When people say "Just be yourself"—well, it’s not usually that simple. I think some of the people who offer this advice have never questioned whether the self they present to the world is actually who they are or just who they think they're supposed to be.
Real self-knowledge, it turns out, takes time. You have to excavate your real personality from everything you've learned to present and project. There might be underlayers of cultural conditioning or even trauma responses that masquerade as your self.
So it’s not easy!
But It’s Also Worth It
The more you understand, oh, this is who I am, who I want to be, who I am becoming ... the more you feel like yourself. You more you recognize yourself.
It gets easier to say yes to things you want to do but were afraid of being judged or shamed for
It gets easier to say no to things you would have agreed to out of obligation
In short, learning to be yourself is indeed worth the effort. It’s even a fun process! At least much of the time.
It’s just not always easy. It's not simple or immediate and it might require some investigation. You might need to change something, and change is hard.
Either way, the next time you hear someone say, “Be yourself, everyone else is already taken,” you can remember: “That's a good idea in theory, but in practice, it takes time.”
“Just be yourself” is indeed harder than it sounds!
Having done over 8,000 hours of hard-core Internal Family Systems therapy on myself for the last 23 years, I’ve experienced how true this is.
No matter how much I peel the onion, there’s always another layer.
There are so many deep, culturally ingrained beliefs that are not mine!
Judeo-Christianity, as one example, is profoundly seared into most of Western consciousness.
The guilt and obligation — training wheels of moral development —rarely come off fully in most people’s lives.
Peeling the onion is hard. It creates a widening gap between your consciousness and that of everyone around you.
The deeper you become yourself, the more distance you put between you and everyone else.
That becomes a second level of work you have to do— navigating how to be in the world, but not of it.
I believe there is no end to self discovery. However far you take it, though, it’s always worth it.
“Don’t ask what the world needs.
Ask what makes you come alive and do that.
Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” —Howard Thurman
Oh Gawd, yes it does, Chris. For me it took leaving the US and incubating in Thailand to "peel" as Melissa said so well. For a little over a year.
Then, I found I had peeled enough. Next step has been getting to know this self and get comfortable with how she rolls.
I like her a helluva lot more than I liked the me that left the US.
Thank you for writing this piece.