Being You: The True Self Habit
Defining you, by building you each day
What is your true self? How do you define it? Where the fuck is it? Is it even a real thing? I am my true self, aren’t I?
These are the kinds of questions I wrestled with regularly until I understood what true self is… For me.
That’s the key, “FOR ME”. I was sick and tired of living life on other people’s terms. I had enough. I ended relationships, I went to the jungle and experienced death (which was crazy and I’ll write about soon). I went to the ends of the earth to figure out how to live on purpose and do good things for the world. The funny thing is that it was right in front of me the whole time.
You Define You
Your true self has to be self defined. There is no self-help guru selling courses for $99 on how to discover your true self that is going to help you find it. Unfortunately, based on faulty conditioning, unforgiving societal “norms” and a lack of trustworthy guidance, we have to scrap away at uncovering who we truly are by breaking down who we truly aren’t. This won’t change anytime soon, but if we look at the scenario differently maybe it can be a little less messy and help us get to a place where our work and life harmonize together to create pure fulfillment and thus unchaining us from our false identities, freeing us to be who and what we are for the world.
When people start to feel separated from themselves they scramble to find an answer. Typically we’re struggling with some sort of mental roadblock, or perceived problem; body image anxiety, stress from work, relationship chaos, an unruly ego keeping you from the present moment, etc. We are analytical animals who’ve evolved partly because we’ve been able to solve problems, so we continuously create problems just so we can solve them. A lot of that is simply bad programming and it’s keeping us in this state of confusion, stress and frustration, holding us in this pattern of struggle and pushing us further away from our true essence.
Who You Think You Are Is A Lie (Told By Some Joker From The Past)
Deep down in our core is an authentic version of who we are, life just sometimes has a way of keeping that person from ever appearing. We let parents, bosses, partners and other external relationships dictate who we are and how we should act. We let these jokers define who we are by creating false beliefs in our psyche that plague us for years. Now there is scientific research being published that suggests we would all benefit from understanding our true selves and that it could have a huge impact on our psychological health, well-being and work. If you believe you are taking action because you value or enjoy that action and it gives you purpose, then you will live a higher level of well-being. That’s it, if you do the things you want to do in life, based on your interests and passions and live into who you really are without the bullshit stories from the jokers of the past, you will live a happier life. But we are holding ourselves back from that happiness because we aren’t living in truth.
We create these stories (fears) in our lives that keep us from going after what we want and keep us from ever experiencing true happiness, but that can change if you can let go of the thoughts that are holding you back from being you. Truly you. The version of you that doesn’t come with a story from the past.
What I’ve understood is that these stories we tell ourselves are all based on personal experiences and interactions with certain people in our lives that have made us believe that these emotions from the past should decide our present, creating a tornado of uncontrollable feelings. These stories manifest into fears and keep us so stuck thinking about the past and worrying about the future that we can’t live in the present, which is where the true self lives, in every moment. By believing in these stories from others, we take in their fears and anxieties, creating false beliefs that keep us from accomplishing the greatness within us.
You Are Not Your Thoughts, You Are Merely Awareness Of Your Thoughts — Building Emotional Intelligence Takes Work
If you’re thinking about the past, you’re doing it right now, if you’re thinking about the future, you’re doing it right now. So all you have is right now (the present), so why the fuck are you worried about the stories from the past, or stressing to create stories about the future? The past is gone and the future isn’t created yet, so stop trying to control things and just let go (easier said than done, I know!)
Let’s break this down a little more to see if we can make it easier. The stories of your past and the ones you’re creating of the future come from the same place: emotions. These emotions, once felt, send the mind into storytelling mode where the ego starts to narrate some fictional epilogue that becomes the be all end all encapsulation of who we are. We believe in these emotions and the fears associated with them and we scramble to make decisions without diving in to see where the truth lies. These emotions (which come from past experiences, as mentioned) build up over time and strip us away from our true self, leading us to living fully in emotion, acting irrationally, unfocused and far, far away from who we really are and what we are really meant to be doing on this planet.
Eckhart Tolle says “you are not your thoughts, you are awareness of your thoughts”. This is one of the simplest, yet most profound things to understand that can help you consistently live in truth. Understanding that your thoughts are just that, thoughts. They aren’t reality, they aren’t true, they are stories told and created from old experiences. You have the power to decide what is true in every thought and in every moment, understanding your emotions better to live more free. Anything that isn’t true becomes nothing if you just understand that you are not your thoughts, you are merely awareness of them. In saying all of that, there is one thing we have to do first in order to get to that place of complete awareness.
The Only Habit You Need To Be You — Fostering Emotional Intelligence To Find Truth
Like I mentioned and what I realized for myself, is that your present feelings (stories/fears) are developed from past experiences, usually tied to some person in your life. These stories get you to believe that you need a certain amount of money to be successful, you need to sacrifice certain passions to be in a solid relationship, and so on. The feelings forming from these stories are what is creating your mundane future and holding your true self in the past, if you let it. By going deep on each story (one by one as they arise), you can identify where the emotions come from. The key here is to find the furthest back experience and person tied to that experience that has created the story and work through the emotions with that person (figuratively and/or literally). Some common feelings/stories to unpack:
- I am not good enough (for me, this one was tied to competitive sports from when I was a kid)
- I am not worthy of success (for me, this was tied to family and past work relationships)
What we have after we unpack the story and emotion is freedom. Freedom from the stress and emotional mayhem. Freedom from the lies and false beliefs. Freedom from the narrator keeping you in your fictional tale. And most importantly, the freedom to be who you truly are, clear of the negative, emotional version you’ve become. All you have to do is identify the false belief from the story that is creating the emotion and define the truth for you. This to me is true emotional intelligence, which is all we really need to be us.
Every emotion, while sometimes negative, has a positive intent
If you look at each emotion as a lesson, you will never have to feel poorly about the feelings that come with them. Every emotion is trying to teach you something. Think about when someone cuts you off in traffic and you feel anger. You’re being taught patience. Most of us go through life unaware of these little lessons and because of the stories that are tied to the anger emotion in our past we continue to live in that mindset without understanding how we can grow out of it and into the truth. Trust the lesson, not the emotion and you will uncover amazing truth about yourself.
To sum this all up. Your true self has to be self defined. While there are some simple tactics and things you can do to uncover it, it all starts with you. Your stories, your false beliefs and your ability to do the work to rediscover your true self by building emotional intelligence and resiliency to find the authenticity in each moment. You define you by peeling away from the you someone else created by uncovering the truth in your false beliefs brought on by past experiences (and people). Because whether you believe it or not and whether you can get past the stories in your head as you read this, your true self has been there all along. It’s just covered with a little bit of dust, left there by some people who couldn’t help themselves.
The Dalai Lama said it best, “man sacrifices his health in order to make money. Then he sacrifices money to recuperate his health. And then he is so anxious about the future that he does not enjoy the present; the result being that he does not live in the present or the future; he lives as if he is never going to die, and then dies having never really lived.”
It’s time to take back what is yours and to find out who you are meant to be in this world in order to show up every day in that role. Creating what you want to create, making money doing what you absolutely love to do and living fiercely into your true self without expectation. Good luck my friends and I’ll see you on the other side of fear!
