"Self Mastery" - Amanda Kate

Amanda is an author (Divine. Messy. Human. A Spiritual Guide to Prioritising Internal Truth over External Influence), Kinesiologist, Mentor, Archetypal Life Coach, Mother and more. She describes herself as a recovering people-pleaser and self-flagellator, who walks the path straddling the Divine and Messy daily. Amanda stated "self mastery" as her most important value because she views always growing, developing and learning new ways of being as the best way to, hopefully, one day leave the Earth better than she found it. There is a very pragmatic and practical thread to Amanda's value. In simple terms, if you can "master" yourself then you are better equipped to do whatever it is you set out to accomplish in the world. The better you know your values, triggers, insecurities, passion, trauma, and the rest of all the stuff that makes us, us, then the more efficiently you can move through the world. Although the value is about "self", Amanda views it as one of the most generous things you can do, because once you master yourself you can better interact and serve those around you. As with many of the discussion we have on this show, you won't get much of an argument from me on that concept, however it does become a question of how do we make it real for us in every day life? What does it mean to "master" ourselves, how do we go about doing it, what role should external input play into the process, and is it true that our ultimate mission is to serve others (just to name a few)? Amanda was totally game and was able to talk about her past experiences struggling with her own identity as a real life use case to explain how this can all work.  What I found really interesting is that at the root of this approach to life is a deep faith in humanity. The belief is that if we trust each individual to figure out who they are and what works for them (no matter what that might be) the world will be better off. If we embrace self love and acceptance rather than external validation and conditioning, there will be a lot more love in the world. I'd be lying if I said I had that same level of faith in humanity, but maybe that is just reflective of the work I still have to do on myself.