How Can You Be Yourself?

What it is to be yourself? We could define it as being natural, spontaneous. It’s how we are when we are without fear, alone or with people we have a lot of trust in.

Not only do fears lessen the authenticity of people but, sometimes, for various reasons we do not live according to how we really are, by our values, skills, vision of life, etc. There are many factors that can influence and move us away from being ourselves. These include traditions, lack of knowing oneself or just doing things to please others.

It is essential to reflect on whether we are living from our true essence or if we are creating a character to face others. All of us, to a greater or lesser extent, have lived from a facade at some point. But happiness and well-being are impossible to feel if you do not live from your true “self.”

Self-knowledge

We need to know ourselves in order to live according to our essence. To do so we should be clear on these three points.

1. What are some things I’m good at? What makes me stand out? What are my best skills?. By knowing our strengths, we can direct ourselves toward a path that will bring us well-being and success.

2.What are my values? What is the most important thing to us in life? What I do want in my life? If live consciously and do not let chance guide our life, we will live a fuller life because we will choose according to what we really want.

3.What are the things that activate my motivation? What do I greatly enjoy? To help us know more about what we enjoy, we can look back at our childhood. We may find activities that we haven’t taken up again, but which make us very happy when we practice them.

Knowing ourselves better will give us the tools that will give us more security, but often the lack of spontaneity is caused by other factors.

3 enemies of spontaneity

1. Wanting to show an improved version of oneself. If we want to give the best possible image of ourselves and we worry too much about pleasing, quite the opposite will probably happen. We will show the worst image of ourselves since one cannot be natural if we push ourselves to want to give a better version.

Personal acceptance is the key to improving. We are unique and unrepeatable and we all have good and bad things about us. We are the ones to decide. W hat do we care about most? Looking good or being happy? Let’s think about it. If we give a good image, what do we get? Others will have a good impression of us, but we will remain dissatisfied on the inside for not bringing out our true essence.

We should never try to put on a mask to please others. We should care most about our own well-being and that is achieved by being able to show ourselves as we are.

2. Focusing on the impression we will make. If the focus of our attention is on ourselves, we will feel insecure and will not be natural because we will feel worried about what others think of us.

Spontaneity arises when the focus is not set in the image that we will give, but rather when we enjoy what is around us without thinking about whether we look good or bad.

3. Nervousness. Tension also destroys naturalness, and can arise from different things.  However, the most common is to be concerned about wanting to look good for fear of rejection. When one does not give importance to what because they accept themselves as they are and do not intend to please. Rather, the priority is to enjoy what is before us and that is when we are the most authentic and spontaneous, because in that way we are eliminating fear.

Image courtesy of Mr.Theklan and Alba Soler