Unlocking your higher self is the thing I’ve been chasing (and mostly failing at) for the last like… three years straight here in my cluttered one-bedroom just outside DC.
Right now it’s mid-January 2026, there’s gray slush outside my window, my heat is making that weird clicking sound again, and I’m sitting here in yesterday’s hoodie trying to explain how I accidentally stumbled into seven mindset practices that—against all odds—actually kinda work.
Not perfectly. Unlocking Your Higher Self Not Instagram-aesthetic perfectly. But enough that I don’t hate looking in the mirror quite as much anymore.
1. The “Shut the Hell Up” Morning pages (aka brutal stream-of-consciousness journaling)
I used to think morning journaling was some woo-woo luxury for people who own $400 candles. Then 2024 happened and I was crying in my car in a Walmart parking lot at 8:17 a.m. because I realized I hadn’t had one single original thought in like six weeks.
So I started the Artist’s Way style morning pages but angrier. Three full pages of whatever garbage is in my brain—no filter, no “today I am grateful for…” bullshit unless it actually comes out naturally.
Your story captures something a lot of people feel but
Most days it’s just me ranting about how the guy in apartment 3B slams his door at 5:42 a.m. or why I’m still mad at something my mom said in 2019.
But after about four months something weird happened: the noise in my head got… quieter? Not gone. Just less screaming. That’s when I first felt tiny glimpses of what people mean by Unlocking Your Higher Self—like there was a calmer version of me watching the tantrum and going “dude… chill.”
Emotional Journaling: How to Use Journaling to Process Emotions
Try it for 30 days. You’ll hate it. Then you’ll miss it when you skip.
2. Talking to myself like I’m someone I actually like
This one feels so stupid I almost didn’t include it.
I spent most of my 20s (and let’s be honest, most of my 30s so far) speaking to myself like I was the worst employee ever. “You idiot.” “Why can’t you just get it together?” “Everyone else is ahead.”
Then last spring I read something on self-compassion by Dr. Kristin Neff and decided—very grumpily—to try talking to myself the way I’d talk to my best friend after she just got dumped.
How to Stop Self-Sabotaging: 5 Steps to Change Your Behavior
Here the harsh self-talk is front and center—staring in the mirror, berating yourself like an underperforming employee (“You idiot”, “Why can’t you get it together?”, “Everyone else is ahead”).
Self-Blame: How to Let Go and Find Self-Forgiveness – Norooz Clinic
Example from yesterday: Instead of “Goddamn it I forgot to answer that email again I’m such a flake,” I went with “Okay… you blanked. It happens. Let’s send a quick sorry-I-dropped-the-ball note and move on, yeah?”
It feels fake as hell at first. Like you’re lying to yourself. But after a while the kinder voice starts slipping in without you forcing it. And weirdly, I started getting more done because I wasn’t spending 40% of my energy self-punishing.
More on this whole vibe → Self-Compassion breaks the shame cycle
3. The 90-second emotional meltdown rule
I learned this from Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor’s TED Talk about how an emotion chemically floods your body for—like—90 seconds max… unless you keep feeding it with thoughts.
So now when road rage hits, or my boss sends a passive-aggressive Slack, or I remember that embarrassing thing I said in 2011, I literally set a timer on my phone for 90 seconds.
I let myself feel the full-body flush of anger/shame/whatever. I don’t fight it. I just sit there like “yep this sucks.”
Then the timer dings and I go “cool, chemically that’s done. What do I want to think next?”
It’s not magic. Sometimes I reset the timer three times. But most days it actually works. And every time it works I feel my higher self give a tiny approving nod like “nice, you didn’t drown in it this time.”
4. Asking “What would the version of me who already did this do?”
This mindset practice is stolen directly from my friend Priya who says it saved her business.
When I’m procrastinating on writing (like this post… yesterday), instead of beating myself up I ask:
“What would the version of me who already published 300 blog posts do right now?”
That version doesn’t doomscroll X for two hours. That version opens the laptop, puts on lo-fi girl in the background, and writes one shitty paragraph.
Then another. Then suddenly it’s 400 words and I’m not a complete fraud.
Works for going to the gym, texting that person back, meal prepping… anything.
5. The “Phone in the other room” digital sunset
I’m not gonna pretend I’m some enlightened tech minimalist. I still check X way too much. But about six months ago I started putting my phone in the kitchen drawer at 8 p.m. sharp.
The first image captures that soft, introspective glow of someone settling in with a book in a calm, low-
No apps. No notifications. Just me, a physical book (currently re-reading Man’s Search for Meaning), and the sound of my ancient radiator.
First week I legit got the shakes. Unlocking Your Higher Self Now those two hours before bed are the only time I can actually hear what my higher self is whispering instead of the algorithm screaming.
6. Radical “I don’t know” practice
I used to have an opinion on everything. Politics, other people’s relationships, why oat milk is morally superior, whatever.
Then I burned out so hard I couldn’t form opinions anymore.
So I started saying “I don’t know” out loud whenever I genuinely didn’t know.
At first it felt like weakness. Now it feels like freedom. Every time I say it I’m giving my higher self room to breathe instead of forcing an answer just to look smart.
7. The nightly “What surprised me today?” recap
Last one. Super simple.
Every night before I brush my teeth I say out loud (yes, out loud, my neighbors probably think I’m nuts):
“What surprised me today?”
Some nights it’s “I actually enjoyed that Zoom call.” Some nights it’s “I didn’t die when I spoke up in the meeting.” Some nights it’s just “The sunset was stupidly pretty and I noticed.”
It’s tiny. But it trains your brain to scan for evidence that life isn’t 100% garbage.
And slowly… very slowly… you start trusting that there’s a wiser, calmer part of you that’s been here the whole time.
So yeah. That’s my current messy, half-working list for unlocking your higher self in 2026.
None of it is original. None of it is perfect. I still lose my temper in traffic and doomscroll and eat feelings with Taco Bell at 1 a.m.
But the gaps between the old me and the kinder, clearer me are getting bigger.
