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Simon says? Be yourself. A short blurb on how to be yourself.

Set the scene - you're driving your car, windows down, music blaring, and nothing but openness in front of you.  How do you feel?

Great, I imagine.  Those conditions enabled you to feel freely and genuinely you.  Unencumbered by intrusive thoughts, distractions, and hefty responsibilities, you were allowed to feel yourself. 

This is the feeling we are all after and the secret?  You can have it if you just allow it to be.

1)  We're told to be something else.  There is no world we can live in without some external forces us instructing us how to live.  On the one hand - that's good, right?  Objectively, we have sources of inspiration - should we choose to narrow our focus.  However, on the other hand, those external forces are often fake, curated, and doctored.  Those external forces us are trying to steer us to be something other than ourselves and that's a real problem.

2)  Individualism is not a bad thing.  Sometimes, I feel selfish for wanting to be myself.  However, I am miserable when I try to be something other than myself.  And so we must live with that tension.  It feels selfish to just be yourself, but feeling genuinely content can only come if you are yourself.  You don't need to dispel the tension in order to move forward - move forward and bring the tension with you and in time, it will lessen.

3)  Projection and "faking it till you make it" are real things.  You should lean into them.  If you want to be that suave, put-together-at-all-times person, then project that image for yourself.  We have that self-image of ourselves that we want everyone to see.  I'd like to think that self-image is a representation of the best version of ourselves.  Arguably, curated, but also legitimately us.  I don't think it's a contradiction, necessarily, to highlight your best self.  The tension here is how to square being your best self while also confronting the external forces (imaging force-fed to you by social media).  

4)  Be a finisher.  Do you know what feels lousy?  Moving around in life with a pile of unfinished projects and business.  Loose ends prevent you from being able to focus yourself in a direction you need to be moving.  The loose ends indirectly move you somewhere else that you don't want to be moving.  Tie those loose ends in order to move in a single, powerful path forward.

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