Who are you?

This week I want to focus on finding out who you want to be, who you have become through your experiences and who you really are. This is an enormous topic as we are all complex and amazing individuals, so I am simply brushing the surface, giving you something to percolate through you over time.

Who do you want to be?

By asking you this question I am not asking who you would prefer to be. I am sure that the vast majority of us have, at one time or another, thought it would be rather nice to be anyone other than ourselves. Of course we have only done that at times when we feel the victim, when the life we have doesn’t match up to our expectations. We are under the false impression that the person we would rather be possesses the qualities or things that we do not have. Sometimes we are encouraged to be more like other people, even by our coaches and mentors. This is also a mistake. We need to encourage ourselves to be more like OURSELVES!!

Conditioning – who have you become?

For so much of our lives we are conditioned to be someone that others want us to be. This conditioning is not necessarily obvious when it is happening. Just like the way we talk to ourselves sends subtle messages into the ether about who we are, we receive subtle messages about others’ expectations of us. I was talking to a very dear friend of mine the other day and telling her how when my daughter was born my Mother bought me the most beautiful multi-coloured floral pram despite the interest I had expressed in a very conservative but much more practical navy blue one. My then partner absolutely loved the pram also, in fact, everybody did. I thought it was great, but really accepted the gift because I didn’t want to disappoint those that I loved by asking them to change it. I didn’t have a car at this time and spent many a hazardous journey on the tube struggling around with the gift in tow.

So, one of the things that I was conditioned to do was to please others. Indeed some of the things people love about us most are things that we are not naturally, but things we have been conditioned to be by any number of aspects of our lives (mostly our compliance). Thirteen years on I will say that I no longer put aside my own needs in order to make others happy. Or at the very least I do it only when absolutely necessary!

Who are you, really?

So if I was conditioned to please others (a common one), what were you conditioned to do? Who were you conditioned to be? And what have been the consequences of that for you in your life? The problem is that once we begin to behave differently from the way we naturally would, it has a knock-on effect and more and more facets of us have to change to fit in with the new trait. How far have you been encouraged to stray from the real you?

One of the fabulous things about coaching is that it encourages you to ‘think outside the box’ more, to question things that you might formerly have taken for granted and by doing so raising your awareness of who you really are and the person you really want to be. Sometimes in the form of flashes of insight, sometimes in the reflection of yourself you see in others.

What parts of you have you put aside through your conditioning? How can you begin to honour them in your daily life?

Remember, you are not alone!

hillybarker@gmail.com