5 Essential Skills For Healing
In my work with clients over the years, I’ve noticed that there are certain skills that, when practiced regularly, transform a person’s life. Those 5 skills are: Presence, People, Preparation, Perspective, and Play.
Often we are looking for that singular high leverage fix that will change everything for us in an instant. It doesn't exist. Change requires consistent work. Gabor Maté, who is known for his work educating about trauma, addiction, and toxic culture, joked that his own tombstone is going to read: “It was a lot more work than I anticipated.”
Changing your life is hard work. There is no way around it.
It might seem impossible, but it’s not. You just need a way to get started, and these 5 skills are essential:
Presence: Is the practice of awareness. You cannot change what you are not aware of. This means you must adopt some kind of consistent practice to grow your awareness of thoughts, emotions, and sensations in your body. That could be meditation, journaling, yoga, or simple stillness.
People: Is the practice of connectedness. We are both hurt and healed in relationships. Any inclination we have that we have to figure things out by ourselves is tied to a relational wound. It’s not just unreasonable to expect a solitary person to change without positive connections to others - it’s impossible. A solitary person is a closed system and closed systems do not spontaneously change for the better. We all need safe and trusted people who can help us see what we cannot see.
Preparation: Is the practice of intentional planning. There is a famous quote from Benjamin Franklin that says: “By failing to prepare you are preparing to fail.” If you have a destination in mind, you must get practical about what it will take to get you there. So, you must develop daily, weekly, monthly, yearly rhythms of intentional planning.
Perspective: Is the skill of changing how you see things - past, present, and future. We cannot change our past, but we can change how we relate to our past, such that it begins to work for us and not against us. Also, getting really clear about what we do want and don’t want can help us form a vision of our future self, which can then act like a filter in the present for how we use our time, treasure, and talent.
Play: This is the skill of taking yourself less seriously. The happiest people I know are those who have learned to play well. They play with their kids, they slow down, they try new things, they learn the art of enjoying life without having to produce anything. Most of our hurts, negative beliefs, and unhelpful behaviors are connected to childlike parts of ourselves. Play helps us connect with ourselves and others, and remember that there is more to life than the grind.
Consider these 5 essential skills and pick the one you feel you most need to work on. Then set a small growth goal for this week. What will you do? Where will you do it? When will you do it? Who will be involved?
Nobody will ever be perfect at these things, but we can all get better with practice. And it will likely take a lot more work than we anticipated.
Happy to be in your corner,
Tom
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