Why hello and welcome to figuring out who the fuck you are. Or maybe welcome back? This is one of the more difficult parts of your journey you will undertake for so many reasons. You will discover that who you want to be and who you are meant to be might be two different people. You will recognize that who you want to be doesn’t actually serve you and so you need to make a shift. You will understand that you have no idea who the fuck you are and this exploration is going to be far more challenging than you expected it to be. All of the above. This is no easy feat, but it is worth it if you are willing to roll up your sleeves and jump in.
I’ve touched on this topic before in a myriad of ways, but there is no reason not to revisit. In fact, there is a very important reason why we need to revisit. What is it? Well, if we are human (and most of us are, save some of our political representatives), we make decisions out of fear or impulse that take us away from who we are. Those choices might be made in some vain attempt to be someone else, but they aren’t based on who we actually are and thus, we are usually set up for disaster.
What do I mean by that? I believe I am a strong, intelligent woman. I believe I do not need many people around me to live a happy and fulfilled life. And yet, I find myself acting in ways that are weak, solicitous, and cloying, as a way to maintain friendships or relationships that I fear losing. Blech. Right? Confusing. Right?
Well, maybe not. Maybe you are of the belief that this is what life is all about. Life is not about being whoever you want to be and living your best life from that point. Life is about making the best out of a life where you are doing your best not to offend or put off the people around you.
A good friend of mine was upset about something and while she was telling me the story she got rather heated. I started to respond to a bit of the story and in her rage, she asked me if I was insane. Gut punch. Here’s the thing, I hadn’t even gotten my full thought out and she was responding to what she thought I was saying rather than what I was actually saying. The old me would have been quite comfortable cowering, apologizing, and allowing her to vent ‘full throttle’. The new me (think infant new), the one who understands who I am, doesn’t play that role any longer. I asked her who she was talking to like that and kindly asked if she would ‘slow her roll’. I didn’t say it angrily or impatiently, but rather, in a very matter-of-fact fashion. How was I able to do that? Well, I wasn’t pissed. I knew that she was very upset and only speaking that way because of the tornado of emotions swirling inside of her. I had compassion, but that no longer extends to where I allow people to be unkind or even abusive. I don’t need to be that friend. I used to be, but I don’t anymore.
You know what’s so funny? I was able to recognize what I had become (not who) because I saw it in others. I saw people around me giving the people around them permission to be abusive or neglectful. They would explain the behavior away. Well you need to understand ____________. Nope. I can be sympathetic when someone is angry or sad without allowing them to behave like an animal. That’s a choice.
Now, before you go all ‘this is me’ on someone, you have to know that you might be rejected. They might be angry with your attempt to neutralize or shut them down based on their state of mind of overall personality. You just have to decide whether you are going to stand strong in the face of that rejection or bend to its will. I used to bend. No longer. People have difficulty with change. All kinds of change. You will encounter difficulty when changing and the people around you will have difficulty with your changes.
I am not some hard ass. I still get scared and sad. But it doesn’t last like it used to because I’m firmly entrenched in the day-to-day practice of realizing WHO I am and living that truth.
There are a couple of ways to get to a place where you know your who. Ready? You can identify your who actively by writing down all the qualities and traits and wants and needs that live within you. For this method, I recommend stream of consciousness writing, which will likely enable the most brutal truth you will ever know. You can identify your who in a more inactive fashion by waiting for the challenges life will present to you and seeing how you feel and react in those scenarios.
What does stream of consciousness writing mean in the scope of identifying your ‘who’? It means you write without judgment, second-guessing, or opinions shared by others. It is quick and can be surprising.
The inactive method is also effective but it takes longer and it can be more difficult to execute because you have to wait for a challenge to present and it is possible that the timing doesn’t jive with what you are looking to accomplish.
The toughest part of this exercise either way is being really real. You know how many people I’ve heard tell me how fucking fabulous they are, only to allow themselves to be treated like garbage? I know that I’ve told myself on many occasions how I deserve better than whatever treatment I am facing, only to permit the shitty treatment over and over again. I’m going to tell you something that you aren’t going to want to hear because it is such a pervasive part of our self-help culture (and works under different circumstances than THIS). Ready? There is no faking it until you make it in figuring out who you are. That’s JUST faking it. Period, end of story. If you fake who you are, and receive necessary or positive feedback or reinforcement, that will be who you become. It won’t be who you become deep down inside though, where it counts. It will be the cloak you wear when you are around ___________.
You will learn how to fake it in a way that never leads to positive growth or change. It only leads to higher level faking. And when you fake it for too long (I am speaking from experience here), you will get so far away from WHO you really are, that the path back to yourself will be utterly unappealing. Your fake life will start to be more appealing than your real life. Imagine that? Not so good, right? Really bad.
This is not unlike the ‘f*ck it list’ I asked you to make a week or so ago. Ask yourself who you are when no one and nothing else matters. Are you really a family gal? Do you like having a lot of friends? Do you need or want a boyfriend/girlfriend? When I ask myself who I am, one of my responses is adventurous. Lack of travel doesn’t mean I cease to be adventurous. It just means I need to find adventures in other places.
You see where I’m going with this?
Talk to you tomorrow.
L.
thepathtoworthy.com 