Losing Myself to Find Myself
Where do I begin…
I have always had a pretty good idea of who I am: the goals I want to accomplish, the beliefs I hold so dear, the person I strive to be. But that all started to drift from me. I got so caught up in everything I was busy doing and people I was helping, that I forgot to take care of myself. I forgot what I liked. I forgot what I disliked. I forgot how to live. I forgot me. So here I am now. Finding myself once again. And it feels great.
I don’t know when I started to become like this. I guess during high school I took a lot of stuff to heart and really didn’t want it to affect me anymore, so I dove head first into the busy life. The busy life of school, work, activities, friends, you name it. Then when I went to college, it escalated quickly. I thought that by involving myself in everything possible, I would pave my own path to success. At that time, success meant accomplishing everything, getting that pat on the back with a “good job” attached to it, receiving that award. By having this mindset, I lost myself. I became so busy that I forgot who I was. I never had time for myself anymore. Between work, classes, family, friends, activities I was involved in, I quickly became this robot who did everything for everyone else, but never anything for herself.
One day it hit me square in the face. My boyfriend and I were talking and out of the blue he asked me about my hobbies. All of a sudden I broke down into a puddle of tears. I could not think of one single thing I actually enjoyed doing or even did for myself anymore. Right then is when I decided to make some changes. I decided to take a step back and a hard look at my life.
From that day, I began to find myself again. I started saying no a lot more. I realized it was okay to turn people down sometimes if it compromised my happiness. I started thinking of the things I love to do and what makes me feel alive. Once I figured that out, I started doing it. And let me tell you, I have never felt better. I feel like I have control of my life again. Finally, I was on the path to finding myself.
Sometimes we get so caught up in our lives and hectic schedules that we forget to take some time for ourselves. And we need to. We need to take care of ourselves and remember the things that we love. The things that make this life worth living. How are we supposed to give 110% to everything we commit to if we can’t even give 50% to ourselves? This is a question I have pondered many a times while I was trying to figure out who I was. Don’t get me wrong, I have not completely reached that point. Every day I am still figuring out who I am and discovering the things I enjoy. It is not a one step process. It is a continuous day to day process that we have to commit to sticking with.
I have realized that to me, success is happiness. It is not overloading yourself and forgetting to be there for yourself. In fact, it is the polar opposite. If I am truly to find myself successful, then I will have found happiness from within. I will be happy in myself and happy doing the things I love, with the people I love. I had to lose myself to find myself. To me, that was pretty successful.
