Your Best Self Is Waiting To Be Discovered
It’s only 7 steps away
You’ve heard the advice, “be yourself.” But what does that really mean?
“You” is not one thing. In fact, it’s not a thing at all. It’s an action. A beautifully unique verb. You, loves, laughs, and develops. It grows and gains new perspectives.
Like a fire that flickers and crackles with each new piece of kindling, who you are is defined every day of your life.
You change with every new experience
Have you experienced knowing someone for years, only to one day see a completely different side of them? “I didn’t know you could dance like that!”
We change based on our experiences. Different sides of ourselves are revealed under different circumstances. No parent is ever confident with their parenting abilities before having kids. And the best public speaker in the world could have been deathly afraid of it in the past.
Who you are is like a beam of light. Life, a prism. Your personality is filtered through your experiences and reveals new colours on the other end. But, it’s a process. With 7 steps.
1. Remove expectations:
You’ll never discover where you’re headed until you accept where you’ve been. All too often we confuse finding ourselves with looking for that that we wish to find. Accept yourself, your past, and wipe any limiting notions of the future, clean.
Accepting that you is not a destination, is the only way to grow into the best version of yourself.
2. Take a step back:
Just as our experiences shape us, we are highly influenceable. It’s important to take time to reconnect with yourself. Spend time alone, go for walks, and hide your phone away from time to time.
Nature, travel, and meeting new people are great ways to cleanse your notions of self. Outside influence often makes us feel obligated to act a certain way.
3. Analyze your environment:
Taking a step back and removing expectations allows you to analyze areas of your life. Are you happy? Are those around you helping or hindering you?
Many young adults make a shift in friend groups after high school, realizing that certain individuals may not be healthy for their growth. Define what it is that you want and then put yourself in a situation to get there.
4. Define a hierarchy of importance:
It can be tough to know whether your life is serving your aspirations or not. It’s helpful to lay out your goals and analyze them. Simply write down the answer to these 3 questions:
- What do you want your life to look like? 1–2 sentences.
- What are the 5 most important things in your life? Then, rank them in order of importance.
- If you could only embody 5 core values, what would they be? Rank them.
Displaying your life in terms of goals, helps you prioritize what’s important. You can constantly compare your actions/surroundings to the direction you’d like to go.
5. Get comfortable being alone:
Being alone is one of the most powerful skills you will ever develop. It allows you to choose who you spend your time with, and what you wish to be doing. Time is precious, and alone time acts as emotional planning. It helps to reduce time, wandering and being pulled off track. Plus, it’s freeing to know that you always have someone to lean on. Yourself.
6. Surround yourself with what you like:
Being yourself is a lot like trying on new clothing. First, you select what you think you might like and then try it on. Through trial and error, you find a collection of clothing that you decide to purchase. But even after all that work, styles change, and clothes wear away.
Once you find people, things, and values that you like, try them on. It doesn’t mean they’re forever but enjoy them while you have them. Care for your relationships, work hard at your goals, and stay on your path. But don’t be surprised if they change. Just avoid buying clothes just because they’re cheap and/or convenient.
7. Reinforce your boundaries:
Being true to yourself is tough. Especially when social influence is everywhere nowadays. Unfollow social media accounts and block content that doesn’t align with your vision. Follow and engage with those that do.
As Aristotle said, “We are what we repeatedly do.” Even bending seemingly small boundaries like your social views or how you talk to yourself shapes who consistently become. Keep your values close, be loyal to them, and stand up for what you believe in.
Live, laugh, laugh — verbs that say it all (to summarize)
Life is but a series of actions. In that sense, “you” is not a passive noun at all, but an active verb. Be yourself now and forever with these 7 steps:
- Accept who you are today
2. Take a step back and let the dust settle
3. Take a look around — “What do I like/what would I change?”
4. Write down what’s important
5. Become your biggest fan
6. Surround yourself with positive influence
7. Reinforce your boundaries to keep bad influences far away
One powerful trick I’ve used to improve my self-talk is to simply remove the word “should” from my vocabulary. Here’s how and why:
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© Hudson Rennie