Who am I?

One of my teachers had a really cool idea of having one class per week dedicated to feelings and time management. The topics we touched on really made me think about who I truly am—since I haven’t gotten the chance to think about myself in quite some time. She gave us a list of words: authenticity, comfort, equality, friendship, humour, kindness, respect, balance, communication, fairness, joy, influence, leadership, responsibility, courage, community, faith, education, inspiration, personal development, spirituality, business, compassion, celebrity, happiness, integrity, love, stability, career, contribution, family, health, intimacy, loyalty, status, challenge, creativity, financial independence, hobbies, investing, meaningful work, success, change, curiosity, liberty, honesty, equity, optimism, travelling, partnership, knowing, relaxing, relationships, tolerance, reputation, unique experiences. She made us choose between 5 and 10 words out of that list that we consider best describe ourselves and our activities. In my case, I chose authenticity, personal development, balance, compassion, meaningful work and liberty. What happens when we do not get enough of one of those important things? For example, even though authenticity is insanely important for me and my work, I sometimes try to inspire from others opinions, work, etc. Sometimes I end up comparing myself to everyone else and I start doing things in a way that does not resonate with who I am. Authenticity is off, which leads to personal development to turn off(since I am no longer learning from others, but copying), same with balance(no balance between my style of work and others’), compassion(I lose compassion for myself), meaningful work(it has no meaning for me because it was not done using my personal ideas and style) and liberty(I lose the liberty of being myself). This was the moment I realised why a lot of things keep going wrong sometimes–I am the trouble-maker in my own story. Not everything going wrong is someone else’s fault. It is my own for ignoring my fundamentals. Of course that others can f*** up your life too, but that’s out of your control. Instead of focusing on the bad you receive from others, focus on the bad you receive from yourself, and change that.