Personal Development: Author Caroline Myss Describes How to Upgrade

We all begin in the basement and work up to the penthouse

Have you ever wondered how personal development works? Or you might ponder what you can do to boost your awareness and improve more easily. Unfortunately, self-mastery isn’t a race, nor can you speed it up with force. But author and well-being guide Caroline Myss shows us how to understand our development more and, by ramping up our awareness, recognize how to be better at working with the process of developing.

Caroline suggests that you picture a building. With lots of floors like this one.

The building represents your personal development and has many levels reaching up to the penthouse (an awakened state of consciousness).

You can’t do anything about the fabric of the building; that’s where you’re born and the circumstances into which you entered the world.

But you can influence whether you move toward the penthouse or stay stuck in a rut of lower development.

Caroline describes the self-development process as stages (floors) of awareness. If you’re on the bottom floor, your state of self-awareness and your understanding of the world is low.

She likens it to being an unconscious eater, which means you don’t care about the ingredients you eat and remain unaware until you get curious or something happens that alerts you to what you consume.

Suddenly, you’ve realized something new about your life (and so the world, since each gem of knowledge spreads to other areas) you didn’t know before. You can see the food you’ve been eating is harmful and stems from an unhealthy source. It doesn’t meet your nutritional needs.

It’s hard going back to eating pure junk all the time once you recognize how it saps the life out of you, so you become dissatisfied. You are no longer prepared to eat rubbish. Also, you question your friend’s choices.

“Are you really going to eat that?”

Your friends may become annoyed with you, and you can’t understand why they continue to eat junk. Now there’s little point eating together because your views are mismatched.

You can either move up a floor (advance in development) or try to forget the junk food ingredients, return to your old ways, and remain in your comfort zone.

If you move up a floor, you’re closer to the penthouse. But you must reinvent yourself (as you will each time you advance).

You adopt new ingredients and become choosy about what you consume in all areas of life. You begin to see how the TV, radio, news, foods, relationships, and other aspects of your lifestyle affect you.

Changing comes at a high cost, though. It takes energy to endure the discomfort involved and learn new behaviors that better serve you than when you lived on a lower floor.

The lower floor might have been unhealthy. You could have endured hardships there, but you were familiar with the challenges you faced. On the other hand, you’re not used to the higher level of development (the next floor up), and you need grit to keep working toward the penthouse.

How to use Caroline Myss’s building analogy to increase personal development

First, realize nobody sees that they’re in the basement because it’s hard to spot which floor you’re on at the time.

Also, there’s no shame if you are on the lowest floor. Everyone starts down there in the dark and works up to the penthouse.

Most likely, however, you’ve already ventured up a few floors (or further) since you’ve often undergone many life lessons and stepped from your comfort zone.

Discomfort is a helpful way to recognize the opportunity to move on up when it presents itself.

When you’re uncomfortable because you’re dissatisfied with aspects of your life and note the inner call to advance, you are in the middle of a transformation.

But remember the junk food? When you note you no longer want to consume what you’ve been eating, you must commit to change, lest you choose the easy route (remaining as you are and consuming junk).

We may fear change because it’s difficult, and we don’t know how things will pan out if we step from our comfort zones. Yet, step out, we must, if we want to progress.

The moment you note discomfort, embrace the possibility of going up a floor. Remind yourself it’s normal to feel uneasy and fear leaving where you are now. But it will be worth the effort.

Now, notice the advantages of changing rather than shrinking into your old ways. List them, so you recognize personal development’s valuable to you.

Also, consider how you can gather support to make your transition to the next floor easier. After all, if you moved house, you’d get friends to help or hire a removal firm. (Maybe friends who align with your mindset and taking classes, reading personal development books, and joining a discussion group will help).

Each time you shift toward the penthouse, you leave behind old habits, friends, and other things that don’t serve you. However, there’s no need to be sad or resentful.

You can bless the ex-friends who aren’t good for you now because they taught you lessons and gave you a leg up to the next floor.

Likewise, the difficult job you hated showed you to aim higher. The partner who cheated reminded you of your value, and the financial hardship you met gave you a chance to seek wealth in nature and love.

And you can take these excellent teachings with you as you travel, so you become spiritually more prosperous when you find a soulmate, earn a good living, and so forth.

Caroline Myss’s building analogy is helpful when you stumble on hard times, fear change, or feel stuck in a rut. You can consider, “what can I do to shift up a floor?” And work toward it.

Picturing your building (that’s your life) will also remind you that self-development is not easy, but the higher you go, the fresher the air will be, and you’ll leave behind whatever creates drama and suffering.

If you want to hear Caroline discuss the building analogy, it begins about 11 minutes into this video.