There is no question that you are a valuable and unique individual. Your gift to yourself and the world is to be that person. So often though, we see someone else and their ideas, life, skills, gifts, accomplishments, world seems so much better than ours.
Or it seems more accepted, important or valued. And so we start trying to be someone else. Trying to think like they think, act like they act, talk like they talk. Or maybe we just try to be what we think we “should be.”
I remember when I first had children, as they became toddlers and I was moving in to yet another stage of my life, I wanted so much to be a good mother to them. And be what I was supposed to be, whatever that was.
I decided that was acting “like an adult.” I decided that an “adult” would be less silly, more organized, less spontaneous, and more serious. I tried acting like those things.
I found I was too serious to laugh with my children or have fun. Being an “adult” was taking a lot of work. And sucking up all the joy in my life. It wasn’t that I had been irresponsible before, it was just that I thought I needed to be much more serious and act older now that I was a mom.
It most certainly did not make me a better mother, friend or adult. It just made me boring, cranky and dull. I needed to go back to being me, enjoying my children and life.
I wish that I could say that never happened to me again, not valuing my own gifting and personality. But from time to time, that lie sneaks up again, trying to convince that someone else is better, more special, more acceptable. Don’t believe the lie.
Because a rose bush is a rose bush from the moment the roots are planted, through till it blooms, and still after the blooms die. Deep down inside that rose root was the potential for that rose to bloom, always. If the rose bush tries to be a lily, it will be the worst. lily. ever!
But if it just does what comes naturally, being a rose bush, it can be a beautiful blooming treasure. And with some care, pruning and feeding, it will be even healthier, more beautiful, “rose-ier”; just like it is meant to be.
So be the best you, grow your strengths, enjoy your skills, value your talents. And the next time you try to be something else, think of this: Trying to live another’s life is like wearing someone else’s underwear.
Bleeechh!
There, that ought to cure you. For a while. 🙂
What’s one word that describes how you feel when you are being your wonderful, true self? Leave it in the comments on my Facebook page.
Feel free to share it in the conversation over at my Facebook page – Click Here.