"Just be yourself!"

True confession: that admonition has always bothered me. Not that I disagree - no. I wholeheartedly believe we should only and always be who we are, and that if we can pull that off, the universe will unfold as it should. Or something like that.

It's the how that always seemed to escape me.

On the surface it seems simple - find out who you are and then be that. Unfortunately my long and ardent pursuit of that goal left me feeling just as confused as when I started. Perhaps I could discover something about who I am, what I'm like, how I am in the world, but I continued to be mystified about how to step into the me I found.

Unfortunately I was treating myself as a concept to be learned rather than an experience to be embodied.

Early on in my life I had learned how to vacate my own presence, my own experience of myself in the world. No wonder I felt lost.

The solution?

The solution is simple, it's just not that easy for people like me.

I had to re-learn how to be in myself. And then I had to learn how to be with myself.

In future posts I will explore these skills, and pass along what I'm learning about actually being myself.

In the meantime, what about you? Do you struggle with the admonition to "just be yourself?"