My friend, Shelly shared a TED talk with me by Caroline McHugh called The Art of Being Yourself. Caroline is wonderful, really wonderful. She says that when we are young, we are great at being ourselves; when we're old, we're great at being ourselves; but the bit in the middle is sometimes problematic. That’s the bit where we have to socialise; we have to accommodate; we have to adapt.
As a life long adapter and people pleaser, I resonate with this talk so much and have chosen to summarise Caroline's key messages to inspire my own brave as fuckery (which ebbs and flows like the tide and right now is ebbing).
Caroline is a public speaker and fabulously describes what she does for a living as helping people to be themselves because she believes that social reformation always begins with the individual. And she talks about remarkable individuals, and she defines remarkable, or successful individuals not by success in monetary terms, she means people that have been successful at achieving whatever they set out to do.
These remarkable individuals have managed to figure out the unique gift that the universe gave them when they incarnated, and then put that at the service of their goals. Caroline thinks that we all come complete. We come complete with one true note we were destined to sing, and these are people that have managed to figure that out.And it doesn’t dictate our choice of job; what it dictates is how we do it.
She asserts that life is large. But that most of us don’t take up nearly the space the universe intended for us. We take up this wee space around our toes, which is why when we see somebody in the full flow of their humanity, it’s remarkable.They’re at least a foot bigger in every direction than normal human beings, and they shine. They gleam, they glow. It’s like they’ve swallowed the moon (love this).
Caroline maintains that our job is to figure out how to be ourselves, and then to be more of that. And that, there are certain times in our life that lend themselves to change, that make change quicker, deeper. And Caroline calls them intervals of possibility. She urges us to tap into our inner voice during these times, to dial into the personal pronoun. And that if we can do this, not only will the speed of our life get quicker, not only will the substance of our life get richer, but we will never feel superfluous again. #diallingintothepersonalpronoun #whatawoman #braveasfuck.
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