In this post I discuss the meaning and significance of the RevealMyWay™ Enrichment tools name.
Let’s begin by pointing out that the WellBeing Profiler, Periodic Profiler, and Problem Management Guide are all enrichment tools that — with willingness and effort — will guide you towards enhancing your overall feelings of well-being.
Using these tools is like building our own unique owner’s manual for having a life with more pleasant and less unpleasant experiences. We can check in with our manual to troubleshoot problems, figure out where our journey is starting, and track where we are headed. The Profiler assessments use the data you provide to take “snapshots” of your life now, and the Problem Management Guide can be used as a roadmap to navigate the path to create meaningful change.
Many people spend their lives trying to avoid thinking about and examining the parts of themselves that cause them feelings of emotional pain or distress. Avoidance and denial of these emotions do not mean the anguish or unhappiness magically disappears or ends. Instead, those feelings continue to adversely affect your life experiences until you decide to address them. Exploring what makes you feel happy is beneficial but understanding the thoughts that trigger your unpleasant emotions can have even greater benefits.
The definition of reveal is to learn about important things that were previously hidden. If you unhide unpleasant thoughts and feelings, you may be surprised to find an incredible amount of useful knowledge and insights that can be revealed and used to improve troubling aspects of your life.
It is only human to have parts of ourselves that we do not want to admit to having, perhaps due to fear of being judged, feelings of shame or guilt, or having something else to hide. Those undesirable parts are known as one’s “shadow self.” We perceive these aspects of our shadow selves to be dark or weak, so we believe they must be hidden or denied even though being aware of them are essential and useful to enriching our lives and well-being.
The unpleasant emotions we try to hide and deny are beneficial to us because the messages they reveal alert us that something in our lives needs to change and motivate us to make that change. For example, understanding anger toward others may reveal resentment, blame, and a desire for vengeance because you were wronged or mistreated by someone. Understanding anxiety and fear reveal that something or someone is a threat, and action should be taken to avoid harm if it’s a real threat, or to change your thinking if it’s not. Just like anger and anxiety, understanding feelings of depression, shame, guilt, envy, and jealousy reveal other insights that can help motivate us to find ways to reduce those emotions and the thoughts that trigger them.
By realizing that we need not suffer from these emotions if we learn what they are trying to communicate to us and listen to what they are signaling. They keep us balanced, safe, and motivated to change what is troubling us by focusing us on what we can do to have more pleasure, and less displeasure, in our lives.
So, now that we understand the terms, let’s put them all together. The RevealMyWay WellBeing Enrichment Tools help reveal valuable information about your life that you can use to create your own (my) unique path (way) to achieve a greater (enriched) sense of well-being.
When certain aspects of ourselves — our thoughts, emotions, behavior patterns, and beliefs — are revealed and brought to our conscious awareness, we then have the power of choice. If you determine that a problem:
- • Cannot be changed — or that it’s not worth the time, effort, risk, and costs to make the necessary changes — then you can choose to learn, by yourself or with the help of others, to accept the situation fully for what it is without being overwhelmed by emotional distress that destroys well-being.
- • Can be changed and is worth changing, you can choose to take a different course of action that can make your life better and develop a different mindset in which your thoughts and emotions increase your well-being.
All this means is that once your reveal your emotions and the thoughts that accompany them (i.e., your “emotional thoughts”), they cannot go back to being unknown. There is enormous potential benefit from understanding the foundations of your emotional thoughts, including what triggers them, what they are trying to communicate to you, and your patterns of behaviors that go along with them. This can create a different mindset that enables you to consciously choose a different course of action and different thoughts which produce different emotions.
The RevealMyWay Wellbeing Enrichment tools help build the knowledge you need about what is influencing your current state of well-being. Knowledge is power. The more you know about yourself, the better choices you can make that will guide your life path in a more positive direction.