UP #57: You’re not Broken with Derek Rydall

Confession: I am not a personal growth, self-improvement, how-to kind of person.

I believe that the self-improvement movement has caused more problems than it has solutions. I also believe that this is the primary reason why so many people in the world today have mastered the spiritual/new age/personal growth lingo (and they know all the cool memes to post on Facebook) – but they’re still a mess on the inside. In other words, they talk the talk, but the walk still fills them with pain.

You know how it goes, talk is cheap. On the other hand, practice makes perfect and actions will always, always, always speak louder than words.

Much of what is offered in today’s personal growth/self-improvement world is comprised of various methodologies aimed at trying to fix or improve what is perceived as “broken” within ourselves. Essentially, we’re set up for failure from the get-go by starting from a place of lack where we believe that we’re deficient in a way that requires some sort of miraculous technique or affirmation to fix us. This ensures that we continually search outside of ourselves for what we will never find. What we’re really after is right under our nose – literally – bursting from within our hearts desperate to emerge. We don’t need to fix anything. We just need to open up to the truth of who we’ve always been.

When we shift our perception and move through life from a place of wholeness and allow ourselves to expand from there, this is when we experience true growth.

What I’ve learned from my dabblings in the personal growth world through the books I’ve read and the workshops I’ve taken is that alot of the “how-to fix myself” stuff only made me feel worse. I felt disillusioned and confused about who I was supposed to be (always be love and light or the boogeyman will rain on your parade), how I was supposed to think (always be positive or you’ll attract negative crap into your life), and how I was supposed to feel (if someone makes you feel like shit, it’s because they’re mirroring something deficient within you). Really?! Fortunately it didn’t take long before I was pissed off enough to just chuck it and embrace all of me instead – warts and all. Liberation!

Sure I meditate, spend time in silence, live compassionately, choose vegan, and live lightly on the planet. I give a damn about life for all living beings – including myself. I do my best to live as mindfully as possible and aim for love as often as I can. But the state of the world pisses me off and I don’t plan to just sit around in a coffee shop griping about it. Instead, I get off my butt and do something about it. My righteous anger motivates me towards action that is aligned with my deep desire for a better world. If I bought into the personal growth mindset, anger would be a flaw to be “healed” or “fixed” and I’d only end up loathing the part of myself that drives me towards love. Screw that is what I have to say!

Alot of the how-to methodologies trap us in a perpetual cycle of looking outside of ourselves for techniques, strategies, and answers that only distract us from discovering our truth. The truth of who we are exists within – it always has and it always will be within – waiting patiently to be activated by something as simple as an inspired thought.

This is why on this podcast you will never hear me telling you how to live your life. In your heart, you already have everything you need to engage your greatness. This show is about bypassing the cultural conditioning that keeps you trapped in feelings of deficiency so that you embrace the truth of who you are – a perfectly whole being of light with a few rough edges that only enhance your unique magnificence.

In this week’s Unplug podcast, I have the honor of speaking with a man whose passion for crushin...