75 Who are you, now?
by Una Hearne.
Who are you? Right now, today? This is a core question in personal development. The foundation of all coaching is who are you and what do you want?
Self knowledge and awareness grounds you. To know who you are and what you stand for means that in turbulent times you can navigate your life with confidence. It means in the midst of chaos you can make the best choices for yourself. Everyone experiences times of success and times of turbulence. Those who know and love themselves fare better, they adapt more easily and respond more positively to challenges. Those whose self knowledge resides in an external image of themselves and not in a real understanding of their own heart and mind fare rather worse.
People, for example, whose image of themselves is the success they experienced in the past ‘I was a successful businessperson’ ‘I was a movie star’ ‘I earned millions of dollars’ are not in touch with who they are now. We all identify with our roles to some extent naturally, nothing wrong with that, our roles are an extension of who we are. When our roles change and we cannot let go we run into trouble. We might be afraid to face who we are now or we simply might not know how to be that person. Identity confusion or crisis can be very stressful. There is a huge emotional drag when we don’t let go of the past – this drains our precious energy. It holds us back and sometimes holds us down. This is equally true whether we are holding onto success or failure.
The good news is, who you really are never changes. The soul, spirit or essence of YOU is always there. And who you really are is always good enough. When you know deep down that you are of value, just as you are, that you always have been and always will be, you can move forward through life changes. Turbulence and difficult times are simply another phase of learning, choice and effort. Same as the easy, calm times.
Finding yourself is an internal trip. It doesn’t matter if you travel the world or sit in your armchair. The outward form of the journey simply doesn’t matter. It is a unique journey you must navigate yourself. There isn’t a WAY to find yourself, to reconnect with yourself, meet your true self. Although plenty of people will tell you there is, and if any of their WAYs appeal to you and better still, work for you, then happy days, go with that. But know there are as many paths as human beings.
The one thing common to all inner journeys is awareness. Awareness that there is an inner you. The you that can observe your own thoughts and feelings. You can observe what is going on for you, what makes you feel happy and strong, what makes you feel sad and week. You can consider ‘What is life about? for you?’. There are no right or wrong answers, only what is true for you and you realise this over time by staying engaged with your real self and the big questions.
Enjoy the trip!
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