Compassion is the Antidote to Stagnation
Reclaiming Your Dreams: Why Toxic Workplaces Demand You Define Your Own Success
If you want to thrash your dreams fast, stay in a toxic workplace that doesn't encourage growth or new research, long enough to forget you ever had them. These are the types of places that breed contempt rather than collaboration, kill motivation to achieve rather than nurture with open communication and worse, typically HR is the enabler and protector of the contemptuous, micro-managing employee who has martyred themselves for the abuse of the organization, all because they are unhealed from untreated trauma.
It won't happen all at once. It creeps in - through the small moments when someone dismisses your insight simply because it challenges their current worldview, when you start shrinking to fit in a room that starts to feel suffocating and as if your brain cells are freezing. Times are different now and many people are rejecting workplaces that don't offer flexibility in lifestyle or the opportunity to do purposeful work.
When you try to share your experience and knowledge, get recognized for it since you have made an impact on people or your clients, but this causes insecurity to emerge within your coworkers who start to find imagined wrongs that you did. They start to create issues, and the hypocrisy is palpable since you have witnessed them doing the same or worse. Your body will start to feel the dread of your spirit being affected day by day. You might blame your bodily symptoms on some physical problems, but this is how your body warns you and awakens you to the truth.
I learned this the hard way: not everyone measures success the same way. And when you're surrounded by people who've traded their intentions for titles and compliance, their ceiling becomes your imprisonment - if you let it. Who defines success? Especially now when people have realized that stress is the number one cause of disease.
So how exactly do you know how you measure success?
Try this: write down every person you genuinely admire and why. That list isn't random. It's a map of your values, your vision, what moves you and your heart. Inspiration lives in that feeling of I want to do what they're doing - and that feeling is the antithesis of following the status quo. Inspiration comes from the soul's memory, another thing no one wants to talk about in current healthcare and western models of therapy.
Intention is Everything
Intention is the key that unlocks the door to your dream life. Without it, you can make large amounts of money and still feel hollow and devoid of inspiration.
I've been in rooms full of people, ironically, in the mental health field who had no idea what their own intentions were - more attached to their credentials than their curiosity. As someone who is endlessly fascinated by the human psyche, that was jarring to witness. In all justness, acquiring a license doesn't necessarily mean you have the interest to acquire true knowledge about ground-breaking discoveries that can advance humankind, it only means you complied with state regulations. It was an eye-opening lesson.
It made one thing crystal clear: knowing how YOU define success isn't a luxury. It's the thing that keeps you from being slowly, quietly watered down by a world that never asked this crucial question. This takes some inner work, facing the hidden parts of yourself, so the light of awareness could heal these wounded parts. I learned that being around people who have not done this deep inner work are merely repeating patterns they were taught to abide by, is very harmful for you, especially if you believe in your visions and aspire for more than just a paycheck.
Authenticity is an innate pattern that exists in all of us
What I have learned in my layered journey as an artist and psychospiritual consultant, is that we are not designed to merely complete tasks or be obsessed with performance metrics like programmed robots. Entering the transpersonal psychology field taught me to value authenticity in a world where it is seen as a luxury for the select few. Authenticity is an innate pattern that exists in all of us- it completes us and connects us to compassion for ourselves and to our soul's path. And if we can't be compassionate to ourselves, or aware of all of or parts, then how can we do that for others? The simple answer is, probably not. Compassion is a magical elixir that has the power to heal. And to quote Gregg Braden, it is one of the human characteristics that is indicative of a highly evolved human. This was learned while practicing energy medicine since 2018 which offered me the blessing of developing my intuitive insight.
What I ascertained by being in a workplace where people had little understanding of the potency of compassion but were completed tasks so they could keep up their numbers, was how essential compassion is for propagating innovation. Curiosity was at a minimal, abiding by what big pharma decided was the key function here. DSM was the ultimate guidance, almost regarded in awe or memorized as if it elevated your status, instead of the heart or conscience. And I won't mention the other observed, unethical practices that went on as common practice. Intuition was a thing that no one dared to ponder here because that is another topic completely dismissed by the mainstream systems while it is being researched by organizations such as Ions, Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Stanford University, Princeton University, University of California San Diego, Harvard University and more.
Current systems are also obsolete
In a world that is falling apart and revealing an unprecedented mental health crisis, to say we need to be innovative isn't emphasized enough. Those who choose to stay with the familiar systems, especially now, are not adequately equipped to handle the psychological issues accompanying the current world situation that has changed enormously since the DSM or western psychology was made the authority of all human existence. To be honest, anyone still in compliance with these systems will not be fully sufficient to serve your needs if you can relate to anything I am saying here. Current systems are also obsolete since we have new scientific findings about the biofield and consciousness and so much more that is omitted by traditional healthcare. These are concluding that the observer influences the observed, and everything is interconnected, debunking most old scientific theories that healthcare and mental health is reliant upon.
So, they say that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing but expecting different results. We have seen this in the conventional mental health systems that refuse to go beyond symptom management, condoning that the mind is separate from the body. And they don't dare consider the most important element, the soul, the energy that keeps it all together, even as it is being documented in quantum physics and in eastern philosophies for centuries. They rely on obsolete beliefs and teachings about the human condition and keep those in practice while the health crisis continues to escalate.
With all this said, you can imagine how one could lose their hopefulness to dream in a workplace such as the one I described here, to envision a more compassionate, collaborative world, a transpersonal world where everyone is seen for their uniqueness, where intuition is utilized openly as it is one of our senses gifted to us, inviting us all to envision, be creative and most importantly, DREAM of a better way.
