We read many thoughts and suggestions about being our best self.
But what is that? How do we know? And, goodness, it sounds exhausting. It sounds like work.
I want to offer a radical idea. When we are our truest, it comes with ease. It is not work.
Truest Self.
Now, there is a concept to engage. Best implies competition, evaluation, judgment. It implies that I’m not my best now, and how will I ever know when I’ve achieved that?
Truest Self.
This is a concept, an idea, a truth. It is the unveiling of who you were created to be. This is determined by you. Not by culture, family, age, belief system. It is determined by you. “Finding Myself” is a thing. But not because you’ve gone out to the streets and are lost. It is more like the environment going ice skating as a group and you have chosen to be the coat pile. Everyone else is out there having fun and there you are, underneath the pile of coats that don’t even belong to you, protecting something so no one rips anyone off.
But you are the one being ripped off. When we make our self determinations based on
cultural trends (if I just learn to like bourbon or a hoppy IPA),
religious shoulds (love Jesus/Allah/Buddha enough),
professional practices (well, everyone is doing it)
We set ourselves up for moveable targets of success. The strongest is the material markers of success and self: car, house, vacations, clothing, etc. These are fine material things. But they do not point to who you are and why you are and even how you are.
So who are you? Who do you say that you are? What are your own lists of “I am”s? What words of strength do you attribute to yourself? When you feel yourself being taken over by a stronger personality, what is it you’d really like to say or do? These are all such important clues. Not toward a narcissistic self protectionism.
But a way toward the truest you.
As I see and interact with those who have tapped into their truest self, they know when they are choosing and creating life based on their own alignment and when they are aligned with culture or someone/something else. No judgment here. But really, it is work when we fit ourselves into someone else’s mold.
What does your mold look like? The one you have created yourself based on your own interior wisdom? Based on your own sense of truth. Now, here is where the work really is. Satisfying work. Self determining work. Self disclosure. I will tell you that this is not easy. It is hard work. You are pulling up your truth from the dregs of pain, wound, numbness, check-out living. Talk about draining the swamp. Yep. This is what we do. And we do it the rest of our lives, but instead of our whole exteriors being covered in sludge as we spit out the sludge from inside in the beginning, its more like every now and then seeing that we’ve got dog poo on our shoes. Quick clean, but clean we must. The rewards are amazing, full, creative, relieving, easy, and joy-filled.
And here’s a hint:
When we are in our truth, we are always led to the good of the whole. Always. If what we call “our truth” stops with our own well being, then it is not truth. It is likely fear based, insecurity based, other based self protectionism. Or as Brene’ Brown says, we’ve “gold plated our grit” and hang on to our lesser selves like trophies. But it is not our truth. We are all linked together in an organism of humanity and my well being and the meeting of my truest self causes me to look up and see everyone around me. Their well being becomes linked to my own. Love expands the bubble of awareness and compassion leads to understanding. Let go of tragic patterns you’ve always carried and have mistaken as your truest self. See what is being revealed. It is life. Life for you. Life for all. That is how you tell.
In the end, the only thing we are here to do, is to be our truest self. We can trust when we do that, we are meeting the needs of others who are around us in some way. Just as those who are living their truest self impact our well being. We feel it when they walk into a room. We feel it when words or concepts of high vibration are heard or spoken.
May you be a hearer and knower and speaker of your truest self. This is everything as we raise the consciousness of humanity toward an ethic of love, compassion, and linked togetherness.
With you,
Amy