How to Be You
Know, Trust & Listen to Yourself
Have you ever been told to "just be yourself"? Or to "turn up as yourself and everyone will love you"? or to "bring more of yourself to the table"? or similar phrases that imply the more you can simply be yourself, the better off you will be?
In the past when I heard these phrases I thought - "how can I be more of myself, when who I am being is who I am?"
It wasn't until I stopped to reflect however that I realised how far from the truth this was.
Self awareness and observation revealed the significant amount of time I was spending in people pleaser mode - not sharing my real thoughts for fear of rocking the boat, hiding my feelings to avoid others being uncomfortable and compromising my needs and wants under the mistaken belief that pleasing others is the way to fit in, be liked and belong.
I wonder if you can relate? If you do, it's not surprising. People pleasing is not uncommon.
In one study of lifestyle behaviours and patterns, it was found that 54% of women and 40% of men exhibit people pleasing behaviour.
However compromising is only one of the ways we hide our authentic selves. Others include giving in to self doubt and holding back, hesitating to show up due to fear of being judged, and giving in to the temptation of indifference believing what we have to say doesn't matter and simply giving up.
People pleasing, judgement, self doubt and indifference are just some of the barriers that get in the way of showing up and living in the world as your true and authentic self.
So how do you be more of yourself? It's a big question but here are just three ideas that may be useful to start bringing out more of the essence of who you truly are.
1. Get to know yourself.
Greek philosopher Socrates said "to know thyself is the beginning of wisdom". He didn't say "going to school was the beginning of wisdom", or "polling your friends was the beginning of wisdom", or "getting a qualification in something was the beginning of wisdom". He suggested that the way to be wise, was to get to know yourself.
So how do you actually do that? A good way to start is to sit down with yourself and ask a few reflective questions.
Things like - what do you want?, what do you like?, what don't you like?, what new experiences would you like to have?, where do you want to go for your holidays?, who do you want to spend time with?, what is your opinion about current affairs, politics, your workplace culture, or the state of your finances? Anything that helps you get to know yourself better. Set a meeting with yourself and brainstorm.
2. Learn to trust yourself.
If you don't trust yourself it's easier to abandon your authentic self for the sake of pleasing others or compromising to fit in with other people's expectations.
Trusting yourself is just like trusting somebody else. If someone says they'll pick you up at 12pm and they turn up, and they do that consistently over time, then you know you can trust them.
It’s the same with yourself.
One way to trust yourself is to keep your word to yourself - only say things you will follow through on and begin keeping the promises you make. To enhance your success, make your to-do list short - consider going to the extent of picking just one thing you want to get done for the day. Do that and celebrate it when it's complete. Repeat that over time and your level of self trust will grow.
3. Listen to yourself
In our busy and mind filled world, our thoughts can take over and it's easy to follow them at the expense of our gut feeling. We get dominated by the voice in our head and it drowns out the deeper voice of our intuition. However our inner knowing is an important source of advice - it gives us clues about our direction.
Too much time in our head and too little in our body can mean we forget to connect to our heart and trust our own inner guidance. When this happens you may feel out of alignment.
Clarissa Pinkola Estes, author of the classic book Women Who Run with the Wolves highlights the value of intuition in this quote from the book: "The old knowing is long overdue. She is the voice that says, “This way, this way”. With her as ally, as leader, model, teacher, we see, not through two eyes but the eyes of intuition, which is many eyed. When we assert intuition we see ourselves like the starry night, we gaze at the world through a thousand eyes".
Seeing the world through a thousand eyes provides much more awareness than seeing it through just two.
Listening to your intuition as a way of connecting to your authentic self means making time to simply be - be still, be in nature, meditate - even for a few minutes, undertake some slow breathing, take a slow walk or do some yoga.
It's when you are still that you hear your inner self speaking.
As Ram Dass said "The quieter you become, the more you will hear."
I'd love to hear your experiences or your thoughts on being more of yourself, and if you'd like to dive a bit deeper, consider joining me next week for our October education session where we'll discuss How to Connect to Your Authentic Voice - details are below.
In the meantime, have a great week being more of who you already are.