Creating yourself vs. being yourself

I have always been an inventor of my personality. I think my love of words highlighted to me their ability to conjure up whatever personality I could imagine. It was quite freeing actually, but also an exercise in losing myself. If I could be anything, do anything, have anything, who the heck was I actually? Choice comes with a dark side: a lack of focus and resolution.

Don’t get me wrong, in a kind of backwards logic, I do see how with every great weakness, comes great strength. I see the value I have when I’m able to create, to detach from outcomes, to regroup, reinvent, imagine, and strategize myself into the future. These have served me well, but many times I’ve felt wholly disconnected from my authentic self. Suze Orman, the financial guru, has said ‘you will not… come into your power until you live a life that is 100 percent authentic every moment of the day, in every way.’

This is my quest right now, my heartplay search for something that fits me to a T. Mel Robbins, host of the eponymous radio show reminds me: ‘as soon as you stop trying to prove how great you are to the world, and just be you, you will find both your power and your joy.”

It is very easy to get caught up competing with everyone else, but I agree with CNN anchor, Soledad O’Brien, that what I need to do in this situation, is compete with myself.  It is my power and my joy that I am after here. My search for ‘what I love to do and am really good at,’ something that  Mary Lou Quinlan uses to describes her current business, and something that describes the outcome of this quest perfectly.

So the bar has been raised, by me, to be me, to seek out myself with an intensity that is usually reserved for more external quests.