There is no question: you want to be you. Why be anyone else? Ultimately, it’s not even a choice. Deep down you sense there is a someone who you are meant to be. But you just can’t seem to figure out how to get there.
It starts with the idea of getting there. Thinking you need to get there implies that who you are right now is insufficient and that the real you is waiting for you out there somewhere. In other words, you need to become someone you’re currently not. This confirms your sense of lack. You’re not good enough as you are. You are rejecting yourself right now, in hopes of becoming someone better later.
But you cannot change yourself from a place of self-rejection. You cannot expand from a place of lack. Your journey is not about becoming someone you’re currently not. Your journey is to be more of who you already are.
It is common to view self-help as a separate activity from the rest of your life. Maybe you set aside an hour a day to read books, meditate, take a yoga class, or surf YouTube for answers to your most pressing questions of how to become a better person. This is your precious me-time. You look forward to escaping from daily life when you get to do you.
But you are always you, every breathing moment of your physical life. There isn’t the briefest atomic nano-second when you aren’t you. You are you when you go to work, do your dishes, pay your bills. You are you when you fall asleep, fall in love, feel inspired, or experience heartbreak. It’s impossible not to be you in every situation you engage in. It’s impossible to put off being you until that special time of the day when you get to relax with your favorite activity. Whatever you do, whenever you do it, you are never not you.
The challenge is that growing up you have become impressed with ideas that are not your own. Ideas about what’s right and wrong, good and bad. You learn to judge things from an early age. Soon, you categorize everything you encounter into I like and I don’t like. A story of me starts to form in your head based on these likes and dislikes. Before you’re aware of it, you’ve developed a judging habit. You start to navigate life by judging things as I agree with and I disagree with, or for me and against me. With so much constant judging, it’s no wonder life feels like one long struggle.
Whether positive or negative judging, it makes no difference. Judging is judging. You experience less of life in front of you, and more of the judgments in your head. You get lost in these stories of judgments, sometimes for minutes, hours, even days or weeks. Your whole life can go by, lost in your mental storytelling. All the time you spend in these stories is time not actually living.
Never reject who you are right now in hopes of finding who you really are tomorrow. Who you are is already perfect and complete. It’s how you see yourself that contains flaws and limitations. I should be this, or I should be that. Should be is a story of imperfection you bestow upon yourself. How can you expect to be happy, when judging yourself makes you unhappy?
When you are you, you shine, because life can shine through you. It’s the best feeling in the world to be you. You are more peaceful, at ease, content, in the flow, clear about your purpose, clear about what action to take. You have a rock-solid foundation of what matters and what doesn’t. To be you means judging less and loving more. And love is what you’ve been looking for all along.
Where in your life can you be more of you?
