This morning I left my house to
discover that I am ready to let go of the pressure I put on myself, the pressure I
allow others to put on me, and to let go and flow with the rhythm and pace of my
life.
I am coming to the realisation
that all this pressure and all these expectations are not good for me, my
health, or my well-being.
I have begun to understand that
my life is okay as it is, and that following the path that it is directing me
on, is the one that will allow me to become myself, if I am willing to trust in
it and the future.
I have spent far too long trying
to be the person everyone else thought I should be. Or perhaps it is more
honest to say I was trying to be the person I
thought others thought I should be. It's been as if I have spent so much of my
time on alert, on the constant lookout for signs from other people to indicate whether I was on the right track or not.
Even though, through my coaching, I have worked hard to
improve my listening skills, I realise I have still spent far too much of that energy on trying to assess and anticipate the thoughts and
feelings of other people when I am with them.
This constant vigilance is not at
all helpful, because I cannot be all things to all people. If I am always
trying to be who and what others want me to be, this will change from person to
person, and I will never know who I am; the person I am right now, and the
person I am becoming.
I can never truly be the person
that anyone else wants me to be, or the person I think that person wants me to be. And even if I could, I would need
to be a chameleon, ready to change all the time. It would be as if I had no
identity of my own, because I would never know when I would need to change
again.
That's why I need to discover who
I really am, to allow that identity to form and to develop, and become strong
enough that I would know who I was, no matter what situation I found myself in.
Or which people I meet and spend time with in my life.
This means I need to become aware
of my thoughts and feelings in situations and circumstances. I need to become
aware of what is important to me, what I value and enjoy, and what makes me
happy.
On the face of it, this seems so
simple, so obvious, yet I am coming to realise that this is not always what
I've been doing. That I have been waiting for someone to tell me who I am – who
that "someone" was, I did not know, but I am learning that that someone is me. It may not be fully clear to me yet, but I am beginning to see who I
really am, and who I am becoming, who I want
to become.
And as I do this, I am letting go
to become me, because I can choose
the person I want to become. I'm choosing who I want to be.
I want to be Lynn, I want to be me.
