Think back for a moment to a time in your life when you knew exactly who you were, and what you wanted to be. It may have been a time in your childhood, or a time later on in your life. Or it may be that you’ve never thought about exactly who you were and who you wanted to be. That’s okay too. Perhaps you’ve just never learned to acknowledge your own motivations. If this is the case, close your eyes and think for a moment about who you would be if there were no barriers keeping you from living up to your own potential. Remember that this is your own idea of who you are, and not someone else’s. If you have one of those voices in your head telling you what you “should” be (usually from a dominating or domineering parent), set that voice aside and listen for the smaller, quieter voice that is you and only you.

Hold that vision firmly in your mind. Be present with it, without any expectations or assumptions. The vision you have right now in your mind is called your True Self. Your True Self is that part of you that recognizes when you’ve done something in character or out of character for you. It is the part of you that is the Internal Observer; the part that holds your highest aspirations and your highest dreams for yourself. The Humanist Psychotherapist Carl Rogers called it your Ideal Self.

Radical Acceptance of Your True Self

You can never love another until you truly love yourself. The first step in learning to love yourself is to truly accept who you are. The first step in learning to accept who you are is to accept yourself with all your perceived flaws and imperfections, but also with all your good qualities. Being mindful means being willing to give yourself permission to make mistakes once in a while. It’s been said, “When you lose, don’t lose the lesson.” The idea here is that each mistake can be an opportunity for learning and growth. The deeper lesson there is that there are no mistakes unless you choose to label them as such.

One way to look at your True Self is to accept that your True Self is the person inside of you that loves and feels loved by others, and feels loved by you. When problems arise in our lives, it is usually because we have lost sight of our True Selves, so it is important to know who we really are and what we really want.

The way this often plays out in relationships, is that we sometimes become so involved with the other person that we give up our True Selves in the process. Think back on any negative relationships you may have had in the past. Did you give up a part of your True Self in an effort to sustain that relationship?

Healthy relationships do not require that we sacrifice who we really are for the sake of another. We can compromise with our partners or other loved ones, but that compromise should never come at the cost of a part of ourselves, especially if we are living in True Self. One way to prevent this from happening is to ask yourself, “Am I doing this because this is what I want to do, or am I doing it because I’m afraid I’ll lose this person if I don’t?” The answer you give to that question will tell you if you are sacrificing your True Self for the sake of a relationship.

Carl Rogers and the True Self

Carl Rogers’ Person Centered Therapy postulates the existence of an Ideal Self. According to Rogers’ theory of problem development, dysfunctions occur when an individual’s perceived self and ideal self are in conflict. For example, if a person’s ideal concept of self is as a confident, successful person, but that person’s perception of self is as a shy, introverted failure, the goal of therapy would be to move the idealized concept of self and the perceived concept of self into closer harmony with each other.

As noted earlier, the True Self is that internal observer we engage when we step outside of negative thought or feeling cycles and observe them from a distance. The True Self is also who we would be if we could shed all assumptions and expectations. Some have called this True Self the Inner Child. A goal of Mindfulness is to achieve beginner’s mind, which is often called child’s mind or childlike mind. The relationship here between beginner’s mind and the True Self is hopefully obvious. The quality of a child’s mind that is necessary to the practice of mindfulness is the quality of openness, and freedom from assumptions about the way things work. Likewise, True Self is the self that is not ruled by ego. It does not make any assumptions about self or others, or about the way the world works. True Self has no agenda. It simply is.

If we equate Rogers’ Ideal Self with the True Self of mindfulness, we see that any perceived imperfections we find within ourselves are not flaws of character; instead, they are flaws of perception. When we learn to see those flaws as processes and not things, we come to realize that those processes have no bearing on who we actually are. Negative thoughts and feelings are separate from the True Self.

This concludes the Mindfulness Skills section of this online course. The next section is the Mindful Meditation section.

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