by Oli Anderson, Transformational Coach for Realness
The Shift: How to Start Seeing What You’re Really Looking For
Most of us are searching for the same thing – whether we consciously realise it or not:
A REAL relationship with ourselves and with life.
Beneath all of our goals, distractions, ambitions, and desires, what we’re truly seeking is a sense of true connection which basically just means that we want to feel whole, we want to feel present, and we want to know – not just believe – that we’re actually here, participating in life instead of performing our way through it as something that we’re not.
The problem, of course, is that we often forget this and so we lose sight of what we’re really looking for and so start searching for that same sense of connection “out there” in the world:
This just leads to a situation where we begin treating ‘good’ things like money, sex, power, status, relationships, achievement, and approval as though they’re ULTIMATE things – these things are definitely not ‘bad’ in themselves but they were never meant to carry the weight of our deepest need for meaning and connection and so treating them like they can do just leads to friction, frustration, and then misery.
The moment we attempt to shape these things (or any other) into the ‘ultimate’, then we begin moving towards what I call the VOID: a state of restlessness and confusion caused by buying into fragmentation instead of wholeness.
Maybe you’ve felt the Void yourself?
It feels like restlessness, emptiness, and the frustration of being on the rollercoaster of constantly achieving things and still wondering why something is missing – the constant sense that there must be “more” but never quite being able to reach it.
What’s interesting is that there IS more but most people look for it in the wrong place:
They think it exists in the next relationship, the next success, the next level of validation, or the next external achievement but what they’re actually looking for isn’t something outside of themselves:
What they are aching for is their REALNESS.
They’re trying to solve an inner problem with outer substitutes and this always leads deeper into the Void.
This article is about two powerful and effective SHIFTS you can start making to put yourself back in reality and to take yourself out of the Void once and for all.
Let’s dig a little deeper:
The Shift: What We'll Cover in This Article
- The Shift: How to Start Seeing What You’re Really Looking For
- The Fundamental Problem: Distortion and Resistance
- Living in the Void
- The Path Back: Awareness, Acceptance, and Action
- The Two Shifts That Keep You Real
- Shift One: Learn to Discern the Real from the Unreal
- Shift Two: Learn to Witness
- The Main Shift: From Fiction to Fact
- The REAL Shift: Start Now
The Fundamental Problem: Distortion and Resistance
Before we get into the two shifts that can help us return to realness, we first need to understand the context of the fundamental problem that keeps most people stuck in the Void in the first place:
DISTORTION and RESISTANCE.
These are the two main forces that stop us from perceiving ourselves, the world, and reality clearly because they create emotional blocks, unhealthy patterns, and mental confusion that keep us trapped in fragmentation instead of allowing us to return to wholeness.
Both distortion and resistance cause us to live in the Void because they stop us from being PRESENT in ourselves and our lives and cause us to become lost in our own projections.
What this means is that – instead of being able to respond to life according to who we actually are in relation to what life actually is – we end up reacting to stories/projections we’ve created about life instead and then just remain ‘stuck’.
This is where suffering multiplies.
Let’s look at each of these ‘forces’ in a bit more detail:
Distortion
Distortion means that we are unable to see clearly.
This usually happens because of underlying shame, guilt, and/or trauma that causes us to over-identify with the ego whilst keeping the shadow self buried and hidden.
When we live like this, we end up filtering life through our interpretations (extending from the ego) instead of actually experiencing life as life itself.
For example:
–We do not see what’s actually in front of us, we see what our wounds tell us is there (“We don’t see the world as it is but as we are”).
–Someone gives us feedback and we experience rejection (because of underlying shame).
–Someone offers us love and we expect abandonment (because of some unresolved ‘stuff’ from the past).
–An opportunity appears and we experience threat instead of possibility.
-Etc. etc. etc.
In all cases like this, reality becomes distorted through the lens of fragmentation (the inner split from self at the level of realness) and we stop living in truth and start living in interpretation.
Resistance
Resistance means that we are unable to ACT in ways that we know are real and true because doing so feels like a threat to the ego.
The ego values comfort, familiarity, and control more than growth, truth, or freedom so that it can remain in place and keep us from facing the unresolved shame, guilt, and/or trauma that fragmented us in the first place.
Some examples of resistance are things like:
-Knowing you need to have the difficult conversation but avoiding it.
-Knowing you need to rest but continuing to perform.
-Knowing you need to let go of something or somebody but being unable to because uncertainty feels too uncomfortable.
-Etc. etc. etc.
Resistance isn’t ignorance because we KNOW what we need to do – instead, it’s a refusal to ACT on what we know is real so that we can hold onto the familiar that no longer serves us (if it ever did in the first place).
It’s the friction between truth and fear and the CHOICE to let fear keep winning.
Living in the Void
When distortion and resistance dominate your life, you remain in the Void and so life feels hollow and unreal and you keep sensing there must be ‘more’ (and there is: your REAL life).
What’s unfortunate is that distortion convinces you that this ‘more’ is something outside of you and so you keep chasing more money, more attention, more control, more success, or more pleasure because you think that these ‘good’ things are the ULTIMATE.
In reality, what you are aching for is your own realness and so you don’t need more illusion – you need more TRUTH.
The Path Back: Awareness, Acceptance, and Action
Many people assume that living with distortion and resistance is simply the human condition and that suffering through fragmentation for the rest of their lives is unavoidable.
Actually, though, we can put ourselves back on the path to integration and return to wholeness and improve our quality of life by removing the symptoms and side effects of RESISTING life and reality.
(The symptoms and side-effects are all the things that come from living in the Void like friction and emptiness etc.).
Returning to the path happens through three stages:
Awareness, Acceptance, and Action.
(These are the stages I use with my coaching clients when working with them in dedicated containers for realness).
Awareness: Deconstructing the Ego
The first step in any transformational journey is always Awareness because if you’re not aware then you can’t change anything.
This means becoming conscious of your patterns, your projections, your emotional loops, your false identities, and the ways you inoculate yourself against the truth.
You cannot change what you refuse to see and so Awareness is the beginning of freedom.
Acceptance: Integrating the Shadow
The second step is Acceptance which means finally learning to stop the war against yourself and life:
Instead of pretending ‘parts’ of yourself do not exist and sending them into the shadow self, you begin to face them honestly and compassionately so that you can OWN them again (and then do something with them).
Instead of building your identity around avoiding shame which leads to ego, you allow truth to be true and build with it instead of against it (which removes that friction, frustration, and misery).
This is where real ‘healing’ begins because acceptance is the opposite of resistance and judgement which are the main things that cause us to deny ourselves and become fragmented instead of whole (“healing” = returning to wholeness or at least the path of moving into deeper wholeness).
Action: Trusting Yourself and Life
The third step is to take real Action which means moving in alignment with truth instead of waiting until you feel perfectly ‘ready’ or good ‘enough’ or [whatever].
This means trusting yourself enough to choose what is real over what’s merely comfortable and trusting life enough to know when to let go so you can stop forcing in an attempt to have everything conform to ego and start flowing instead.
This means you’ll be acting from a foundation of acceptance – again, the opposite of resistance and judgement – which is the only solid place from which to build a meaningful life.
The Two Shifts That Keep You Real
So having said all this, let’s get onto the two shifts you can start making from this day forth to start embodying your realness and working with life instead of against it:
There are many complicated ideas and systems out there about healing and transformation but these two shifts can serve you for the rest of your life because they always bring you back to truth.
They are simple but that doesn’t mean that they’re ‘easy’ – but if you’re going to get started, there’s no better time than today.
Let’s dive in:
Shift One: Learn to Discern the Real from the Unreal
One of the most important skills you can develop is the ability to tell the difference between what’s real and what’s unreal.
This is because most (not all) suffering comes from confusing fiction for fact and believing in thoughts that quite simply aren’t true but are just an extension of the ego (itself and extension of shame, guilt, and/or trauma).
It’s also about learning to see that we often are hypnotised by and obey conditioning that was never ours in the first place because we mistake social programming for reality.
Growing real means learning to ask one of the most important questions possible:
“What is actually true here?“
Not what is convenient, not what protects your ego, not what helps you maintain an image but the truth.
To become effective at this first shift, discernment needs to happen at three levels: the Self, the World, and Reality.
At the Level of the Self
At the level of the self, this means looking honestly at anything within you that is holding you back from deeper wholeness:
-Your distortions.
-Your resistance.
-Your shame.
-Your compulsions and addictions (same thing in many cases)
-Your emotional avoidance.
-Your need for validation.
-Your attachment to a self-image that no longer serves you but is ruling your life.
-Etc. etc. etc.
Essentially, discernment means choosing the real over the unreal and so, sometimes, this means admitting that you are hurt instead of pretending you are fine; sometimes, it means recognising that what looks like confidence is actually fear.
Sometimes, it means realising that what you need is not more motivation but more honesty with ourselves and discipline to act in a real way and overcome resistance.
The real path is rarely glamorous but it is always liberating because the truth will set you free (but first it will piss you off and make you miserable as you let go of your illusions).
At the Level of the World
At the level of the world, discernment means understanding that the world is not reality:
This means understanding that the world is full of social conditioning, inherited beliefs, and cultural programming that tell you who to be and what to value but much of this is unreal.
For example:
Messages like “you’re only valuable if you are productive“, “you must be good-looking to matter” or “your worth depends on your success” are not truths – they’re SCRIPTS and PROGRAMS.
If you don’t question this kind of social programming, then you’ll unconsciously build your life around them and wonder why achievement still feels ’empty’.
Discernment means refusing to let the unreal define your worth and knowing that your realness is valuable in itself.
At the Level of Reality
At the level of reality, discernment means accepting how life actually works by embracing the natural laws that apply to all of us.
For example:
Reality ‘includes ‘works’ around cause and effect, time, consequence, responsibility, and limitation which means that you can’t negotiate with reality – you can only align with it (or resist and then end up on the path to misery)
This means accepting what can’t be changed while working wisely with what can.
It also means understanding that healing takes time, resistance creates suffering, and actions have consequences.
In short, the more you stop fighting reality, the more peace you experience in the long-run.
Shift Two: Learn to Witness
The second shift is learning to witness:
Witnessing means training yourself to come from a place of AWARENESS first and foremost rather than automatic identification – it means stepping back from your mental and emotional fluctuations so that you can allow them to pass without becoming them.
This means embracing the FACT that you’re not every thought you think, you’re not every feeling you feel, and you’re not not every fear your nervous system produces in moments of stress (or most of the time if you’re stuck in sympathetic dominance).
Without witnessing, thought and emotion become identity; with witnessing, thought and emotion become a CHOICE.
This changes everything.
Responsive Instead of Reactive
The more you learn to stand back and witness before making a choice, the more you become responsive instead of reactive which means that you can act from your realness instead of your ego.
For example:
–If somebody criticises you, instead of instantly becoming defensive, you can pause and ask why it affected you so strongly.
–If anxiety rises, instead of panicking and acting compulsively, you can recognise that your body is activated and stay present with it.
–If rejection appears, instead of collapsing into self-abandonment, you can remain with yourself and meet the pain consciously.
This is how we actually show up in life – not by becoming emotionless but by becoming aware.
Check out this article about Urge Surfing if you want to go deeper into witnessing: Urge Surfing Desires: Staying REAL and Controlling Desire the Urge and Stay Real
A Simple Practice for Witnessing
A simple way to practise witnessing is to pause, observe, name, allow, and choose:
Pause before reacting.
Observe what is happening within you.
Name it honestly (“I feel shame” etc).
Allow these experiences to exist without judgement.
Then:
Choose your response from awareness rather than reactive habit.
This gives you your power back because it interrupts unconscious patterns and creates the freedom of choice.
Check out my book Trust: A Manual in Becoming the Void, Building Flow, and Finding Peace if you want to go deeper into building your real life in a real way.
The Main Shift: From Fiction to Fact
These two shifts support each other because discernment helps you recognise what is real and witnessing helps you stay present enough to live from it.
Together, they move you from FICTION to FACT, from projection to presence, from fragmentation to wholeness, and from the Void back into real life.
This is the work of growing in REALNESS – it’s not about being perfect or impressive but simply being TRUE and REAL to yourself and life.
The REAL Shift: Start Now
Don’t wait for the perfect moment to start changing your life or wait until life feels ‘easier’ to get started – you’re never going to feel completely ‘ready’ but you can always be real by standing wherever you find yourself.
Start by asking yourself one simple question right now (journal out your answer if you need to):
What in my life is real and what is unreal?
Then follow this up with a second question:
What next step does the truth require of me?
That is the SHIFT and it begins with small, repeated acts of ACCEPTANCE instead of RESISTANCE.
Over time, these choices rebuild trust:
Trust in yourself and Trust in life.
Eventually, you stop chasing connection because you realise you were never supposed to chase it in the first place – instead you just needed to RETURN to it.
Stay real out there,
P.S. If you’re ready to start shifting from unreal to real and creating an active sense of flow in your life then book a free coaching session with me and I’ll help you start showing up.
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.
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