best intentions.

Things will occasionally go completely ‘wrong’ for reasons you couldn’t possibly have predicted.

But, despite it, all….

It’s all okay…It’s just called “being human”.

Not “okay” in the sense that none of it matters or in the sense that you should pretend that things aren’t ‘bad’ when they actually are – and certainly not “okay” in the sense that you should plaster a positive affirmation over every difficult experience and suppress you’re actual feelings.

Just “okay“ in the deeper sense that you’re actually allowed to let reality be reality.

You don’t have to turn every difficult experience into evidence that you’ve failed or to interpret every setback as further proof that you’re irredeemably ‘broken’… but you also don’t have to manufacture a spiritual explanation for everything or to abandon yourself just because life isn’t giving you what you wanted (right now).

Healing isn’t about becoming ‘perfect’ and eliminating all the qualities that make you human (no human is perfect, anyway) but about accepting your imperfections, changing them when you can (if you even can and want to) and then continuing to move towards a deeper place of wholeness anyway.

The Real Test Is What Happens When Things Go Wrong

This is why we can say that healing isn’t about feeling ‘good’ all the time but about something else entirely:

It’s about learning to stay grounded and REAL in yourself even when things aren’t working out.

Anyone can feel centred and ‘healed’ when everything is going their way

If your business is booming, your relationship is fantastic, your health is good, you’ve got money in the bank and everyone seems to love you then it’s pretty easy to tell yourself and everybody else that you’re grounded and that you can “trust the universe”.

Wonderful.

Here’s the question, though:

What happens when “the universe” doesn’t seem to give a shit about your plans anymore?

If I’m making loads of money in my business, my love life is going brilliantly and the economy is booming, then it’s exceptionally easy for me to walk around telling everybody that I “trust” life and that I’m “healed”:

But what happens when I’m not getting any clients booked?

Or if my love life starts dwindling?

Or if money becomes tight?

What if my plans collapse, I’m confronted with uncertainty that I genuinely can’t control, and the world as a whole starts to destabilise and it feels like World War III seems like it could start any day?

The point I’m making is simple:

It’s in the ‘bad’ times when I get to discover whether my trust is actually real or not because anybody can trust when things are going great.

Real TRUST comes into effect when things aren’t going so well and sometimes even when they downright SUCK.

Trust Is the Foundation

This is why the whole idea of trust – in yourself and life – is so important to the healing journey:

Real trust isn’t the belief that everything will work out exactly how you want it to – that’s just a wish list for the Great Cosmic Vending Machine disguised as optimism.

Real trust is the confidence that you can keep taking the steps you need to take even though you don’t know exactly what will happen all the way down the line.

It means you trust YOURSELF to respond to what’s actually happening in reality, to learn by doing, to adapt, to get back up when you need to, and to make the next decision when the time comes.

It also means that you trust LIFE to fill in the blanks because your humility allows you to accept that you don’t know everything, you can’t control everything, you can’t predict everything.

When you trust yourself and life like this then you can go through any situation knowing how to:

Do your best (trust yourself) and let go of the rest (trust life).

That’s REALNESS.

Trusting in this real way doesn’t mean becoming passive – in fact, real it will usually makes you more active because you’re not allowing an unreal self-image and set of limiting beliefs to hold you back:

You still send the email.
You still make the phone call.
You still go to the gym.
You still have the difficult conversation.
You still apply for the job.
You still work on your relationship.
You still build the business.
You still take the next step.
Etc. etc. etc.

The only real difference is that you’ve been through an internal shift and so now you stop demanding a guarantee that the step will lead exactly where you want it to go.

You do your best and then let go of the rest.

The Humility of Being a REAL Human Being

We can only learn to trust ourselves and life in a real way if we develop the humility to know and accept the truth which is that:

We don’t know everything, we’re not not in control of everything, and that there are always going to be forces bigger than ourselves affecting our lives which means that we all have natural limits that we need to work with.

“Humility” here doesn’t mean thinking you’re worthless or kowtowing and deferring to the world when you don’t need to – it just means accurately accepting your strengths and weaknesses and understanding the natural limits that come with being a real human being.

You’re human, I’m human, neither of us are all-knowing or all-powerful and so neither of us know exactly what tomorrow will bring or have complete control over the things that are unfolding in our lives and the consequences of our actions.

The ego (the opposite of our realness) hates this because the ego is based on the illusion that we’re separate from life as a whole and so eventually we can figure everything out if we’re clever enough, wealthy enough, attractive enough, productive enough, enlightened enough or spiritually evolved enough to finally make uncertainty disappear from our lives.

That would be nice but uncertainty can’t disappear because it’s a fundamental part of our existence as fragmented creatures in fragmented bodies on a fragmented planet (even at the most basic level of being in a fragmented body uncertainty is just in-built – for example, you can never know for sure what’s behind you all the time because you don’t have eyes in the back of your head).

Accepting that uncertainty and unknowing etc. are just part of human existence itself is actually very liberating because once you stop pretending you can control everything then you no longer have to exhaust yourself trying to control the uncontrollable.

Instead, you can actually focus on what belongs to you and that you have influence over:

Your awareness.
Your choices.
Your actions.
Your relationship with yourself (and then the world and reality by extension).
Etc. etc. etc.

When you focus on what you can control (“do your best”) then you can allow the rest to unfold however it needs to until you have an opportunity to step in again (“let go of the rest”).

Trust: A Manual in Becoming the Void, Building Flow, and Finding Peace

If you’re ready to go deeper into your realness and getting into the flow then check out my book Trust: A Manual in Becoming the Void, Building Flow, and Finding Peace.

How to Grow REALNESS & Move Forward On Your Healing Journey When Life Feels ‘Bad’

So how do you actually make all of this practical so you can start seeing improvements in your own relationship with yourself and life?

Well, it all begins with paying attention to what happens inside you when reality doesn’t match your expectations.

Let’s look at a few quick steps for implementation:

1. Stop arguing with reality

When it feels like something is going ‘wrong’ then start to pay attention to the JUDGEMENTS that arise in your inner experience of yourself and the thoughts and interpretations that you’re projecting onto reality itself.

An example of this kind of judgement is “This shouldn’t be happening” – maybe, maybe not but, actually, what’s way more important is the fact that it IS happening and that’s what you need to learn to work with to be able to ‘heal’ in the real way that we’ve been talking about.

The bottom line is that reality doesn’t require your permission nor does it care about what you ‘like’ or ‘dislike’ or get affected by your judgements in any way, shape, or form.

The first step, then, is always to acknowledge what has actually happened without adding another layer of psychological suffering through judgement and resistance by training yourself to just observe instead – for example:

“This is happening. I don’t like it. But it is happening”.

This is REAL because it puts you on a foundation of ACCEPTANCE so you can actually build with what is instead of being held back from building because you’re caught up in your own mind.

2. Separate pain from identity

Another important point to acknowledge is that something going ‘wrong’ doesn’t mean that there’s something ‘wrong with YOU:

A failed relationship doesn’t make you a failure, a bad month in business doesn’t make you a bad entrepreneur, a mistake doesn’t make you a bad person, and a difficult emotion doesn’t mean you’re emotionally unhealthy.

The ‘healed’ approach is to allow yourself to feel whatever you feel in the short-term with without turning the experience into a permanent definition of yourself.

It’s about knowing that emotions are just “e-motion, energy in motion” and allowing them to pass through you without identifying with them and then leaving them stuck in your system as a whole.

3. Ask: “What is mine to do?”

When life becomes chaotic and uncertain then bring your attention back to REAL action instead of just acting for the sake of it to try and feel like you’re ‘doing’ something.

Real action is aligned with your real values but also – more importantly – who you are when you’re grounded in your realness instead of the unreal self-image your ego has created because of underlying shame, guilt, and/or trauma (the Unholy Trinity).

Ask yourself some simple but powerful questions that can open up the path forward:

What can you actually influence?
What conversation needs to happen?
What decision needs to be made?
What practical step can you take today?

You don’t need to ‘solve’ your entire life – you need to take the next real step (and that will reveal the next one and then the next one and then the next one).

4. Practise trust in small moments

You don’t need to wait for some massive unfolding existential crisis to discover whether you trust yourself or not – you can actually start right now by facing uncertainty head on and moving through it:

Make decisions without having every possible outcome guaranteed, allow other people to be themselves, admit when you don’t know things, try something without knowing whether it will work.

Let a little uncertainty into your life without allowing it to shake you from yourself and you’ll start strengthening your trust muscle.

5. Let yourself feel bad

This one is particularly important when it comes to having realistic expectations about your ‘healing journey’ and being able to stay true to yourself and life on whatever path you walk.

Sometimes you’re going to feel shit so let yourself feel shit.

You don’t need to turn sadness into gratitude within thirty seconds, you don’t need to meditate your anger away, and you don’t need to convince yourself that your disappointment is actually a “blessing” when it isn’t.

Sometimes something hurts simply because it hurts and so feeling ‘bad’ isn’t necessarily a sign that you’ve gone backwards and is actually a totally normal and healthy reaction to whatever reality is throwing at you right now.

The goal isn’t to eliminate difficult emotions from your life (which is impossible) but to develop a relationship with them that allows you to remain REAL even when you’re riding through the ‘bad’ times.

A healing journey when you accept what actually is and use at as fuel to create what could be.

The Final Word: Feeling Better is a Consequence of a Healing Journey, Not the End Goal

There’s an important paradox in everything that we’ve been talking about in this article and it looks like this:

REALNESS will make you feel better overall because when you stop fighting yourself and life, stop performing your way through everything, stop chasing perfection, and stop demanding that reality conform to your expectations, then a lot of unnecessary suffering disappears as you become more resilient, you recover more quickly, you become less reactive, and you experience more genuine peace.

This doesn’t mean that you need to ‘cling’ cling to any of these ‘good’ experiences, though, because you know that they’re just as temporary as the ‘bad’ times are.

What it does mean is that you know you don’t need to feel ‘good’ all the time because you know you’re on the right path because you don’t need complete certainty and control to trust yourself and life.

This is the difference between feeling good and being well – feeling ‘good’ is an experience but being well is a relationship with reality based in your realness.

You can only have a health relationship with reality if you accept that it contains everything – ‘good’ and ‘bad’:

Joy.
Grief.
Success.
Failure.
Love.
Loss.
Certainty.
Uncertainty.
Growth.
Stagnation.
Pleasure.
Pain.
The whole fricking lot of it.

You don’t become REAL by finding a way to live permanently outside of everything that life has to offer but by becoming capable of meeting all of it without abandoning yourself.

This is truly the deeper promise of going through a ‘healing journey’ – not that nothing will ever go ‘wrong’, that you’ll wake up ‘perfect’ one day, or that the universe will finally start doing exactly what you want but that when things go ‘wrong’ (which they will) that you can stay with yourself.

The ultimate form of healing isn’t finally becoming someone who has everything figured out but becoming humble enough to admit that you never will and continuing to trust yourself and life anyway.

Stay real out there,

Oli Anderson, Transformational Coach for Realness

P.S. If you’re ready to go deeper into your own realness and reconnecting to yourself and life through real action then book a free coaching session with me and I’ll help you shift gear.

Personal Revolutions: A Short Course in Realness is a book designed to help you look at your life from the inside-out so that you can stop holding yourself back and go get what you really want.

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