by Oli Anderson, Transformational Coach for Realness
Three Pillars of Realness for Real Life Transformation: Mind, Body, and Vision
Every so often in life a moment arrives where it suddenly ‘clicks’ that something has to change:
You might feel restless even when things look ‘fine’ on the surface; you might feel like you’re holding back and hesitating from acting on the things you know could lead to your real life; or you might have a growing sense that you’re capable of so much more but can’t quite access it yet.
When this feeling appears, many people assume something is ‘wrong’ with them but – in reality – it usually means the opposite:
If you’re starting to feel like it’s time to change your life then it normally means that you’ve been living according to an unreal self-image and that you’ve reached the end of the line in terms of how far it can take you in life.
In other words, the mask you forgot you were wearing has stopped working and it’s time to take it off and replace it with something more REAL because the strategies that once helped you survive are now beginning to limit you, the beliefs that once protected you are beginning to trap you, and the life that you could once tolerate is beginning to feel unreal.
When this happens, you’re being invited into something deeper:
Your REALNESS.
In order to reconnect to this realness, then you have to let go of the unreal self-image you’ve been living through so that you can undo the consequences of old conditioning and programming.
This article will show you Three Pillars of Realness that you can start working on immediately in order to do this and that will help you see results surprisingly quickly (if you stick to them)
Let’s dig a little deeper:
Three Pillars of Realness: What We’ll Cover in this Article
- The Void: Why So Many People Feel Stuck
- The Symptoms of Living in the Void
- The Three Pillars of Realness
- Pillar 1: The Mind & Reclaiming Your Thinking
- Pillar 2: The Body & Restoring Emotional Flow
- Pillar 3: Vision & Giving Realness a Direction
- The Final Word: Putting the Three Pillars Together
The Void: Why So Many People Feel Stuck
Before we get into the pillars and what do DO about the problem, let’s look at how many people today end up with the core problem of being disconnected from their REALNESS in the first place:
It all comes down to the phenomenon of people living in what I call the Void.
The Void is the state we find ourselves living in when we’ve become disconnected from the truth about ourselves about life and this disconnection almost always begins with shame:
At some point in life – usually during childhood – we experience something that makes us feel that who we really are is unacceptable for some reason (maybe we were criticised, rejected, ignored, or misunderstood, for example).
Instead of processing that experience in a healthy way, we end up making a silent decision to blame ourselves (because this is what children do when they don’t get what they need from the world):
“The real me must be the problem“.
This leads to us beginning to hide by judging our realness and sending the “unacceptable” ‘parts’ of it into exile (which creates the Shadow Self).
In order to function in the world with these ‘part’s split off and left in exile, we create a replacement identity: the ego.
In the terms we’ve used, the ego is essentially a mask designed to survive the Void.
At first, it feels useful because it protects us from vulnerability, helps us avoid rejection, and gives us a relatively easy way to navigate the world.
The problem with this is that eventually we forget that we’re wearing a mask and we think that we ARE the mask and this just causes all kinds of unnecessary friction, frustration, and misery in lives as the unreality of the mask clashes against reality itself.
The complicate things even more, the ego comes with an entire belief system designed to keep it in place and these beliefs trap us cognitively by telling us who we are, what we can do, and what’s possible for us (in a totally unreal way)..
The ego also blocks our real emotions from flowing in the way that they need to (because integrating the emotions would mean reconnecting to our realness which is the opposite of the ego):
Emotions are “e-motion, energy in motion“- a part of the natural flow of life that keeps us integrated and whole and so when we suppress them to maintain our ego identity, that flow becomes blocked.
When both our thinking and our emotions are restricted, we end up going even more deeply into the strange fragmented dreamworld of the Void.
The Symptoms of Living in the Void
Most people don’t realise they’re in the Void because it’s become ‘normal’ and so the symptoms are seen as just being part of the human experience for most of us:
Here are some examples of the symptoms of the FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEM of the Void:
- A constant feeling of restlessness.
- Hesitating on things you know you really want to do.
- Chronic self-doubt.
- Excessive judgement of yourself and others.
- A generalised feeling of fear.
- Difficulty taking real action.
- Feeling disconnected from purpose or meaning.
- Not allowing yourself to just be (and so you’re constantly distracting yourself or looking for something external to fill the Void with).
When you’re living in the Void, life starts to feel like something that’s being done to you rather than something you’re participating in and so you’ll feel like you’re existing but not actually LIVING.
The ‘good’ news is that returning to realness doesn’t require a dramatic life overhaul like moving to the mountains to become ‘enlightened’ or dropping everything completely and renouncing the world.
It actually requires something much simpler but more effective:
You need to start working at the right levels of your being.
The Three Pillars of Realness
The journey back to realness is about undoing the fragmentation created by the Void and returning to your natural state of wholeness.
In my work with coaching clients, this process sits within a broader arc:
- Awareness – Deconstructing the ego
- Acceptance – Integrating the shadow
- Action – Trusting yourself and life
For practical daily work, though, there are Three Pillars of Realness that you can work on every day that gradually move you from fragmentation back into wholeness.
Those pillars are:
- Mind
- Body
- Vision
When you begin working on these three areas consistently, you stop feeding the Void and start reconnecting with your realness.
Let’s quickly look at each pillar in detail:
Pillar 1: The Mind & Reclaiming Your Thinking
The first place to begin is the mind:
Your ego identity is largely built from thought patterns and beliefs that you’ve absorbed over time but most of these beliefs were never consciously chosen and instead were inherited from family, culture, school, and past experiences.
When these beliefs are unreal, they limit you and keep you fragmented – examples include things like:
- “I’m not good enough”.
- “People will reject me”.
- “I can’t change”.
- “It’s too late for me”.
- Etc. etc. etc.
These beliefs feel true because you’ve repeated them for years and ended up hypnotising yourself into thinking they’re the actual truth.
They’re absolutely NOT the truth, though -they’re simply thought patterns that you’ve learned to identify with.
Realness begins when you learn to detach from your thoughts instead of identifying with them so that you can make an actual CHOICE about how you’ll let them influence your relationship with yourself and behaviour (and, thus, by extension the results you get from life).
This doesn’t mean suppressing thoughts – it just means training yourself to observe them and step back from them.
Eventually, you start to recognise that just because a thought appears in your mind doesn’t mean it’s real.
Practical Mind Practices
Here are some simple ways to start working with your mind:
1. Daily Awareness Journalling
Spend ten minutes each day writing down the repeating and unreal thoughts that keep appearing in your mind.
Then put the thoughts on ‘trial’ by asking questions like:
- Is this thought actually true?
- Is it helping me grow?
- Where might this belief have come from?
Awareness begins to dismantle the ego so that you can start to step away from the Void and into REALNESS.
2. Thought Labelling
When a negative thought appears, simply label it:
“That’s just a fear thought“.
“That’s just an old conditioning thought“.
Labelling thoughts weakens their power and helps you to step into observation mode instead of identification mode.
3. Practise Cognitive Distancing
Remind yourself the fundamental truth:
“This is a thought – not reality.”
You are not your thoughts – you are the awareness that can observe them.
Over time, this practice helps you loosen the grip of the ego identity and opens space for something more authentic and real to emerge.
Pillar 2: The Body & Restoring Emotional Flow
The second pillar of realness is the body:
Many people try to solve everything at the level of the mind but the body plays a crucial role in our psychological and emotional lives because when emotions are suppressed to maintain an ego identity, they don’t disappear – they remain stored in the nervous system.
This creates emotional blocks and keeps the body stuck in a heightened stress response which is ‘bad’ news because when the nervous system is dysregulated, the world starts to feel threatening and overwhelming.
This is one of the main reasons people stay trapped in the Void.
Restoring realness requires restoring flow in the body which comes back to the idea that “emotions are e-motion, energy in motion“:
When they’re allowed to move, the system rebalances itself naturally and (re)aligns with the natural drive towards wholeness.
Practical Body Practices
Here are a few simple ways to start working with the body on a daily basis:
1. Conscious Breathing
Slow, conscious nose breathing is one of the fastest ways to regulate the nervous system because you can’t sustainably breathe like this without activating the parasympathetic nervous system (the part of the nervous system that helps you relax and regulate).
Try this for starters:
- Inhale slowly through your nose for four seconds
- Exhale slowly for six seconds
- Repeat for five minutes
(Longer exhalations signal safety to the nervous system).
2. Movement
The body is designed to move and so physical movement helps process emotional energy and get you out of chronic ‘fight-or-flight’ mode.
Walking, yoga, stretching, strength training – anything like this will help you to restore flow.
You don’t need an extreme workout as much as you need consistent movement every day.
3. Emotional Allowance
Instead of suppressing emotions, practise allowing them to just be whatever they happen to be:
If sadness arises, feel it.
If anger arises, acknowledge it.
If fear arises, sit with it.
You don’t have to act on emotions but you do need to allow them to move because when emotions flow, the body returns to balance and presence.
If you want to go even deeper into your realness then check out Trust: A Manual in Becoming the Void, Building Flow, and Finding Peace.
Pillar 3: Vision & Giving Realness a Direction
The final pillar is Vision:
Realness is not just about healing the past but about moving towards something meaningful as a deeper expression of your realness.
Without a vision, people drift, but when you have a vision based on your real values your mind gains focus, your emotions gain direction, and your actions gain momentum.
In other words, vision gives your realness somewhere to go so you don’t have to get pulled into negative spirals caused by automatically caving to old (outdated) and unreal patterns.
Creating a Vision for Realness
To get started with this, you can yourself three simple questions (journal out these answers to get the best results):
- What kind of person do I want to become?
- What values do I want my life to embody?
- What kind of life would feel deeply meaningful to live?
Don’t worry about being perfect or having all the answers – you’re simply pointing your life in a real direction and can keep adapting as you move forward and learn by doing and engaging with reality itself.
Turning Vision into Action
As an aside, it’s worth knowing that a vision becomes even more powerful when it is broken down into goals and habits.
For example, you might break it down like this:
Vision: Live with courage and authenticity by creating my own business and sorting my health out.
Goals:
- Start a meaningful business
- Improve physical health
- Build deeper relationships
Habits:
- Work on your project for one hour daily
- Exercise three times per week
- Have one honest conversation each day
Habits are the bridge between vision and reality and it’s those small daily actions that compound into enormous life changes.
The Final Word: Putting the Three Pillars Together
The real power of these pillars comes when they work together because each pillar supports the others.
When you regulate your body, your thinking becomes clearer; when your thinking becomes clearer, your vision becomes stronger; when you take action on your vision, your confidence grows.
Over time, you’ll notice that – by focusing on REALNESS – you’ve started to leave the Void behind by reconnecting to the truth about yourself:
The restlessness begins to fade, the hesitation begins to disappear, and life begins to feel more real and you feel more present in your own experience of yourself and life.
Stay real out there,
P.S. If you’re ready to work on leaving the Void and stepping into your realness then book a free coaching session with me and I’ll help you to start seeing yourself and life more clearly.
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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