The Key to “Finding Yourself” is Creating Yourself
“If you’re searching for that one person that will change your life, take a look in the mirror.”
Loving oneself is the most vital quests in the journey of life. How often do we hear people say, “I need to travel to (insert location here) in order to find myself.” I once was also a victim of this. I was constantly trying to create a life that I required a vacation from. I was finding every excuse under the sun to take short term vacations away from ‘normality’.
Finding yourself may sound like an inherently self-centred goal, but it is actually an unselfish process that is at the root of everything we do in life.
With knowledge, consistency and practice, I soon understood that the best version of you was already inside you and that person has actually been waiting patiently for you.
In this day and age, where social networking has consumed much of how we socially interact with others. Humans have been conditioned to seek other peoples approval in order to feel good about themselves, what's worse is that we have the ability now to do it at the expense of clicking a button.
We do just almost about anything to receive a nice pat on the back every once in a while. When a person posts a picture and gets positive social feedback, it stimulates the brain to release dopamine, an act of instant gratification and validation perpetuating our social media habit.
However, there are repercussions to this strategy. By using external sources as a basis of our happiness we set ourselves up to live a life that’s not uniquely our own but as a reflection of a life that’s graciously accepted by others.
The fear of rejection is one of humans deepest fears. We are biologically wired to seek a sense of belonging.
But alas, you live in a world of non-stop comparison — unknowingly born in an era with the rise of the Internet and social media. An age where you can observe how well everyone else was supposedly doing, yet a human’s greatest fear is to be alone. We have been bounded, ball and chain, to continuously worry about other peoples approval. The belief that other people are judging you harshly and that you need to be perfect to secure social approval.
And by doing this, impacts how we make decisions and where we choose to spend most of our time. And where we choose to spend our time is more important than how you spend your money. Money can be made, time is gone forever.
Time is your most valuable and precious asset. You have a limited amount of it. How you spend your time is how you spend your life. Time spent worrying about what other people think is not time well spent. Unless your worry can tangibly help you identify solutions that you can implement to prevent a negative outcome, worry is often something that people do to create more distress for themselves.
Worrying only causes you to lose awareness of what’s important to you, what drives you and what makes you happy.
“Your greatest responsibility is to love yourself and to know you are enough.”
Since the beginning of time, humans have been obsessed with the purport of ‘perfect.’ Perfection is desirable. It is a state of flawlessness, without any defects. It’s illustriousness, diligence and high achievement. It’s aiming high and working hard and it is maladaptive perfectionism.
But what we haven’t been told that striving for perfectionism comes at a cost. It packages a lot of self-judgement, allowance for vanity and errors; a constant dream pursuit of being perfect and never measuring up to that ordeal. We are each our own worst critic, yet we are all thriving to reach perfectionism.
“You were born to be real, not to be perfect.” — Ralph Marston.
Humans, however, were never intended to be perfect. That’s part of the definition of being human. Consider the expression, “I’m just human.”
We need to remind ourselves that the goal isn’t to seek flawlessness but to embrace the imperfection of being human.
If we are constantly trying to be perfect, we are missing out on the beauty of who we actually are. Our own quirks and imperfections are what makes us unique. We were born original. We are all incomparable and we all have our own special place in the puzzle of the universe.
The truth is, most of us walk through life not really knowing who we are. It’s time we asked ourselves: what really makes us happy? What is it that gives you love? What gives you purpose?
I first approached this exercise by deactivating my Instagram account. I realised that the less time I was spending sculpting a life on the internet, the more time I was spending creating a life that was benefiting me. I discovered self-love when I was quietly engulfing books in my bedroom; when I am working relentlessly on my articles; when I am running laps around at the park. And then I had a light bulb moment. I discovered, life wasn’t about finding yourself… it was about creating yourself.
“Finding yourself” is not really how it works. You aren’t a ten-dollar bill in last winter’s coat pocket. You are also not lost. Your true self is right there, buried under cultural conditioning, other people’s opinions, and inaccurate conclusions you drew as a kid that became your beliefs about who you are. “Finding yourself” is actually returning to yourself. An unlearning, an excavation, a remembering who you were before the world got its hands on you.” — Emily McDowell.
As Lucille Ball says, “Love yourself first and everything else falls into line,” The more I understood this, the more I’ve noticed that self-love was already prevalent in all the activities I do in my life. Self-love is an ongoing, consistent daily practice of discovering yourself. It isn’t a destination, but an adventurous journey. It’s not an overnight miracle pill or staring really hard in front of a mirror. It is a task we must work on every single day.
Create your own path. Create your own system or rules and find a way to make it work. The road to mastery requires consistency. Never stop doing your best just because someone doesn’t give you credit.
“Be yourself- not your idea of what you think somebody else’s idea of yourself should be.” ― Henry David Thoreau
When you love yourself, you are acknowledging your worth and value and then acting in a way that shows who you are and what you stand for — And how you feel about yourself will invite in the standard of relationship you are accepting into your life.
— After all, if you don’t love yourself, how can you expect anyone else to love you?
Writer’s Note
Thank you for reading my article. I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it!Also, follow my twitter account @dxinspires — I post daily diverse content about blog posts, podcasts, quotes, videos and news on motivational and self-development topics.
- D.Q
