Personal Transformation

What does it mean to undergo the journey of personal transformation? Well, it honestly can mean a million different things.

However, it all starts with being honest about what your current position in life is— and we’re not necessarily talking about things like your career or romantic relationship (although your position in life certainly does affect these things).

Transformation Begins With Honesty

In order to begin an honest and true journey toward transformation, you must be honest and true to yourself, about yourself. This means you must address your inner wounds and baggage.

The things that you struggle with the most in your life— whether it’s building authentic friendships or finding a career path you’re passionate about— can all be traced back to these wounds and baggage.

We call this inner confrontation with one’s wounds shadow work. Shadow work involves the process of peeling away the layers of your childhood one by one, until you eventually get to the crux of your own individual humanity.

The Stages of Personal Transformation

These are ultimately very similar to the stages of grief and they’re essential to the transformation process.

Anger and rage: Coming face-to-face with one’s own demons and shames after years and even decades of repression and normalization is a stage of reliving our darkest moments that have shaped a significant portion of who we are.
Grief: This leads to the stage of grieving over our wounded inner child who we’re meeting for possibly the first time. This involves purging ourselves of the control that these traumas have over our mind, spirit, and body.
Acceptance: Naturally, grief is followed by the acceptance of the fact that our past reality has controlled our present reality for too long— but that it’s okay.
Self-love: Acceptance of all parts of ourselves— including the shameful bad and ugly— sets the stage for us to love ourselves and feel gratitude for the journey we’ve been on so far.
Transformation: And finally, when we learn to love ourselves not in spite of our wounds but because of our deeper understanding and relationship with those wounds, we’re able to transform and change the path of our journey into one that aligns with our true selves.

Each individual’s journey of personal transformation will ripple into every aspect of their life in a way that may feel painful at first, but that will ultimately lead to a life of true authenticity and self-realization.