People with integrity walk safely, but those who follow
crooked paths will slip and fall. Proverbs 10:9
Do you feel like you are walking
crooked? Are you really trying hard to
be that someone you are expected to be by someone else? You give all you can to be that person, always
improving you, and striving to meet their expectations, and yet you come up
short and feel confused. No matter how
hard you try, you simply cannot be that person.
Perhaps you even lost your passion and feel like you just cannot find the
gusto you once had. The fact is that you
are not and will never be that person because that person is not you. What if I
told you that you are walking crooked and that trying to be someone you are not
is sucking the energy out of your life. Take
a moment, reflect and believe in your goodness.
All you can be is be your best you, not a you someone wants you to
be.
If you find that you are living your
life trying to meet someone else’s unnecessary or unrealistic expectations,
STOP IT. Let’s begin being a healthy straight-walking
you. After all, you were born to be you, not someone else’s version of you.
Perhaps you are more or less talkative
than others in your life, or more or less organized, adventurous, risky, detail
oriented, controlling, creative…the list goes on. For everything we are not, there is someone
somewhere who is. Think
back to school days where for some, science and math were so easy yet for
others English or Gym class was easier.
We are all different and there are certainly enough assessment tools
available that measure a broad spectrum of personality traits, habits,
behaviors and preferences. These tools
help you identify the why you react or think a certain way, and they help you
understand differences in others. They
don’t change who you are. But, they do help you identify areas that you may
want to apply a less innate, more cognitive process. This takes energy and continuously working at
being someone you are not innately can be exhausting.
I recently had a situation where I realized
that who I am and who I am expected to be was causing me a lot of anxiety. While there are behaviors I can modify easily,
there were some that were going to cause me to exert a lot of energy. Armed with lots of information from my personal
development assessments, I tackled my situation. I aligned myself with people who are opposite
me in things like time management, I disengaged the stories in my head that had
me shouldn’t all over myself and I flexed myself more in the areas that are
beneficial and are within my comfort
zone.
There are always going to be situations
where you will need to walk crooked. However, accepting who you are and learning
to enroll others who have those preferences that drain your energy will
compliment you, will keep your energy level increased and will have you perceived as ”that person” who meets their
expectations…all while you get to be just “you”.
