Be Yourself

This is the ability to know and understand yourself, by staying true to your identity. It is actually something you have to do alone.

A lot of people get confused about who they really are. Then issues like personal identity becomes a challenge for them. While it may seem easy that one should be one's self in reality, it is usually not the case. It takes courage, discipline and resilence to overcome a lot of challenges that could influence you against who you truly want to  become. But then, remember that nothing in life has a short cut.

Do not allow circumstantial challenges like influence of people around you, failure, poverty, fear based thinking or individual complexity deter you from getting in touch with your inner person.

The expectations of people around us contributes to the difference in our identity. We have a lot of programmed choices and daily, people adapt to this complexities, just to have the approval of others.

Overtime, if you are true to yourself, you will realise that its certainly not working and to say the least, the inner happiness will not be there, because you live to either impress, get approval from others or to belong. It becomes increasingly challenging to identify our true self from the external influences.

To be yourself, you have to do the following:

1. Reconnect with the child in you: We watch children live their lives, one thing to agree on is they care less about who is watching them or what you think. They have not yet socialised or understand the society. Children are just pure love and that defines what you should be like. To be in touch with the child in you, you need to be freer always happy, play and enjoy every moment.

2. Thought awareness: being aware and in control of our thought has a way of either motivating or dwindling the mind.

The ability to create positive thoughts at all times, despite the circumstance, has a way of pushing us in the right direction. The positive is like a propeller. Building our thoughts to create positive image makes us better.

3. Follow your intuition: We regularly ignore this over time because we feel obligated to others. I did things the way my parents feel I should and ignored my urge to do things my way. For instance, there are things we want to do but for fear of leaving "the comfort zone" or fear of the unknown... Things like leaving an unsatisfactory job or bad relationship, always thinking of what people will think or how to cope. At the end you end up being unhappy.

I know a friend that the parents did not allow to leave home until she was 24 years, just because they still want to be in charge but if you don't take charge of your life, you may not know it's worth. So let go of your old ways of thinking, follow your heart and do what you love, then you will begin to align with happiness and peace. Then your real self will shine in all glory.

4. Know your personal values: We all have core in built personal values,if we loose touch with them, we begin to lose our identity. We all know this positive personal values because we all have them or used to even if you are not in tune with them again. So, let's try to realign our personal values and reconnect with them. This is a true path to finding and being yourself.

5. Response adjust pattern: Care less about what is said about you, especially when it's not a constructive criticism or a positive word. We can never have every one applaud you no matter how hard you try.

6. Cultivate positive belief: Believe in yourself, appreciate you, understand your worth. If you do this, there is no way you will not have a positive mindset about yourself. Make a culture to cultivate positive feelings about you. Commend yourself when you make positive efforts. By doing this, you give your identity the required approval which is not dependent on outside sources.

I hope you find my piece useful as you sojourn in this trip of self-discovery.