by Oli Anderson, Transformational Coach for Realness
5 Life Lessons for REALNESS & Building Flow
Everybody’s journey through life is different but the underlying structure is always the same:
Some of us have to climb mountains that nobody else ever sees whilst others spend years wandering through deserts of uncertainty, grief, shame, anxiety, addiction, heartbreak, illness, or disappointment; some are born into chaos whereas others create it for themselves; some have every external advantage imaginable yet still feel completely disconnected from themselves whereas others have nothing but feel nothing but connection even when it doesn’t make any ‘sense’.
The scenery, details, and stories change but – beneath it all – the journey itself is remarkably similar because, whether we realise it or not, we’re all moving in the same direction:
From fragmentation to wholeness, from unconsciousness to awareness, from bullshit to truth, and from the unreal version of ourselves that was built through fear, shame and conditioning to the REAL version of ourselves that has always been waiting under the surface of our lives all along.
This is what Realness is really all about….
Over the years I’ve worked with people from almost every conceivable background: different ages, different careers, different cultures, and different problems but – despite all of those differences – I’ve noticed that the same lessons tend to keep appearing over and over again – they aren’t “life hacks” or motivational slogans but universal principles rooted in the structure of the human experience itself and so whenever somebody truly accepts them, things begin to change in very real ways.
(Not overnight but nevertheless permanently)
This article is going to share five of the most important life lessons for realness and if you can truly start living them then you’ll put yourself in a far more REAL position than most people ever manage to reach.
Let’s dig a little deeper:
Life Lessons: What We'll Cover in This Article
- 5 Life Lessons for REALNESS & Building Flow
- Life Lesson #1: Real Always Works
- Life Lesson #2: Action Over Belief
- Life Lesson #3: Fill Your Cup
- Life Lesson #4: Slow Down to Speed Up
- Life Lesson #5: Shit is a Diamond
- The Final Word: The Journey Towards Realness
Life Lesson #1: Real Always Works
The first life lesson is based on the simple premise that real always works because reality is the only place where anything can actually happen.
That might sound a little too obvious until you stop and pay attention to how much of life is spent trying to avoid reality in the first place:
- We deny.
- We distract ourselves.
- We blame.
- We fantasise.
- We tell ourselves stories about why things can’t change (when they can).
- We cling to identities that stopped serving us years ago.
- Etc. etc. etc.
The problem with doing all of these types of things is that none of them can ever produce actual RESULTS in our lives because only if we face reality can we find an actual solid foundation (of acceptance) and then DO something with it.
Here are some examples of what I mean:
If you’re overweight, pretending you’re not doesn’t help to lose any of it.
If your relationship is broken, avoiding difficult conversations (that uncover reality) doesn’t repair it but makes things worse.
If you’re exhausted, convincing yourself to “just push through” isn’t sustainable in the long-term (and will most likely lead to burn out).
In short, then, “real always works” because reality is the only thing you can actually work with in the first place.
Truth is actionable but Fantasy isn’t.
One of the biggest shifts you can make to get started with shifting into a REAL gear instead of an unreal one is to start replacing questions like “What do I wish were true?” with “What’s actually true?” so that you can start tapping into a foundation you can actually build on.
This is difficult in the short-term because reality can sometimes hurt because it it dismantles your ego and excuses but also gives you a place to stand which is priceless (plus, it’s not reality itself that hurts – reality is actually medicine – what really hurts is having to let go of the illusions we think we need to protect ourselves from it).
“Real always works” because once you know where you really are then you can begin moving towards where you want to be.
Real Always Works: Practical implementation
- Ask yourself daily: “What’s actually happening here?”
- Separate facts from the stories and projections your mind keeps showing you.
- When you catch yourself resisting reality, then try to become curious instead of defensive.
- Remember that accepting reality isn’t giving up – it’s just a way to uncover something real to work with so you can move forward.
Reality may not always feel comfortable but it’s still the fastest possible route to freedom.
Life Lesson #2: Action Over Belief
Many of us can waste precious years of our lives on trying to ‘think’ ourselves into becoming somebody or something different – for example:
“I’ll start when I feel confident“.
“I’ll have that conversation when I’m ready”.
“I’ll write the book once I believe in myself”.
“I’ll launch the business when my imposter syndrome disappears”.
Unfortunately, life doesn’t work like this because the only thing that creates clarity of belief is action itself – in other words, real belief (knowing) follows action and doesn’t precede it.
Take confidence as an example again – it isn’t something you just ‘think’ yourself into but something that you earn by repeatedly showing yourself that you can survive reality and do what you need to do.
Imagine standing at the edge of a cold lake:
You can spend three hours thinking about jumping in, you can analyse the temperature, visualise success, and even stop to watch YouTube videos or read a few books about swimming in lakes and how to move your arms in the most efficient way.
Or…
You can take a single, solitary step and actually take a plunge.
At the end of the day, only one of those approaches gives you actual information based on experience over concept and life works in exactly the same way:
Movement reveals reality whereas thinking about it often just reinforces our ideas about (which may or may not be pointing towards something true).
This is why action is so powerful and what I like to call “the only real cure for anything“:
- It interrupts overthinking.
- It exposes limiting beliefs.
- It creates evidence.
- It changes identity over time.
Every meaningful life transformation I’ve ever seen began with somebody taking one imperfect step in a real direction instead of waiting in an unreal way for perfect certainty.
Action Over Belief: Practical implementation
- Start asking yourself every morning: “What’s the smallest REAL action I can take today?”
- Stop measuring progress by how motivated you feel and start focusing on your vision and principles (i.e. who you want to BECOME).
- Let your action teach you what’s possible instead of letting your feelings dictate your behaviour.
- Remember that momentum is created through movement – not thinking about it.
You don’t become ready and then act – you act and then the readiness catches up.
Life Lesson #3: Fill Your Cup
There’s an old saying which goes “You can’t pour from an empty cup“:
Most people (that I’ve spoken to, anyway) tend to agree with it but very few of us actually tend to live by it – instead, they spend years trying to prove their worth through endless giving, helping, ‘fixing’, people pleasing, performing, rescuing and achieving.
The result of all of this – perhaps predictably – is just burnout, resentment, emotional exhaustion, and a nervous system that’s permanently stuck in survival mode (Sympathetic Dominance).
The truth is that your ability to serve others is directly related to the state you’re bringing into the interaction.
What this means is that if you’re chronically dysregulated, then your cup becomes empty and so you have nothing real to give.
It also means that if you’re constantly abandoning yourself, then your cup has holes in it and so you’re just leaking energy and again unable to show up and give in any real way.
Healing and growing REAL means learning to fill it first and foremost so that you can give yourself what you need and then actually show up for others as a real version of yourself.
This isn’t ‘selfish’ (though some of your social conditioning might make you believe that it is) – it’s actually responsible because when you learn to REGULATE, INTEGRATE, and ACCELERATE then your nervous system is regulated, you integrate difficult emotions instead of suppressing them, and you learn to meet yourself with honesty and compassion so you naturally become more REAL.
More ‘real’ in this context means that you’re not plagued by all of the consequences of stress, dysregulation, and emotional incoherence and so you can:
- Be more patient.
- Be more creative.
- Be more generous.
- Stop forcing yourself to care because caring becomes effortless flow instead.
- Have something genuine to give.
In short, when you fill your cup then our presence becomes the gift instead of you needing to try and find something unreal to give to fill the Void.
Fill Your Cup: Practical implementation
- Prioritise foundational health habits like sleep, moving your body daily, and nourishing whole foods.
- Build a daily practice for nervous system regulation (walking, breathing, meditation, yoga or simply sitting quietly and cultivating stillness).
- Feel your emotions instead of immediately attempting to escape them because of old patterns and habits.
- Notice where you’re giving from obligation, scarcity, or attempts to fill the Void rather than abundance.
Fill your own cup first and then whatever naturally overflows becomes your gift to the world.
Life Lesson #4: Slow Down to Speed Up
One of the biggest obstacles to healing is impatience (along with a lack of self-compassion – in fact, I always like to remind people that two of the non-negotiables on a journey back into realness are 1. Patience and 2. Self-compassion).
You’ve probably experienced or seen impatience and how it shows up in your own life:
We want enlightenment by Tuesday afternoon, a perfect relationship by the end of next month, and complete confidence before Christmas roles round again.
Our impatience is one of main reasons that we’re always rushing – almost always because shame is driving us from beneath the surface of our lives and is constantly whispering that who we are right now isn’t ‘enough’.
To try and outrun this shame and our fear that it might be telling us the truth about ourselves (when actually shame is the literal opposite of truth) then we end up forcing, grinding, rushing ourselves, others, and even life itself so that we can finally get whatever it is that we think we want to finally feel that sense of being ‘enough’ (when we already are, anyway).
The irony of all this forcing etc. is that it almost has the opposite to the desired effect and so it slows us down:
This is because forcing is always rooted in the ego (the unreal version of ourselves we become because of shame) and so it disconnects us from reality which is actually the only place we can get results (“Real always works” – like we explored above).
When we’re disconnected from reality and the actual process of moving with life then flow, presence, and the learning all disappear and we become disappears and we become so obsessed with ‘arriving’ at a certain outcome that we stop paying attention to the journey that’s actually transforming us on the way there.
Healing has seasons, growth has rhythms, and nature never apologises for taking its time but still gets everything done.
“Slowing down to speed up” is what allows you to work in the same natural rhythm so you don’t get unnatural results (or no results at all):
The paradox is that when we slow down enough to actually experience life and to engage with the process of our own growth, then we make better decisions, become more resilient, stop wasting energy fighting reality, and notice opportunities we would otherwise miss.
Suddenly, simply by slowing down, our progress accelerates – not because we’re trying harder but because we’re finally cooperating with life instead of wrestling it.
Like I said a few paragraphs back, two qualities become absolutely non-negotiable here:
- Patience: Trusting that meaningful change unfolds over time.
- Self-compassion: Treating yourself like somebody worth supporting instead of somebody who constantly needs ‘fixing’.
Without those two qualities, healing becomes another impossible standard your ego tries to achieve but with them it becomes an ever-deepening relationship with reality that takes you deeper into realness.
Slow Down to Speed Up: Practical implementation
- Catch yourself whenever a sense of urgency or need to rush appears and ask whether it’s actually necessary (then remind yourself that life is too short to rush, anyway).
- Replace self-criticism with curiosity so that you can stay in the process instead of some result that your ego has determined will ‘save’ you in some way.
- Celebrate consistency instead of intensity and keep taking small steps every day.
- Remember that slow progress is still progress and that it often speeds you up in the long run.
The river returns to the ocean without rushing.
If you want to go deeper into your realness and building flow then check out my book Trust: A Manual in Becoming the Void, Building Flow, and Finding Peace.
Life Lesson #5: Shit is a Diamond
Perhaps the strangest lesson of all is this one and it goes like this:
The ‘parts’ of yourself you most want to get rid of often contain the very gifts you’re searching for.
Here are some common examples based on what I’ve seen:
- Your anger may become healthy boundaries.
- Your sensitivity may become deep empathy.
- Your stubbornness may become resilience.
- Your loneliness may become wisdom.
- Your fear may become discernment.
- Your pain may become purpose.
- Etc. etc. etc.
The ego has a black and white tendency to label all experience into categories of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ but reality itself is never that simple (because what’s REAL is beyond ‘good’ and ‘bad’ and just IS).
What this means is that most of what we call “flaws” are just strengths we have a distorted relationship with because they developed under painful conditions.
This is why shadow work (getting in touch with the real shadow side of yourself that hides behind ego) is so important – not because we’re trying to eliminate the darkness but because we’re trying to understand and learn from it.
Integration doesn’t mean pretending everything about yourself is wonderful but it does mean that EVERY rejected part brings valuable lessons that can help you grow more real, every defence mechanism that now holds you back once protected something, and that every wound developed for a reason but can free you once you start to really heal it.
As you stop fighting yourself by treating diamonds like ‘shit’ then the energy you were spending on self-rejection becomes available for living your actual REAL life as wholeness replaces fragmentation.
The diamond was always hidden inside what looked like ‘shit’ but once you see it again for what it really is then life starts to sparkle a little bit more.
Shit is a Diamond: Practical implementation
- Ask yourself what hidden strength exists underneath the qualities you dislike most about yourself.
- Become curious about your emotional triggers instead of judging them (your triggers are your teachers).
- Practise self-forgiveness so that you can cultivate self-acceptance (forgiveness is the process of returning to acceptance).
- Remember that healing isn’t about becoming somebody else but about recovering the ‘parts’ of yourself you’ve somehow forgotten.
The Final Word: The Journey Towards Realness
Healing isn’t about becoming ‘perfect’ and it isn’t about removing every uncomfortable feeling or finally reaching a point where life never challenges you again.
What it’s about is becoming more REAL.
The five lessons we’ve explored in this article are simple enough but don’t mistake simplicity for weakness if it returns you to a real foundation in yourself and life.
Remember the lessons we’ve explored and you’ll always have a way of navigating yourself back to a real place:
- Real always works.
- Action beats belief.
- A full cup serves the world better than an empty one.
- Slowing down often speeds everything up.
- The ‘parts’ of yourself you’ve been judging may contain the gifts you’ve been searching for all along.
Just like the rest of us, the scenery of your life will always be unique to you and you alone and your challenges will never look exactly like anybody else’s.
Despite this, the deeper journey remains universal and is a reminder that every step you take towards reality is a step towards wholeness, every act of honesty dissolves another illusion, and every moment of trust over fear brings another fragmented part of you home to yourself.
This is what the healing process of growing real is all about – not becoming someone new but becoming who you already are beneath all the bullshit.
Stay real out there,
P.S. If you’re ready to go deeper and to integrate realness in your own life then book a free coaching session with me and I’ll help you shift gear.
Trust: A Manual for Becoming the Void, Building Flow, and Finding Peace is a book about learning to return to your realness by cultivating trust in yourself and trust in life.
It contains practical exercises and dedicated meditations (Transformational Bridges) to take you DEEP in knowing yourself and life.
This book will answer many of the questions you have growing REAL and flowing towards wholeness. It covers everything from shame to addiction to the unconscious mind and synchronicity (and way more).
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.
It contains 166 practical ‘Revolutions’ for awareness and over 8,000 Self-Guidance Questions for you to uncover new insight about yourself, the world, and reality that you can translate into action and start building your real life on the realest possible foundation.
Shadow Life is an exploration of the human shadow and the hidden side of our personalities. It looks at the masks we wear, where these masks come from, and how we can take them off.
The book explores how we can better manage our relationships with shame, guilt, and trauma in order to remove the Mask that the world has asked us to wear (and that we forgot we were wearing) so we can live an authentic life with less drama, chaos, or BS whilst we’re still around.
The Flow Builder Journal has everything you need to make the next 21-weeks of your life a turning point.
It has monthly, weekly, and daily (morning and evening) check-ins, tools and reflections to keep you in the zone and keep you flowing with zest and momentum.
If you want to get unstuck and grow REAL then check it out.
Download EGO/SHADOW/TRUST - a free guide to transformation that will walk you through the vital stages of Awareness, Acceptance, and Action with practical strategies to implement right away.
