7 Reasons Why Connection With Self and Others Is So Important

Some of the basic needs of childhood are love and emotional connection. When we receive these, we learn to feel worthy and lovable. Many of us grow up without these needs being adequately met. This lack of connection can have far-reaching physical and psychological consequences for us. (For extensive research on these consequences, see Why Love Mattersby Sue Gerhardt.)

Not experiencing loving connection as a child can lead to feeling a deep yearning in adulthood. Unfortunately, trying to get this connection from others, rather than learning to connect with ourselves and others, can lead to many personal and relationship problems.

In my work with clients, I focus on helping them, first and foremost, connect with themselves -- with their feelings and their higher self/personal source of spiritual guidance. Here's why:

1. An Inner Black Hole vs. Inner Fulfillment

When we are disconnected from ourselves -- from who we really are and from our feelings -- and when we are not filling ourselves with love through our spiritual connection, we create a black hole within. The black hole we've created through our self-abandonment becomes like a vacuum, trying to pull love from others. This neediness tends to push people away, so we end up feeling even more unloved.

When we want responsibility for our own well-being and we open to learning about loving ourselves, we open the door to connecting with an infinite source of love. Learning to bring this love within and share it with others creates deep inner fulfillment.

2. Failed Relationships vs. Sharing Love

Since we come together at our common level of self-abandonment and our common level of self-love, if we are abandoning ourselves by disconnecting from ourselves and avoiding responsibility for our feelings, we will likely attract someone who is doing the same thing. Each partner hopes that the other will fill the black hole within. While they might seem to do this for each other for a short time, eventually each feels unloved and resentful, leading to relationship failure. We cannot fill up another person. We each need to do this for ourselves, and then share our love with each other. We cannot connect on a deep level of love with each other when we are not connected with ourselves.

In my experience, sharing love with another who is also filled up with love and sharing it, is the most fulfilling and joyful experience in life. Do not confuse getting love with sharing love -- they are light years apart!

3. Depression and Loneliness vs. Happiness and Joy

Depression is a huge problem in our society. While there are many causes for feelings of depression, one of the causes is disconnection from self -- self-abandonment. Just as a child gets depressed when the parent is disconnected and unavailable, so our inner child -- our feeling self -- gets depressed when we are disconnected from our feelings and not taking loving responsibility for them.

Another cause of depressed feelings is social isolation and the resulting loneliness, which is often one of the results of disconnecting from ourselves and then being unable to connect with others.

The film Happy takes us on a trip around the world to the happiest people on the planet. Invariably, these are people who live in communities where they feel connected with each other. They feel safe because they watch out for each other. They are not lonely.

However, many people who have tried to establish connected or intentional communities end up leaving them for the same reason they leave marriages: They don't work unless people are connected with themselves and taking responsibility for their own feelings.

4. Physical Illness vs. Physical Health

Stress is a major cause of illness (see The Biology of Belief by Dr. Bruce Lipton). When we live our lives disconnected from ourselves -- not listening to and taking loving care of our feelings -- and disconnected from our personal source of guidance, love and comfort, we cannot manage stress well. Self-abandonment itself causes much anxiety and stress, which activates the fight-or-flight response and negatively affects ourimmune system.

There is some indication, according to Malcolm Gladwell in Outliers, that people who live in connected communities are far healthier than those who live in a more isolated way. Connection with self and others is vital for good health.

5. Addictions vs. Self-Regulation

When we have not learned how to connect with our feelings and with the love and comfort of our spiritual guidance, we often turn to addictions as a way of managing painful feelings. In order to be able to manage and regulate our feelings in healthy ways, we need to connect with them with a desire to take loving responsibility for them. Turning to addictive behavior is a form of self-abandonment -- a way of avoiding responsibility for our feelings -- and can lead to many negative consequences.

6. Violence vs. Compassion

When we have not learned how to fully feel our painful feelings, compassionately managing them, learning from them and then releasing them, we may lose touch with our humanity. It is the inability to manage pain that can lead to destructive and self-destructive behavior. When we cannot connect with and feel compassion for our own feelings, we may lose our ability to feel compassion for others. When this occurs, we can act out in violently harmful ways.

7. Boredom vs. Passion and Creativity

Our passion and creativity thrive through our connection with our feelings and with our spiritual guidance. When we disconnect from our feelings to protect against pain, we also shut out joy, creativity and passion. Life becomes flat, pointless and boring. Love and joy live in the same place in the heart as loneliness and heartbreak. When we shut down, trying to not feel our loneliness and heartbreak, we also shut down our ability to feel love and joy. This is a very sad way to live.

You don't have to live this way. You can learn to connect within. You can learn to move your focus from outer -- trying to get love and connection from others -- to inner, truly loving yourself and others. You can learn to shift from avoiding feeling your painful feelings to compassionately embracing them with a desire to learn about what they are telling you. You can learn to take loving care of yourself and experience the deep joy of sharing your love with others.

Margaret Paul, Ph.D. is a relationship expert, best-selling author, and co-creator of the powerful Inner Bonding® self-healing process, recommended by actress Lindsay Wagner and singer Alanis Morissette, and featured on Oprah. To begin learning how to love and connect with yourself so that you can connect with others, take advantage of our free Inner Bonding eCourse, receive Free Help, and take our 12-Week eCourse, "The Intimate Relationship Toolbox" - the first two weeks are free! Discover SelfQuest®, a transformational self-healing/conflict resolution computer program. Phone or Skype sessions with Dr. Margaret Paul.

Connect with Margaret on Facebook: Inner Bonding, and Facebook: SelfQuest.

Reblogged from Huffington Post: Read the original blogpost here 7 Reasons Why Connection With Self and Others Is So Important...

7 Idea Generators

The 7 Idea Generators are competencies and practices to generate ideas, improve memory, increase knowledge, solve problems (find solutions), invent things, improve relationships, find partners, shift to a new perspective, and best of all, to cultivate a sense of humour. Did I mention, it creates HAPPINESS?

Like INNOVERY  or not, on facebook. 7 Great tips to get you what you want!

Uniquely You: 20 Things To Love About You

If someone were to say “You are indeed unique.” What does this mean to you? This column is to guide you through the process of making an appreciative inquiry into what makes you special, and create a more conscious awareness of many ways in which you express your uniqueness. Your practices are the many ways that you express your uniqueness. 


The first step is to list 20 qualities that are uniquely you so we can inquire into them. The purpose of this exercise is to connect with what is best and then to make it even better. I am not asking you to come up with 20 things that you or someone else thinks is wrong with you; neither of us feels inspired to create there!


We want to do something different. I am asking you to note 20 things that are great about you and then the ways you express these qualities.  Can you be comfortable enough to make the assumption that these qualities exist? What if you are doing at least 20 things right? Can you live with that thought? If they are there, are you willing to look into them? For example, you might write that you’re creative, generous,genuine, focussed and funny.


Proceed until you reach 20. Here are a few processes that can help you get there.

• Ask somebody 
• Brainstorm, and free associate 
• Focus on an image, plant, animal or fruit and write down the words that come to mind 
• Choose any five words and then substitute these for the qualities that ring true for you. 
• Perhaps the words to a prayer, a song or quotation come to mind. Write these down. 

Stay in the flow, and truly open your mind to this process. I encourage you to truly see the beauty that is you—and uniquely you. By now you are relaxing into this process of appreciating the authentic you and becoming increasingly comfortable. Notice how you are feeling differently already, notice how you are making the difference in your perception and experience. What is changing for you as you progress through this appreciative inquiry?


Now lets review your list. It’s probably a good guess that the majority of items on your list aren’t just physical attributes. You may have already noticed that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. You may have also noticed that you have inner qualities that you express in ways that are uniquely you.


We are now in an even better position to expand your list to include what it is about these qualities that makes you different and unique. The answer lays in the way you and only you practice these qualities. Practices are your ways of thinking, expressing, doing things and getting things done.


Now you are ready to continue to the next step which is to register each of these qualities onto an index card.


Once you have completed this, you will plan to create multiple opportunities to affirm and consciously appreciate your unique capacities. Carry these with you and put in places where you can connect to them easily.


You are different and you are similar. These special qualities will help you connect in more meaningful ways to yourself and to others. You will notice how others also hold these qualities in ways that are unique to them, similar yet different at the same time. We do practice what is in our awareness and you will find yourself sharing your experiences with others, projecting an increasingly creative and positive self-image. In other words, you will feel more connected, confident and empowered.


And it keeps getting better. Your growing awareness will not only continue to sustain you, it will also expand into all the areas of your life, personally and professionally. In this way, they form your unique Success Blueprint that will honour and continue to celebrate the authentic you. You will continue to tell an ever-improving story of how you made it, a story of appreciation and worthiness. Your experiences will continue to grow, to empower and to sustain you.

The Happy Heart Connections

I have a new initiative, a non-profit organisation called The Happy Project on Facebook.
I also have a webs account to blog on The Happy Heart, read and participate while the book unfolds.
This is an extract from one of the blogs on this site.

There are three parts of the program. I have studied the process of creativity and innovation extensively. I have taken the different stages and condensed them into three stages, recovery, discovery and prosperity. Prosperity is a mainstream word, that I find comes the closest to represent the third stage of creativity, which embraces insights, and the integration of these insights into one's experience and across all areas of one's life. This learning is free of context and therefore can be applied universally, very much like one would use a metaphor and apply it to different contexts.


The term I prefer using to represent the third stage of prosperity is "innovery". It is a term I have coined and embodies the true essence of this stage of moving beyond all that already exists.


If I was to elaborate on the characteristics of recovery, I would liken it to falling out of the sky in the middle of the desert. You are stunned and disorientated... Who Am I?  In Recovery, one is so entangled in one's story and overwhelmed that one no longer has a sense of the unlimited self. Flight, fright and freeze are active modus operandi. Recovery is initiated when one realizes that one is confused and that there is more. It is an awakening that "oh, I am stressed, I forgot my heart, my courage, and so on". One then takes the initiative to restore some balance.


Inadvertently or consciously, one realizes  this is not who I am, I am more, I can reach for that now. Discovery is discovering that "you never left Kansas". Your personal power, happiness, strength, courage is inside you and you can reconnect. Your capacity for happy never separated from you, instead you turned your attention away from the things to appreciate.


Innovery is when you receive this insight amongst others and decide to integrate it into your life. You look through believing eyes fully and clearly seeing possibilities are endless. You incorporate new insights into your thinking practices and you seek to create new practices, projects and connections.

How Can You Be Happier?
Here are 3 practices that can make a difference:

1. Express appreciation to someone you want to connect with in a more authentic way
2. Pay attention to your self talk. What words are you using? Take 3 of these words, write them down. Now make them more positive. For the rest of the day, take the opportunity to use your 3 words that make a difference.
3. Write down one belief you have about what makes you happy. Ask yourself 3 questions, any questions, about this belief. 

• What makes you happy? 
• Can I be happy right now? 
• What can I do to reconnect to my happy feelings?

In very simple terms, the stages are:

EXPLORE, PLAY, APPRECIATE