The solar plexus chakra is the seat of our SELVES. It is where we develop a strong or weak sense of self. But in today’s world that we live in – many of us have an incredibly weak or damaged sense of Self.
This is due to the massive amount of programming and messages that we have been internalising through the media and society – the various toxic cultures we are expected to participate in as members of this society – beauty culture, diet culture, wellness culture, productivity and hustle culture. Etc. And what we’ve got to show at the end of all of that is a massive amount of damaged self-esteem and self-worth.
We’ve also got to deal with damaged selves from generations of trauma as well as the beliefs and mindsets that our own culture has embedded within us.
It does feel that in recent years, all these forces have combined to hurt our sense of selves even further. As reported by Betterhelp.com, 85% of Americans have reported having low self-esteem in recent years. How has our sense of selves been affected?
#1 A lack of confidence in living the life that we want
Many of us walk around thinking thoughts like “I am worthless, I don’t deserve this”. We live small because we don’t think the life we want to lead will happen to us, dreams are for other people. We find it difficult to push through to our goals or to assert ourselves. We abandon ourselves constantly, we feel lost and directionless because we are afraid of going after the path we feel most drawn to. When we lack a sense of self, we don’t have a strong desire to want to fulfil things that the self desires.
#2 We spend our money and time keeping up with the Joneses because if not, we are made to feel worthless
Beauty culture for instance, makes its money by constantly telling women (especially) and men that they never look good enough. That no matter what they do, their natural selves are unacceptable. So you have to purchase more stuff to put on your face, your hair, your body to be accepted. By whom? Who knows. A faceless bunch of people most likely.
When we are constantly fed messages like “Hustle more! if not, you won’t be successful!”, “Buy this diet pill or yoga mat or hairspray or anti-ageing face cream! Because if not, you won’t be feeling or looking as good as you should.” And ingesting messages like these overtime, eats into our self-esteem and makes us feel unaccepted and worthless.
Because we are made to feel like if we are not participating in this cultural behaviours, that we are not living up to this standard – set by God knows who – of beauty or success. That we are being left behind by society. It makes us feel like whatever we have been doing, however we have been living our lives, is unacceptable by society’s standards.
#3 Comparison-itis and a disconnection from the self
When we constantly being told to do more, look better etc or else.. it pits us against one another and sets up a culture where people compare their lives with others, especially with people that we barely know but we often see online. When this happens frequently, when we constantly focus our attention on others – this is where we start to lose our connection with ourselves. We forget what healthy self-esteem feels like.
This loss to our selves, a breaking up of a relationship that we have with ourselves is the key factor that is contributing to worldwide loneliness that we are seeing in the world today. We are at an incredibly connected them as a human race, but more and more people are reported feeling increasingly isolated. This is a concept I talk more about in my book as well as the strategies to combating these and returning to yourself.
Building up your sense of self and reconnecting to yourself can be a long and somewhat difficult pathway. But it absolutely can be done. Here are some strategies:
#1 Lessen social media frequency
Magazines, social media, TV – these are the platforms where the damaging messages are coming from. When I lessened my time on social media, stopped reading women’s magazines and watched less TV, I found myself feeling a lot better about myself and about my life in general. If it is affecting you negatively, it’s time to lessen your frequency on these platforms.
Stop reading, stop scrolling, stop giving your time to Mark Zuckerberg and his friends. Stop allowing them to destroy your sense of self. Instead, go out, talk to people, read, join social groups. And consume media very selectively. The stuff we consume online is a huge echo chamber – it makes it seem as if everyone out there in the world thinks and worries about the same things that we read about online.
You will see that the world outside is pretty different, it’s time to go out and experience it.
#2 Questioning the stories you tell you about yourself
An important next step to take would be to start questioning the stories around what you’re telling yourself about yourself. Because if you’re constantly criticizing yourself, telling yourself you cannot get stuff done, that you cannot pursue your dreams because of various limitations etc, you are just going to keep those damaging threads circulating within your psyche.
This makes it harder to build self-love and confidence. The negative energy also eats into other chakra centres – like the surrounding heart, sacral and root chakras – making it difficult to strengthen and repair your sense of self.
#3 Start connecting deeply with yourself
The third and most important thing to do would be to actually start connecting with yourself again and asking yourself what are some of the things that you love doing? Eating? Maybe you love reading. Maybe you’ve been dying to do something that others don’t do – like learn acupuncture. GO OUT AND DO IT! For yourself.
I have a client who told me that recently that she wanted to do different things – like paint, go on a silent retreat and write a book, but she felt like she couldn’t do it. When we dug deeper and unpacked her fears, it was actually because she felt like people would judge her and that she wasn’t good enough to experience all these things. Use these fears as a source of strength, as a signal to mend that relationship to yourself.
If you are hesitating or fear doing something, that is the signal that you need to go out and do it. This is the year of the Chariot (major card in the arcana), and the Chariot has very similar energy to the solar plexus. It’s the year for you to go out and do whatever it is that you’ve always wanted to. And in doing so, you will start to rediscover a different relationship with yourself.
Interested in learning more about rebuilding and mending your relationship to yourself? Keen on strengthening your solar plexus chakra?
All that and so much more is available in my new book: Click through to grab your copy right now and start to learn how to strengthen your relationship with yourself!