Optimal Performance & Overthrowing the Institutions of Should and Shame.

Optimal Performance 

I recently attended a friends book launch. Their books premise: we perform optimally when we feel a sense of belonging and meaning or connection and purpose.

Performance can be a troubling word for many of us, as the association is often performing (acting) for others. However, if we consciously shift this to performing for ourselves, taking action for ourselves, then this has a whole different feeling.

Take a moment now to shift to this perspective within yourself. Feel it in your heart – feeling right action, right purpose, and right relationship with your heart. It’s a different feeling – one that brings us into alignment with our being and gives us incredible strength and power. Feel it for a bit longer ; )

Contrast this with the relentless pressure to perform. To meet external measures, guidelines and goalposts. This pressure comes from within and without, in all the daily expectations we and others have of ourselves.

Overthrowing the institutions of ‘Should’ and ‘Shame’. 

Shaming is out-casting. It is being ‘un-belonged’ and disconnected. It is the most powerful thing a person or group can do to another. It has been exploited as an unconscious tool for conformity (because it works) by many of our family systems, educational institutions, societal institutions and work organisations. It bends our spirits and mal-nourishes our souls. Subtly underpinning shame are all the ‘shoulds’ we become entwined with as we grow up in the systems of shame. Underpinning ‘should’ is the notion you can belong and be approved if…(you meet these conditions)

This is fundamentally dysregulating to our nervous systems.

Chances are the root of the disquiet in your soul (the place where you may occasionally experience inner peace and glow, but mostly don’t) – is your not acceptance of your Self. You’re not belonging your parts to themselves. You’re not homing them by your hearth – the warmth of your heart and inner wisdom.

It takes time, deep time and rest, deep rest to do this. We are naturally capable of this – it organically happens to us – our systems are wired for it – when we make time and space for this and our souls, away from the relentless pressure to perform.