How to find your true self?

Lesson 5: Find your true self and look inside

Why do we sometimes not feel like ourselves?

There is a question that we all ask ourselves at a certain point in our lives. Who am I? This is something that we ask when we are fairly young when we start to discover our identities. We wonder what makes up the person that we are. We ask ourselves what part is actually our pure true self.

This is fairly hard when everyone is trying to tell us at the same time who we should be. That is the reason why we don’t feel like ourselves, cause sometimes we don’t feel like we are someone. We might not feel like we are not someone we have complete power over. Or like our outsides don‘t reflect our insides the way we want them to. This could be in our personality or in our physical appearance. 

For example, 

When I think about who I am, I am constantly wondering what is the core of me. I know that my personality has been shaped throughout the years by a lot of people and events, but if you remove that, who am I.

The truth is that we make ourselves who we want to be. I believe that there is this inner intuition and knowing that tells us what connects with our soul. Like if our intuition guides us towards the experiences and people that we deep down know that will shape us into the person that we are meant to be. 

I’m not saying that the feeling of not knowing who you are or what you are doing in this world is great, no. It is actually horrible because you feel so ungrounded and disconnected from yourself. And sometimes we can give in to the world around us and it engulfs us in knowing who we are but from the outside, not the inside. 

How have we been conditioned by society?

I would love to say that when we are born we are a white canvas ready to become a magnificent painting. But we are not. We are influenced by other people before we are even conceived.

The way our parents experience their lives gets passed down to us not only through our DNA but as generational trauma. The way our mother felt and her experiences when we were in the womb impacted us greatly. Not to mention that our parents build who we are during our first years before we even conceptualize our existence. 

What I’m trying to say here is that even though this actually makes us who we are, most of “us” come from the outside. The way the rest of the world impacts our parents, impacts us. Then as we grow up we are bombarded with ideas of who we should be. By this I mean, how we should dress, how we should act, what is socially acceptable etc.

How does this impact us daily?

I would like to say that most of our moves are impacted by society and the patriarchal systems that are in place. From our relationships to how we show up in the world. An author that I’m reading right now talks about how this impacts us deeply in her book Untamed.

She goes over how this impacts girls and boys differently and how both should be taught to listen to the patriots of themselves that they have been taught to ignore. 

How to rediscover your true self?

There is this concept that she talked about that I have been ignoring for some time that I would love to share with you. She talks a lot about consumerism and I believe this is the way we stop looking for who we are on the inside and start seeking meaning outside of ourselves. Other creators like Delani from @submissiontosource have shared this message as well.

I have been putting it away since I was keen to believe that the answers for what I needed would be in a podcast, in what my therapist would tell me, and in self-help books. After all these ignored messages from the universe, I gave in. It was time to sit in silence and look inside to find my true self.

This is where you rediscover your true self and your intuition. This is when you start to flow. Try to sit down or go for a walk once a day but without any external stimuli added. Allow yourself to think and your thoughts to flow. Go past the threshold of who you are supposed to be and into who you are.

Lastly, I leave you with this quote from Glennon Doyle

“When we are bored, we ask ourselves: What do I want to do with myself? We are guided toward certain things– The moment after we don’t know what to do with ourselves is the moment we find ourselves. Right after itchy boredom is self-discovery. But we have to hang in there long enough without bailing.”