Being Yourself

Every day, you get up, go out into the world and do what you do. But who’s doing it? Who is going out there and doing the thing you do? Is it you? Or is it a person you’ve carefully created to be sure the world will love you? A person you’ve created to be sure the world won’t hurt you? To make sure the world won’t reject you?

Probably. 

Every day, we step out the door as someone who is’t real. Someone who isn’t really us. We go out into the world as a fake. A phony. 

We do it to protect ourselves.

But we quickly realize, this is slow death. Not being who we uniquely are kills us — slowly and painfully. Becoming genuinely happy and contributing to the world in our best way means chipping off all the stuff that isn’t really us… and be left with who we truly are. 

And that means we have to do one really hard and scary thing:

Be honest. 

Being honest with your friends, family, coworkers, and other people is hard. But the brutal truth is that it’s the easy part. Easy compared to the to the biggest, nastiest, meanest, hairiest monster you’ll ever have to face: 

Yourself. 

Being honest with yourself is the scariest part. 

What if I’m no good? What if I don’t really matter at all? What if? What if? What if? 

It takes a long time and a lot of living of life to get this very simple point…. and many people don’t get it it before they reach their death bed, but it’s the only thing that really answers the “what if” question: 

You actually ARE good enough just like you are.

Even if you don’t get out of bed today, even if you get nothing done, even if you make no money, even if you make no progress, even if you help nobody, even if you do nothing…. No matter what…. you’re good enough just like you are. 

Even if you don’t matter (you do), even if nobody likes you (somebody does), even if nobody thinks your creations are any good (they are), even if you fart out crappy blog posts (they’re kind of good, actually… maybe?), even if you completely suck at life…. you’re good enough. 

It is ONLY from that understanding that you can actually become what you are truly capable of. 

Knowing that (and it’s doubtful that reading this is going to convince you, so you’re going to have to keep working at it, since every single human being on this planet struggles with this to some degree every single day), you can finally….. 

finally….

finally….

BE HONEST

…. so that you can be who you really are…. yourself. The alternative is a slow, miserable death. 

BE YOU. 

Photo Credit: https://www.splitshire.com/young-man-headshot/

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