HOW FAR ARE YOU FROM WHO YOU WANT TO BE?

Do you still recall the picture that you had in mind while you were growing up? If you were anything like me then you had everything planned out really early in life, you knew what you wanted to study, which profession you wanted to follow, when you would have your first child and be married and live happily ever after.

You soon find out that life has different plans for you, that the plan seldom comes together as you had hoped. They say life is what happens when you busy making other plans, while you busy starring into the sky, thinking up what makes the perfect life, life is happening and as it happens, you wake up to find that your life is far from how you thought it would turn out. The first reaction would be that of defeat, when you finally have so much on your plate that you believe your dreams do not matter anymore, you don't have the time, the money, the resources......So you convince yourself let go of all you grew up wanting for yourself, you feel that its not important anymore.

You rationalise with yourself that things turned out exactly as they should have, you belittle the things that you believed in back then so that they seem insignificant and in that way, you are able to live with not pursuing them. Not only the dreams and aspirations that we had, we also imagined the type of people that we wanted to be, how we wanted to relate to others and how we wanted to be remembered. Somewhere along the line, so much happens to us, good and bad but these become the experiences that shape us. Others may bring out the best in us while some events and circumstances seem to turn us into people we ourselves do not even recognise.

When you look in the mirror today, do you see someone that you are proud of? Or don't you recognise the person that stares back at you in the mirror..........we cannot deny that when life hurts or breaks us, we don't always know how to approach it, the lesson that we are meant to learn is not always received and embraced and instead of becoming better people, we become one of those people who have become cold and distant as a result of our experiences.

Ask yourself, how far are you from being the person that you want to be and if like me you find that you have deviated from your ideal, your principles and what you want to be known for, change it. Do not dwell on the flaws, do not get stuck in the past, do not look at how far you have travelled in the wrong direction. It is never too late to turn back, to give yourself a clean slate and be someone who stands tall, someone who embodies all the sweet things that your dreams were made of in the beginning. You can still be the person that you dreamt of, one whose dreams were not limited by reality, one who believed in innocence and purity, one who believed that they could be anything they put their minds to.

WHO ARE YOU???

Imagine someone walked up to you and asked you, “Who are you?” What would your response be? Honestly! Think about it for a moment………………………….

Most of us, whether consciously or not, will most likely answer that question in a way that secretly seeks the approval of the person who asked the question. “I am a down to earth, loving person”, “I love people and I am a sensitive person”, “What you see is what you get”, just some of the most common responses to the question who are you.  People will seldom say, “I am a loner who doesn’t like interacting with others” or “I am impatient and will do whatever it takes and stab whoever is in my way in the back to get my way”

We are all aware of our negative traits but will often hide them to only portray an image of us that is perfect and one that conforms to the standards set by society. The question who are you, needs internal probing, self-reflection, a real look into ourselves so that we are able to honestly answer that question without holding anything back. It gives us the opportunity to genuinely look at ourselves and even identify aspects that we don’t like about the people that we are. That realisation shouldn’t make us vulnerable but raise awareness in us because it is only when we can admit our shortcomings and flaws that we are able to work on them and improve on what we don’t like.

Yet many times, I see people hiding the truth, concealing their flaws and pretending they are not there. We preach principles to the world, that command respect and sound noble but we not prepared to live by them, to practise them in our lives. We give out advice that we refuse to implement in our lives. What we say needs to correlate and live up to our actions, not a case of do as I say and not as I do. What we want to teach the world should not come from what we shout to them but how we conduct and carry ourselves. You don’t teach people humility or love, you walk in those and people learn from you by emulating what you do.

The denial of our human imperfections is not only a lie that we tell people but also a way in which we rob ourselves of growing and being better people. We cannot change what we don’t acknowledge and what we hide from others remains our biggest weakness and what they ultimately can use against us to bring us down. When we tell a lie about whom we are, we are not deceiving the person we tell the story to but we deceive ourselves more in the process. We remain stuck in our ways because we foolishly convince ourselves that people are unaware and nothing compels us to change what we believe others don’t know about ourselves.

Life should be about meaning and truth, this truth is not what is rooted in the beliefs of others but living a life that we are proud of. We have all read stories of celebrities or maybe even people that we know personally, who are successes in public but failures in private. This is the type of person, who says all the right things, does all the right things when people are watching and does the opposite behind closed doors. They receive praise from the public, from the people around them but in the quiet moments by themselves, they live with shame and disgust.

Who we are, is not what people see or what we let them see. Who we are probes at our mistakes, our secrets, the lies we have told, who we are is the person that stares you back in the mirror when you are by yourself, the shadow that falls asleep next to you when the curtains of the world have closed down. Who you are, is not what society deems acceptable but the thoughts you have and the choices you make when no one is watching or when you think no one is watching. Who you are is not the man or woman who dances or shouts the most praises in church and quotes Bible scriptures but what you do and say when it’s only you and your God watching.

I always say, the biggest lie you can tell, is the one that you tell yourself. You may get away with lying to the people around you but the lies stare back at you and follow you when you only have yourself for company. And that’s when you find people who can’t be alone, by themselves, who are always seeking a way to numb reality out, whether it’s through drugs, alcohol, jumping from one relationship to the other, shopping etc., whatever your crutch is, it only works for so long because at the end of the day, at the end of your life, you only have you and what you truly know about yourself to answer to.

Think about it carefully the next time you answer the question, who you are. Instead of thinking of the right thing to say, listen to the silent voice that whispers within, look right in and through you and give an honest answer. It may shock or repel the next person but by being honest, you give others the chance to love you for who you really are. You give yourself a chance to open up to the fact that you are human and like everyone else, you too have flaws. You give yourself the platform to embrace in whole who you are and what you stand for, what you lack and need to work on. Do not continue to live a lie that pleases others but slowly eats away at you, be bold enough to say you are a work in progress, aware of the work that still needs to be done in you.