I admit it. During The Festival of the Lion King at Disney World's Animal Kingdom, I cried tears of joy almost the entire thirty minutes. Another person might describe the show as melodramatic, or gaudy, or cheesy. What can I say? It moved me. My essential self absolutely adores singing, dancing, and big, colorful spectacle. I can't help it.

For those not familiar with Martha Beck's concept of essential self, here's a definition from her book, Finding Your Own North Star:

Your essential self formed before you were born, and it will remain until you've shuffled off your mortal coil. It's the personality you got from your genes: your characteristic desires, preferences, emotional reactions, and involuntary physiological responses, bound together by an overall sense of identity. It would be the same whether you'd been raised in France, China, or Brazil, by beggars or millionaires. It's the basic you, stripped of options and special features.

Most of us are pretty out of touch with this part of ourselves. We stuff down our deepest desires because we are afraid of what other people might think, or because those desires don't seem "practical" or "safe." We live by the rules set by our social selves.

The social self is driven by a need to fit in and do what's considered "right." The social self says "go to college" when the essential self is begging for a shot at Broadway. For most folks, the social self is the dominant self, and that is really unfortunate. Don't get me wrong, the social self is important and definitely has a role to play. Without a social self, it would be almost impossible to survive. But when the social self calls all the shots, our lives become utterly joyless.The social self is full of warnings, and, quite frankly, has a lot of irrational fears. Your social self is going to tell you to never, ever take a risk. Never, ever try something new. When the social self says it's probably not a good idea to punch your boss in the face, you might want to listen. But when your social self says you must bow down to your boss at the risk of your own dignity and happiness, that's when your social self needs to take a step back.

The trick is to find ways to honor your essential self while sufficiently appeasing the social self.  I was in essential self heaven during The Festival of the Lion King. That doesn't mean I need to move to Orlando and begin auditioning for a role in that show. But it does mean that I should pay attention to opportunities to find similar delights. My love for dance has lead me to take Nia classes instead of slogging it out on a treadmill, for example. Every time I choose to dance instead of jog, I am honoring my essential self.

So what about you? Are you in touch with your essential self? And are you finding ways to honor those innate preferences?

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