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These sticky buds think they are a horse due to the horse shoe shape beneath the bud
giving the tree the name of Horse Chestnut.
Let Go of Who You
Think Should Be and Become Who You Want to Be
Alexander Heyne
“Do not become a stranger to yourself by blending in with everyone
else.” ~Dodinsky
I spent many decades of my life trying to be person I was expected to
be.
It was partly the kind of expectations our parents impose
on us, but also those from society, combined with the worst ones of all: the
expectations I had put on myself.
For example, the story of who “I should be” had told me
that:
I had to be a hard worker, a great student, and an
overachiever.
I had to be responsible.
I had to be serious.
I take to take care of everyone else.
Naturally, my actions reflected all of these thoughts.
Eventually, the picture my life painted became everyone else’s picture.
I ended up going into a “safe, secure career”—you know, the dreaded
corporate job
you don’t want but you “know you should do” to have all the trappings of
a secure life.
People discouraged me from pursuing the things I was
interested in,
because it wasn’t guaranteed that I would make a good
living in them.
How was I supposed to support a family if I didn’t have a
safe, secure job?
Happiness wasn’t less important in this equation; it was
non-existent.
As the first born, I felt I didn’t have a choice—partly
because I had expectations from others
riding on my shoulders, partly because I wanted to make
my family and friends proud of me.
I wanted to show them that all of my parents’ work didn’t
go to waste.
For a while I could fake who I was. And for a while it
worked.
I went to my job like a busy worker bee and did what I
was supposed to do;
then I clocked out, went home, rinsed, and repeated.
About a year or two later, those first stirrings started showing up. Why
am I even here?
How did I get here? Do I even like this line of work? What on earth am I
doing?
What’s the point of my life and waking up to do all of this stuff?
Then I felt the worst feeling of all—the one we’ve all
felt before—
the feeling of your soul leaving
your body.
The next year was unlike the first.
Mysterious illnesses start cropping up: sleep issues,
fatigue, aches and pains,
and the worst, an unshakeable unhappiness that wouldn’t
go away,
even though I was doing everything “right.”
That’s when I reached a breaking point.
One day, which naturally was a rainy Monday,
I stood for a moment longer than usual before entering
the office door.
A second later a big commuter bus passed by.
Right then and there, I wondered if it might be easier to
just get hit by a bus
rather than keep repeating this ridiculous nightmare
every day.
I paused.
The idea that I would rather die than live another
day like that shocked me sufficiently
that I stepped back, and after work spent time in a cafe and thought
about how I got here,
and how I could get out.
There were three things after this event that
dramatically helped me:
1. Blind courage
I thought about what I wanted, which was surprisingly
difficult,
and just went for that without questioning it.
This is something that almost no one tells us to do when
we’re young.
I realized how important it is to be brave,
because the entire world (and often our close friends and
family) is trying to change us.
Everything competes for our mind space—we want to be happy,
we want to make our parents happy, we want to be
successful, and more.
2. Listening to my gut
I understood that this battle would never end.
I realized there would always be conflicting voices:
voices that told me to work for money,
voices that told me to work for passion, voices that told
me to just run away and do neither.
Most importantly, I remembered to listen what my gut voice
told me,
beyond the intellectual stuff of what sounds practical.
3. Tuning out other people’s opinions
Finally, I stopped letting other people determine who I think I
should be and decided to just be me. This was perhaps the
hardest of all because we’re always receiving the message
that we should be more or less of something.
I made a conscious effort each day to pause and think
about what I wanted.
Forget what my parents wanted, what my friends wanted,
what I thought I should
want—what did I want?
It wasn’t until I made these three changes that I
released the brakes in my own life,
regained that feeling of being myself,
and finally embraced who I actually was,
not who I should be.
I invested more in my passions and interests: health,
medicine, meditation,
reading (and writing), and lots more.
And over the next period of months and years, I gradually
felt “my spirit” coming back.
We’re always going to feel pressure to make choices we
think we should make
rather than the choices we want to make.
The world is always trying to pull us or push us in
different directions.
It’s up to us to stay focused and centered so we can identify what we really want;
otherwise, we’ll end up feeling that we’re just going
through the motions.
Ultimately, it takes courage to be truly authentic.
It can be easy to conform because it doesn’t require
going against the grain
or stirring up conflict, but it’s the little acts of
courage that lead us to fulfillment.
http://tinybuddha.com/blog/let-go-of-who-you-think-should-be-and-become-who-you-want-to-be/
Introduction
to Turbo Charged Reading YouTube
A practical overview of Turbo Charged
Reading YouTube
How
to choose a book. A Turbo Charged Reading YouTube
Emotions
when Turbo Charged Reading YouTube
Advanced
Reading Skills Perhaps you’d like to join my FaceBook group ?
Perhaps you’d
like to check out my sister blog:
www.innermindworking.blogspot.com gives many ways for
you to work with the stresses of life
www.turbochargedreading.blogspot.com for extra TCR
information
www.happyartaccidents.blogspot.com
just for fun.
To quote the Dr
Seuss himself, “The more that you read, the more things you will know.
The more that
you learn; the more places you'll go.”
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