My Self And I

When I was a young lad, it was all about finding yourself. It was as if the essence of who you are was buried under layers of insecurities, uncertainties, right or wrong, and what your parents, teachers and other adults tell you what you should and shouldn’t do, and your task was to find out who you are amongst all that.

As I grew older, it was about knowing yourself. It was me realizing that I was not the son/student that adults told me I should be. I started thinking for myself, choosing for myself. My mantra became, “To thine own self be true.” I even had the chutzpah to insist that asking me to change meant asking me to not be true to myself.

At first it was easy to trumpet my own strengths. But the older I got, the more mistakes I made, the more I had to recognize and embrace my weaknesses. Life taught me valuable lessons in humility. I realized I had to accept my flaws as well as strive to better myself. So knowing yourself lead to improving yourself.

But as you improve yourself you will also realize that, no matter what you do, you will never be perfect. At any given point, you will fail. You will disappoint. You will come up short. You will be imperfect, and you will continue to strive and fail. That’s when you start to accept who you are at that given moment. I think that’s when you begin the life-long lesson on how to be at peace with yourself.

In the journey though Life, your longest, closest, most personal relationship will be with yourself. Now is the perfect time to start being good to yourself.