Who don't you allow yourself to be?

January 24, 2025
8:56 PM

One of the most valuable skills I have developed over my lifetime is the ability to live with the uncertainty of the questions I can't immediately answer. In my search for truth, I've learned that it is harder to let go of a deeply rooted belief than to adopt a new one, and it is more dangerous to believe based on feeling than to take my time confirming the truth in the reality of my experience.

For the longest time, this was my greatest challenge in learning to value the truth. I can't count the number of times I have jumped to conclusions that have only created bigger problems for myself later in life. In the discomfort of my ignorance, I impulsively sought to fill the gaps in my knowledge with any reasonable information I could find without verifying its validity.

I used to make up reasons I would succeed based on the books I read, believing their words as the truth rather than seeking to discover how to succeed in my own experience, heeding their ideas as counsel. When I experienced setbacks, my false sense of certainty and security crumbled. I would become discouraged and question whether my efforts would amount to anything. In trying to escape my uncertainty, I only found insecurity.

While this unhealthy and destructive tendency applied to all areas of my life, it was the most noticeable in my relationship with myself. In constantly trying to understand who I was, I lost the peace and freedom to be myself, as I was. It was the opposite of what I was trying to become. I didn't grow to be more self-aware, but more self-conscious.

For years, I replaced one limited perception of myself with another, wondering why it didn't capture the essence of who I was. I built my self-image on a narrow interpretation of what I have experienced, how I felt in the moment, how I reacted to my emotions, what I could do better than others, what I was working toward, and what made me happy; neglecting the thousands of smaller details that also make me who I am.

At the time, I was so focused on improving what I thought about myself, that I failed to consider how I thought about myself. I was trying to improve within a vision of myself that could never capture everything I was meant to be. It was a road that led me to continuously question what my actions, decisions, and results made of me, always looking over my shoulder to see what others thought of me.

However, since then I have learned that who I am is greater than my labels and I do not need to be understood. It seems I'm not meant to be an answer, but the exploration of a question, and I won't know who I am until I have reached the end of my life. I have learned to simply be, and accept that I am who I am and I am working to be better.

In embracing myself and my life this way, I have not only found peace in allowing myself to be as I am, but a renewed sense of motivation to become who I can be; one that comes from inspiration, not desperation. My self-discovery is not tied to the expectation I must know myself to begin living my life, but that I must live my life to allow the world to know me.

If you're struggling to know yourself, remember that it's in the nature of all definitions to distinguish something not by what it is, but by the boundaries of everything it isn't. Self-discovery is not a process of learning but of unlearning. It is giving up the ideas you hold of yourself and embracing the lived reality of who you are.

As you continue on your self-discovery journey, seek to discover who you can become and how far the boundaries that define you today can be pushed by the end of your life. In the end, you will have known yourself better than any person who has lived their life creating theories of who they might be.

10:05 PM
Chris X

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