
Allowing yourself to develop strong connections in your life is one of the best things you can do for your health and happiness. Connections can come in many forms—with other people, the planet, and even with yourself.
As best-selling author Ilchi Lee says in his new book, Connect: How to Find Clarity and Expand Your Consciousness with Pineal Gland Meditation, he has found a common denominator for many of the problems people have sought his advice for during his 40-year career.
“Recently I took a long look back at what I’ve been doing for the last four decades and at the problems people have repeatedly presented to me, such as stress-related illnesses, depression, anxiety, and relationship issues,” he wrote. “The more I reflected upon these common worries, the more the underlying cause became clear to me: people’s connection with themselves has been cut.”
Why You Should Look Internally
When we try to pinpoint why our lives aren’t how we wanted them to be, the easiest thing to do is point fingers externally. We often pin our problems on other people or even the toxic environment we live in. But Lee said pointing that finger toward ourselves when we want change is one of the most powerful things we can do.
“Yes, the earth suffers from pollution, and the behaviors and words of others can be toxic, but the first order of business is your own inner world, not the world outside of you,” Lee wrote. “In fact, you will never be able to adequately solve outside problems if the interior connection isn’t established first.”
Let’s look at some examples of how disconnection with yourself might be hurting your happiness. You could be experiencing:
- Stress: If you don’t feel connected enough to yourself to pursue what you need and want out of life, every area of your life can feel like a pressure cooker. Your relationships, job, finances, and lifestyle may not be in tune with who you are.
- Depression: If you were a rule follower your whole life, you may have done everything everyone told you would lead to a successful life. You may have earned great grades in school, never got in trouble, found a high-paying job, and maybe you’re still not happy. You feel cheated. You did everything right, and you feel depressed rather than energized by your life. The problem may be that you chased someone else’s version of a dream and not your own.
- An inability to cope: Do you instantly shut down when you face setbacks? Perhaps you’ve started believing you can’t handle problems, and it has become a self-fulfilling prophecy. The ability to see yourself as the capable, balanced, strong person you are at your core can help you overcome this.
- Caring too much about social status: The need to be perceived as successful, wealthy, or popular can be traced back to not being connected with your inner self. Because you’ve lost that connection, it’s far too easy to care more about what others think. That superficial approval can feel addicting when you have no inner compass to guide you elsewhere.
- Feeling lonely: You may have thousands of Facebook friends and few real friends you can count on in times of trouble. You may have trouble forming connections with anyone because you can’t even talk to yourself.
These are just some examples of how your life may be affected by the disconnect you have with yourself. But it doesn’t have to be that way – you can make your life exactly how you’ve always dreamed it could be with a little work.
How You Can Improve Things
Lee’s book focuses on how you can figure out exactly what you want to achieve in your life. One of the most powerful methods you can employ is to quiet your overthinking.
“You must silence the emotions that have held you captive,” he writes.
By doing simple techniques like meditating, concentrating on your breathing, and putting your attention inward instead of outward, you can make improvements.
But by incorporating pineal gland meditation, we can take it to the next level. It will take three steps—connecting with your body, connecting with your soul, and connecting with your divinity.
Although Lee’s concept may be new to you, keeping an open mind and being willing to put in the work will help you build that essential connection to yourself you’ve lost somewhere along the way.