Sometimes life can feel like it’s a glass filled with holes where happiness, faith, and hope slowly dissolve faster than we can really embrace them. If you live long enough, you will have times when life can leave you feeling incomplete, empty, and lost making it even harder to believe that becoming whole is a reality for you.

So, let’s first start with this: You are capable of experiencing wholeness. Period. And, you don’t need another person to start experiencing it. It’s within you and it is possible for you.

Why should you care about nurturing your wholeness?

Whether you are pursuing a goal, trying to become a better version of yourself, or working to improve your life and relationships, you will quickly discover that it requires physical, emotional, mental, and even spiritual health. You can get ahead in life as a broken, stressed, depleted version of yourself, but you will not get too far before wholeness starts calling for more attention.

Wholeness simply means to be in unity and harmony within yourself. It’s not about being perfect, having everything you need, and/or having it all figured out. It’s about knowing that you have (and can have) harmony within yourself.

Take a moment now and check in with yourself: Do you feel a sense of wholeness within you? Have aspects of your life started eating away at your inner peace and balance? Are you in harmony with yourself? If you answered “yes,” then take note of what you are doing to maintain that sense of wholeness and protect it at all costs. If you said “no,” then you have some work to do to start creating space for wholeness within you.

But how? After spending countless hours of my early years assuming that I was incomplete because I didn’t have certain people, relationships, or material things, I started to realize that the journey to wholeness happens internally. It’s really just a journey of self-discovery, acceptance, and healing. Once I started to realize that my wholeness already exist within me, I was able to start doing the work to accept it and ultimately accept myself.

Ten Ways You Can Start Finding Wholeness Now

To get you started on your journey, I’ve compiled a list of ten ways you can start entering into harmony with yourself. I hope this saves you some time and emotions. You deserve wholeness; your success in life depends on it. 

1. Acknowledge areas in your life that leave you feeling incomplete and inadequate.

   This may take some digging and transparency, but it is an important step. Admission and acknowledgment is the first step to recovery and healing. Being honest about these areas helps us identify where we need to focus more attention to help us move forward.

   Remember, you can lie to everyone around you, but you can’t really lie to yourself. Even if we deny the truth about where we are, we know deep down inside what parts of us are calling for balance and better harmony. Take the time to listen to your soul; it’s always speaking.

2. Consider the experiences that create feelings of incompleteness in your life.

   Once you acknowledge the areas that need work, go a little deeper and see if you can start the process of understanding where those feelings are coming from. This might surface some painful memories or negative experiences, but you need to do the healing work in order to move forward. Why? So you can take back that piece of yourself and your power that comes from wholeness.

3. Identify negative behaviors or coping mechanisms that keep you from becoming whole.

   Sometimes we do not notice that we are not whole and need to nurture ourselves because we are so good at telling ourselves that we are fine. It is in the process of true examination that our behaviors can reveal where we are in misalignment.

4. Consider your self-image.

   In order to become whole, or accept the fact that we are whole beings outside of the validation of others, we must first believe that we are capable and strong enough to become whole. Do you believe that you are worthy of wholeness? What lies about yourself do you need to let go of? We all have imperfections, but they do not mean we are inadequate; they mean we are human.

5. Accept your uniqueness.

   It is so important to accept and find inner peace and beauty in the fact that we are created to be different. It’s not worth spending all of your time comparing yourself to other people since your life’s path is uniquely designed for you. Relying on other people to complete us is like trying to complete a puzzle with the wrong puzzle pieces. In the end, you will waste valuable time. The more you come into alignment with yourself the more equipped you are to walk your unique path. Your journey to wholeness is connected to your success.

6. Understand your reasons for wanting that relationship.

   I cannot write a post about wholeness and not address the fact that many people think that the only way to truly become whole is to have a significant other that makes them whole. Being whole is important for healthy and strong relationships with other people, especially relationships with our significant others; however, you are responsible for your personal growth and development.

   Relying on another person to complete you usually results in stress in the relationship. Either someone ends up disappointed or one person gets lost in the other. Relationship math should not be 1/2 a person plus 1/2 a person equals 2 whole people. It should be 1 whole person plus 1 whole person equals a 2 person dynamic duo. This is not the Jerry Maguire “you complete me” goal; it is the “you help me see places where I’m incomplete and support me in becoming better” goal.

7. Understand that people’s thoughts and actions are not always in your best interest.

   Most of our feelings of inadequacy are a result of what other people have said and/or done to us. Here is what usually happens: someone does or says something, we blame ourselves or internalize it as truth, and then we rehearse that narrative. If we are going go to become whole, we need to challenge and refine our inner dialogue.

8. Don’t let society make you feel incomplete.

   Now, this is a hard one. The images and norms that bombard us every day can make it difficult to not feel empty or inadequate. I don’t know about you, but some of what other people possess is quite attractive. We have to be careful not to judge ourselves against other people’s standards. Trying not to internalize every thought and image that is shoved into your face is one important step to entering harmony with ourselves. Whether you have the things you desire or not, wholeness is still within you. 

9. Maintain your wholeness.

   Arriving at a place where you feel whole does not mean you will feel that way forever. It takes work to maintain harmony and balance. In a house, areas that go untouched accumulate dust and debris. If we don’t make time to check in with ourselves and do the maintenance work, we will eventually find ourselves in discord with ourselves. Be willing and committed to investing in YOU.

10. Protect your wholeness.

    This one is short, simple, and probably the hardest step. Protecting your wholeness requires work, energy, attention, and intention. You will be shaken and you will have times when people and things threaten your journey to becoming whole. Persist and fight through it anyway. If you don’t protect your inner harmony, no one else will. Keep the journey sacred and know that it will take you far. 

Hopefully, you found something in this post that will help you take a few strong steps toward becoming whole. When you start finding a sense of inner alignment and completeness, go out and encourage someone else to do the inner work to get there too.

Be patient with yourself and others; we are all looking for a sense of wholeness.