I Don’t Know Who I Am — Yet

I think a lot of us get caught in this trap: “I’m not ready, so that means I can’t do it yet” or, “I have to be fully ready, and have a full understanding before I begin to live my life.”

Resonate?

These statements may sound reasonable, but here’s why they really are a trap. When you make decisions based off of the concern and resolution that “I’m not ready, therefore I can’t do it” what this is doing is building a habit of self-negligence and disowning oneself. This response builds a lifestyle of fawning. Which is why, maybe 10 years down the line, you find yourself alarmed or confused that you’re so far off where you thought you’d be. The alternative, is to approach an obstacle, challenge, and some times danger, with strategized care. In this way, you build a lifestyle of ownership. But how do we really do that, when the feeling of not being ready feels so unbearable, suffocating, even?

First, feel the feeling, beneath the feeling. Carl Jung writes on this, particularly around anger and rage, where anger and rage are masks for grief. Not just sorrow or heartache — unprotected grief. Where grieving is something in which, needs to have bounds around it, so that it does not bleed out and intertwine in all areas of your life, for the rest of your life. At some point, grieving must turn to remembrance. If it doesn’t, that’s why your suffering persists. Grieving is best done, methodically, as a season of life. But if you’re in the position where you can’t even access the grief itself because of the bitterness, frustration, anger or rage that’s built up over it — those are the layers you have to work back through, to get to that tender underbelly of your grief. 

I will say — being someone who’s had to grieve betrayal trauma of my own human nature, betrayal of my own body — the moment you meet what needs to be grieved, when you tend to it — your belief, confidence and respect for yourself will transform immediately. Listen up though: no one can do it for you. Your tending to that grief flips everything around. It turns the light on in the core of your being. It’s what allows you to finally move forward from whatever experience caused the grief in the first place. 

Second, continue forward movement and anchor yourself to your guiding light. Sometimes that means trying something new, just to reignite the sensation and connection with life and growth. Even if it doesn’t stick for the long-term, what you’ve done by trying something new is capture a process for your system to repeat. Let’s say you try a cooking class, you try pilates or yoga, or go travel for 6 weeks somewhere to become a ranch-hand, the point is: when you try something new, even if it’s not a forever hobby or practice, you’ve reminded your system that life is easy. You’ve reminded your system that you can do and accomplish things. 

Because time waits for no one, the best we can do is show up with our whole self. You might not know who you are yet in a given context, a relational dynamic, a work position, in a new environment, but if you never step towards that desired place, person, or lifestyle, you’ll never know who you are in it. Which is why, when God calls you up or commands you to do or cease something — you listen. 

Listening isn’t passive. 

Go meet yourself where your soul needs you to be, right now. 

-B

I broke through the glass ceiling I was up against in my mind through voice-work and coaching myself. Because of my personal success in identifying and uprooting a blindspot in my own life, I realized the impact this could make in our world, if others could do the same. What took me 3 years of dedicated work, I compiled into my program Amplify Your Voice, a 6-week voice-confidence program, where I teach you how to use your voice as your compass for life. If you can never say it out loud, it’s like it never happened or it doesn’t exist. Your voice isn’t something to take lightly, it’s your tool to architect your life. Click anywhere in this paragraph to join. 

“Many are the plans in the mind of a man, but it is the purpose of the Lord that will stand.” Proverbs 19:21