Series: Be Yourself

We all go through a journey to define ourselves and develop our self-identity. Be the person you want to be instead of the person others want you to be.

During a very tough time in my life, I started a search to find out who I was and define my “self”. Much like everyone else, I grew up in a society in which the “self” was a very vague concept that kids never considered. I was 16. I went through a bit of crisis when I discovered that I did not know who “I” was. I needed to find and define “me”, to make the choice to be myself.

The second step of my journey was during the first year of my degree. I was studying psychology with one of the most incredible teachers I have ever met when I realized that self-concept, regardless of when you start defining, is something we all have to figure out. In our very first lesson, the teacher walked into a room full of students and asked, “Who are you?”. It sounded like such a simple questions, but we struggled, big time!

Read Be Yourself: Everyone Else is Taken »

When my clients come to the Be Happy in LIFE program and I ask them, “What do you want?” they are confused by my question. They could easily tell what everyone else wants. Their wife, husband, mother, father, boss, children. But they do not really know what they want. Often times, all they want is for something someone else wants to stop. I tell my clients that when you don’t have a definition of who you are, it is easy for people to offer their definitions, regardless of whether they suit your or not. If you are confident in who you are, your self-concept will not change because of something someone says to you. For example, if a friend comes up to you and says, “You are not a good friend because you didn’t come to my wedding”, you might think to yourself that you did not come to the wedding because you were being a good son and your mum was in hospital. Your definition of yourself as a good friend would remain, despite your friends feeling. Conversely, if you do not have a good definition of yourself, you will probably accept it as “fact” that you are just not a very good friend, because your friend said so.

Every person has an image of perfection that they wish to achieve. It is an image of the perfect person, someone who is all knowing, smart, healthy, wealthy, loving and successful. There is no other person on earth who is exactly like you and has managed to find the perfect balance of all those things we want in life. Despite knowing this, we create an image of the perfect person by picking and choosing attributes form different people. Our perfect person is the miss universe beauty queen, who is a perfect mother, a great chef, a celebrity, with a PHD in something brainy, with bucket loads of money like the Queen of England and the spirit and dedication of Mother Teresa. Although I think it is good to be inspired by others, when we lose ourselves in the quest for this perfection, we chase our tails endlessly and never reach our final goal.

Read Be Yourself: Who Am I? »