Skip to content We have a lot of words for what we’re experiencing before we ever say, “I just feel disconnected from myself.” So often it sounds more like overwhelm, overstimulation, exhaustion, anxiety, stress, emptiness, feeling stuck, feeling uninspired, or simply feeling like we’re going through the motions. But I want to use these next few pages to explore the possibility that underneath so much of what we’re experiencing is disconnection—and, more importantly, how to reconnect with yourself in a world that is constantly pulling us away from who we truly are.
If we were truly connected to ourselves and our true nature as spirit, how much purpose would angst, worry, hate, and judgment really serve? I believe that as we deepen that connection, much of what consumes us begins to soften—and sometimes, eventually, disappear.
In this modern world, our notifications are constantly sounding. Screens are in every pocket, every room, and seemingly every corner of our lives. Societal expectations, pressures, and beliefs are consciously and subconsciously influencing us. Nature can feel farther away than ever. Real food, real conversations, uninterrupted inspiration, and a genuine sense of purpose can easily get lost somewhere in the noise.
We are not exactly set up to feel deeply connected to ourselves—to our purpose, to what we feel we’re here to do, or even to how we truly want to live.
So I challenge you to ask yourself: When was the last time you felt truly connected to the most authentic and vibrant expression of you?
What were you doing?
When was the last time you completely lost track of time because you were so immersed in inspiration, creativity, or something you deeply loved?
How present are you in your actual life?
Are you constantly worrying about the future or carrying regret or resentment from the past?
Do you love yourself—your body, your dreams, your inner spirit that keeps trying to get your attention and move the needle toward something more aligned?
Or have you learned to shame your body and quiet the voice that encourages you to dream?
I often wonder how much of the world is feeling disconnected right now. Or maybe, more interestingly: how many people feel truly connected?
Sometimes this is hard for me to really think about because it breaks my heart a little. I don’t believe we were meant to live this far from ourselves, from what we’re here to create and contribute, or from the possibility of rising into more of our potential—and from there, experiencing true joy and sweetness.
The human experience is a wild one, is it not?
No human experience is free from suffering, but what we do with that suffering—how we walk away from it, grow through it, or even learn to embrace what it came to teach us—is something we do get to work with.
I believe we are meant to use our suffering to rise beyond old patterns, habits, and beliefs, continually exploring how to reconnect again and again until we begin to understand our deeper reason for being—our dharma—and remember that love and joy are not things we must endlessly chase outside of ourselves.
I embrace the eye rolls here. I know this can sound dreamy and abstract. Maybe it brings you back to images of 1960s communes and anti-war hippies preaching peace and love, peace and love. It’s almost as if that period of society made these concepts cliché—or even taboo.
But I want to challenge that…
Maybe parts of the counterculture movement were onto something. Maybe the questions being asked about consciousness, human potential, spirituality, peace, love, and alternative ways of living deserved more serious consideration than they received.
Decades later, the exploration certainly hasn’t disappeared. Researchers continue studying meditation, consciousness, emotion, the nervous system, contemplative practices, and the extraordinary complexity of human experience.
Maybe there really are ways of being that allow us to feel more connected to ourselves and more awake to what it means to be human in this very modern world.
Before we dive into reconnection—which is ultimately what I hope to awaken in you by the time you’re through with this article—we have to be honest about disconnection.
I was listening to a podcast the other day and they talked about unbecoming before becoming, and I LOVED that.
What a beautiful expression for something I’ve been trying to convey for years.
It’s one thing to recognize where we’re disconnected—but how do we begin to unbecome the limited, conditioned, or wounded parts of ourselves that we’ve mistaken for who we are?
When you allow yourself to take an honest look at your life, what is holding you back? We can easily point to money, circumstances, our upbringing, our jobs, or even toxic people in our lives. And external circumstances absolutely matter.
But I also want to challenge you to look inward: What thoughts, stories, subconscious beliefs, and learned patterns might be influencing the reality you’re experiencing? These stories often don’t reveal themselves overnight, but awareness can start now.
Choose something in your immediate reality that you aren’t thrilled about—your job, relationship, money, health, confidence, whatever it may be.
Then work backward.
What behaviors may have contributed to where I am?
And underneath those behaviors:
What beliefs or recurring stories keep bringing me back to those same behaviors?
Maybe you have no savings and desperately want to see $100,000 in your bank account, but you also impulsively spend on apps, coffees, Instagram purchases, or things you don’t really need. You feel like you budget for gas and groceries, yet another behavior keeps you stuck in the same cycle.
What’s beneath the behavior? Maybe there’s a story of “I’m empty,” “I’m not enough,” or “money never stays.” Perhaps spending temporarily fills something emotionally while simultaneously reinforcing the very identity you’re trying to leave behind.
This isn’t about blaming yourself for everything that happens in your life. It’s about becoming curious about the places where you actually have agency. Bringing awareness to these patterns—and consciously beginning to show up differently in our perceptions, choices, and actions—is the unbecoming.
It’s one of the first phases of the journey authentically reconnect with yourself. And while we’re unbecoming, we can also begin remembering and ultimately becoming our ignited, aligned selves..
When you start to reconnect with yourself, it’s almost like building a muscle. We do small things regularly that remind us of our nature, our purpose, our potential, and who we genuinely want to be. Meanwhile, the unbecoming is more like a slow detox. They can happen together.
So what would feeling authentically connected to yourself actually look and feel like? Across many spiritual traditions, love is described as one of the highest states we can embody. And whether you understand that spiritually, psychologically, or physiologically, I think cultivating self-love is a beautiful place to begin.
Here’s one practice you can try:
Find a quiet, comfortable place to sit. Take a few rounds of deep breaths, allowing your body and mind to relax as you breathe. Close your eyes and turn your attention inward.
Then use the power of your mind to imagine breathing self-love—or universal love, if that resonates more deeply—into every cell of your body.
I often picture a color, maybe a beautiful white light or soft pink, and imagine that sensation and light moving from my head to my feet, filling every part of me and eventually expanding beyond my physical body.
Stay there for as long as you can hold onto that sensation of love. Enjoy the feeling. And notice any resistance. Notice the places that don’t feel quite as easy to fill.
We increasingly hear emotions described in terms of frequency or vibration. One of the best-known frameworks comes from psychiatrist David Hawkins, whose Map of Consciousness places emotional and conscious states along a scale ranging from shame and fear to love, joy, peace, and ultimately enlightenment. It’s an idea that deeply resonates with me, especially as we continue to explore the energetic nature of our bodies and the world around us. Why wouldn’t our emotional states have an energetic component, too?
Of course, we have to make an important distinction: Hawkins’ numerical scale is a spiritual and philosophical model—not a scientifically established measurement of emotions in Hertz.¹ At least not yet!
What science can show us, however, is equally fascinating: our emotional states aren’t simply thoughts floating around in our minds. They correspond with measurable changes throughout the body, including shifts in heart rate, respiration, skin conductance, and autonomic nervous system activity. Research reviewing more than 100 studies has found evidence of distinguishable physiological patterns associated with different emotional states, although exactly how specific and consistent those patterns are remains an ongoing area of research.²
And while you may not need a researcher to prove to you that love feels drastically different in your body than the intensity ignited by anger or fear, I still find it exciting that science can observe some of these physiological differences. It gives us another way to understand just how deeply our emotional experience and physical experience are intertwined—and perhaps another reason to become more conscious of the states we spend the most time inhabiting.
So while we may not yet be able to measure love, gratitude, and other “higher-frequency” states with a single number in Hertz, what we do know—from both lived experience and research—is that our emotional states are reflected in our physiological experience. Even positive emotions aren’t physiologically identical; research examining love, awe, amusement, and other positive emotions has found different patterns of autonomic activity.³
And maybe that’s where the conversation gets really interesting: we don’t have to pretend science has proven everything about consciousness or the energetic nature of emotion to become curious about what we don’t yet understand. We can simply recognize that how we feel matters—not only to our minds, but to our bodies and to how connected, clear, and present we feel within ourselves.
I’m sure countless others have shared the classic ways to reconnect with yourself—whether it’s nature, breathwork, meditation, creativity, movement, or any number of practices. And it’s easy to get lost in all the systems, steps, and professionally recommended frameworks.
As I’ve coached and taught over the years, one thing has become incredibly clear to me when it comes to personal development and habit change: less is often more. Cliché, yes. But clichés exist for a reason.
I know for me, I’ve tried the various frameworks, countless styles of meditation and movement, workbooks, routines, and practices. I’ve gained incredibly valuable tools and insights from many of them, but what I’m able to do regularly and passionately may not resonate with you.
Meditation has been criticized more lately as people explore other ways to achieve similar states, but for me, it’s still my go-to (specifically Transcendental Meditation). I love to work out. I love watching my kids explore nature alongside me. I feel refreshed by community. And I love to write.
These are the things I can realistically return to within the rhythm of my life right now. Not every day. Not perfectly. But often enough. These things help me reconnect.
So instead of giving you my “top ten tips on how to reconnect with yourself,” my most authentic and professional advice today is much simpler: begin your own journey of unbecoming, practice connecting to love, and then ask yourself:
What are one or two things I can realistically do for myself that make me feel a little more alive, a little more whole, and a little more connected to who I really am?
Maybe something immediately comes to mind. If not, pull from this list for inspiration:
The point isn’t which one you choose, but noticing what brings you back to life.
And please, don’t get carried away trying to do too much or do it all. We want this journey to feel aligned and supportive. Reconnecting with your true self—beneath the expectations, conditioning, fears, roles, and noise—is a journey. Maybe even the journey.
So yes, take a step today. But choose the step that feels good enough, nourishing enough, or exciting enough that you’ll actually want to return to it. Then allow that to be enough.
As your capacity grows, you’ll know when you’re ready to go deeper. Another practice may call you. Another layer may reveal itself. Another old story may suddenly become visible. That’s part of the remembering, too.
And if you feel lost, or simply need a gentle nudge back toward yourself, maybe don’t start with another book, course, protocol, or person telling you what you need.
Start with a question:
What part of myself have I been missing—and what might change if I began making my way back to it?
Sit with whatever comes up. Listen before you judge it. Get curious before you dismiss it. Trust that there is wisdom within you worth hearing.
Perhaps your journey to reconnect with yourself isn’t really about becoming someone better, more evolved, more productive, or even more “healed.”
Perhaps it’s about remembering who you’ve been underneath the noise all along.
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