Who are you?
How would you answer that question if it was asked to you face-to-face? Most likely you'd start with your name, lead onto your job, possibly your relationship or parental status. This is not what I'm asking. Who are you underneath all of that?
It can feel like a tricky question. Some of us have kept qualities of ourselves for most of our lives, either because they serve us in a way that works for us or because we believe "that's just how I am." Some of us are ever-changing, always searching for who we are underneath all the conditioning of the world, getting rid of old qualities that no longer serve us or learning new ones. Some of us are in-between.
I believe not knowing who we are, rejecting parts of who we are and refusing to grow is where we become insecure, unsatisfied, depressed, stressed, disconnected, resentful, and lonely. Do not be afraid to try new things because it doesn't suit the type of person you're trying to be perceived as, do it at the risk of finding something you enjoy. Look at Billie Eilish: she recently posed in lingerie in Vogue, after years ago stating that she would never show off her body, always wearing baggy clothes. Even her style of music has fluctuated over the years. As adopts new perspectives, skills, knowledge, lessons, she grows and shows that accordingly, never pretending to be someone she is not, never berating herself for her past. She is true to herself.
I have a question for you. If you had no judgement of yourself nor cared about other's judgement, how would you be different? What would stay the same?
Acknowledge the Parts of You That You Like
Anecdote
In one of my previous posts (which you can find here), I note that "uncertainty of oneself" is the definition of insecurity. Confidence, however, comes from being certain of, having faith in and believing in oneself. How can we do that if we don't acknowledge the qualities of ourselves that we do and don't like?
My therapist recently gave me an activity asking me to look at what my personal values or strengths are. The questions were: what are some of my values or character qualities, how do they present in my life, do they serve me/do I want to keep these or do I want to get rid of them. What I noticed when I first sat down with it was that I STRUGGLED. The only quality I could come up with was kindness, and when I wrote down ways that kindness presented in my life, half of them were about getting walked over--ways of living that used to serve me but I no longer want in my life. I decided that I like the value of kindness, but I didn't like some of the ways it showed up, so I redefined kindness--I came up with new ways to address the same situations that include being kind to myself.
Finding What You Like About Yourself
It is easier to see what we dislike about ourselves than it is to see what we do like, right? I couldn't see past the qualities I dislike until I had a mindset shift. I started off by spending more time with myself and doing activities that brought me joy like listening to music I like regardless if others like it, writing, listening to podcasts on history. When I couldn't answer the question of what qualities I like within myself, I decided to sit down and write out qualities that I like in other people, the qualities of people I look up to. Once I had some listed, I asked myself "how do each of these qualities show up in my own life?" and "in what ways can I incorporate this value into my life more?" Chances are that you already possess this quality, even in little amounts, and if it is high enough on your list of values, learning this skill will help you gain a little more lovin' of yourself.
Embrace ALL of You
Chances are that there are parts of us that we will hide from time to time. However, if we refuse any parts of ourselves, what we are really doing is neglecting and rejecting ourselves, which starts a cycle of self-pity, self-hatred or self-sabotage.
What are the qualities you don't like in others? And where do you do this in your own life?
The parts of others we don't like are typically parts we don't like within ourselves and vice versa. This does not give us permission to hate them, nor ourselves. This is a challenge of empathy. What if you could learn to sit with the difficult emotions, the mistakes you've made in the past, the way you've behaved? If you could forgive yourself and learn to drop the judgement, you might find it easier to like all of you. You might even find it easier to like others. PSA: This does not mean tolerating or making excuses for cruelty, abuse, or maliciousness.
Another way of figuring out who you are and what you like (minus the judgement of others) is to reflect on the little version of you.
Rewind The Clock
What did you like doing as a child? The activities that brought you a sense of joy or peace. Did you enjoy playing with Lego or fixing broken toys? Writing and reading? Performing? Playing with remote control cars or an instrument? Being in the garden? Baking? Dressing up? I encourage you to grab a pen and paper or pull out your Notes and write a list, right now.
From age 5, I really enjoyed singing to musical movies, making dances up with my sister, playing games on Playstation, writing in my diary or making up stories, sometimes I enjoyed reading adventure, mystery or history books, and, albeit rarely, I enjoyed drawing. Sometimes I would create new board games to play, paint my nails, or do some skipping out back (remember Jump Rope for Heart? I took that shit seriously). I was free to be me during all of these activities and I always felt good during and after doing them.
Rewrite
If you've got your own list, change the title to "Things That Bring Me Back," or "Things I Need to Do for My Sanity" if you want to be a little more realistic.
These activities are the hobbies you are most likely to enjoy as an adult--they bring you back to the creative, playful or present side of you, the one that isn't held back by responsibilities or expectations.
In my adult life, my list looks like: singing while cooking or driving, dancing while I exercise, writing in my journal or a blog post, reading, learning about history and life through podcasts, hanging out with my sister, doodling, cooking something new, and doing fun HIIT workouts akin to skipping.
Find ways to incorporate those old activities you liked into your adult life in a new way. The realest versions of ourselves were when we were children, before our family, environment or society taught us that we need to be scared, stressed, overworked, discontent. We were curious, playful, present. We need to invoke that inner child more often.
You're Not You When You're Unsatisfied
If you haven't already realised by now, chasing material items does not bring you happiness. Having these material items like cars, houses, and nice clothes help us feel safe and they boost our ego but they do not bring us the confidence that we are chasing, nor the satisfaction in life.
A scientific study found that "individuals who engaged in more frequent enjoyable leisure activities had better psychological and physical functioning. They reported greater PA, life satisfaction, life engagement, social support as well as lower depression... they had lower blood pressure, cortisol... and better perceived physical function, even after adjusting for the standard demographic variables." (Pressman, Matthews, Cohen, et al., 2009)
You are not the realest, best version of you when you are depressed, stressed, unwell, suffering from discontent or loneliness. Whilst I truly believe you need to honour those harder moments in life by feeling those feels, there needs to come a time when you pick yourself up and take action. For me, the easiest way to do that is by having that list of activities ready at all times, like an emergency pick-me-up list.
Cultural Values Also Play A Role
For years Finland has been found to be the happiest country in the world. This is because their culture is not one based on having items or money, but on having a balanced or enjoyable lifestyle. Australia is ranked 12th, and whilst that doesn't sound terrible, the U.S. is two spots behind us--we all know how much discontent there is over there. So, disconnect from the values of our society and create your own. Go back to focussing on internal values like we did here, as opposed to external values.
Prioritise Yourself
We have to show ourselves how important we are not only through acknowledging our good qualities, watching how we talk about ourselves and making emergency hobby lists, but by taking action, making conscious changes daily.
What if every time we picked up our phones to scroll aimlessly on Tik Tok, Instagram, Facebook or Reddit, we paused, and instead decided to do an activity on that list we conjured up earlier?
Each time you realise you're scrolling on your phone, pick a different activity, one that feels good to do at that present moment. Mix it up each time, even.
Give each activity on your list a go. You may even need to change up the way in which you do it in order to get satisfaction out of it, or learn mindfulness in order to disengage from the critical, analytic, stressed and judgemental mind we've created.
Drop The Mind Chatter
You are not the material items or titles society gives you, nor the feelings you have, nor your thoughts, you are what is underneath. All that other stuff is external fog. We want to find ways to clear that away.
We can do this by doing those activities I've made you revisit a thousand times, but we can also do this with mindfulness or meditation. Mindfulness is described as focussing the mind on a particular object, thought or activity, whereas meditation is described as using mindfulness to train attention and awareness, as well as achieving a mentally clear and emotionally calm state. All it is is being present. Through mindfulness or meditation, we are able to observe where our mind goes, the patterns it produces daily, our emotional state, but also improve our ability to stay connected to the present moment and clear out the fog of life.
It really is as simple as being still and silent, taking deep breaths and just staying there. Noticing what comes up, coming back to the present moment. There are plenty of free guided meditations on YouTube and a few on the Calm app, free daily guided mindfulness tracks on the Headspace app, and a list of mindfulness techniques in my post Ways to Deal with Stress and Anxiety. It is a free skill to learn that can help you in every single waking moment (and improve your sleep too).
This is a skill that needs to be trained. It is entirely possible to make time for this, especially if you put that goddamn phone down and commit to making time for you. Next time you head to the toilet, are in a waiting area or café, or have just woken up, leave the phone alone and just observe the present moment.
Gain Confidence (Through the Brain)
Bare with me on this one. Have you heard of neuroplasticity before? It is the brain’s ability to form new neural pathways (how information is sent from one area of our body to another). This ability is what allows us to learn new things!
If we continually repeat the same ways of thinking, feeling and acting, we get so good at them they become second nature. So if we repeat new learnings, we can be gone with old habits that no longer serve us. I believe this to be one major way that I have come out of depression and anxiety--I learned new habits and ways of thinking to replace old ones that were detrimental to my mental health. This was not easy, I still have to remind myself all the time and it is harder to do this as an adult, but I am living proof it is possible.
This is why I advocate for trying new things often! Dive in the deep end of uncertainty, educate yourself on a new skill and action it. Do it again and again. This can feel defeating if you're not good at what you've picked, but that is not a reason to stop doing it--it is the very reason you should keep going. Sitting in that space of difficulty, uncertainty or frustration is what allows us to gain confidence in our ability to do hard things.
Once you get past that stage, you start looking towards improvement: "how can I do that better," "how can I make this more fun" or "what am I missing here?" The mental skills you gain from persevering through difficult times far outweigh the skills you were initially trying to achieve. This mental strength is what allow you to get back up in life and, most importantly, have confidence in yourself.
Acknowledge the Good
Once you get a taste of authenticity--of uncovering the realest you there is--run with it. Write it down. Write how good you feel, how you got there, what you were doing, and make the decision to do that thing again. Keep giving yourself the opportunity to find what works for you by reflecting on the good moments.
I also find it beneficial to show myself the good in each day. I do this through a journaling technique inspired by an episode of The Daily Stoic podcast. At the end of every day, I write "What went well today?" and I sit with it for as long as I can, dot pointing each thing. When you allow yourself the time and thought to do it, more things go well than you realise. Even write the little things, especially the things you did.
Train Yourself to See Better
Along with journaling "What went well today," I also ask "What could I have done better today?"
Instead of focussing on what didn't go well or other's actions that affected me, I focus on figuring out ways that I can improve my day. This keeps me accountable for my actions, noticing the habits that are harming my day rather than helping, noticing what habits are repeated, and is training my brain to find solutions within myself. No blame, no shame, no regret or guilt. By answering these questions, I'm also training myself to have a grateful and resilient mindset. I encourage you to try this out too. When we gain those universal skills, we see the world a little better. Remember, our mind changes our perception of the world. Suddenly, we have changed the hard parts of our day to be, in a sense, good.
Acknowledging all the good parts of each day seem to be rare in after-hours conversations, and it seems even rarer that people are willing to take responsibility for how their actions affect the quality of their day, let alone reflecting on how they could have made it better. The journal questions invoke the most important qualities in shifting perspective.
At the end of the day, shifting our perspective is all we need. Remember that nothing changes if nothing changes, so get to it!
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