Embracing The Person You Already Are
What if we stopped trying so hard to become the person we think we need to be, and become much better at being the person we already are?
Dolly Parton came up in a recent coaching conversation.
Not because my client was particularly interested in country music, but because something about Dolly seemed to represent something she was trying to understand in herself.
“She knew her worth.”
That stayed with me.
What struck me was the idea that Dolly seemed to know what she had - her accent, her songwriting, her appearance, her personality, her ability to entertain, and she made the most of it all.
It got me wondering about how often we do the opposite.
When we become young adults, we have very little experience of life and no real idea how our lives will unfold. So we draw upon what we’ve learned from the people around us. Our parents, families, teachers and friends. We observe what others are doing, what they’re achieving and what seems to matter to them.
And gradually, we construct a life that we think is ours.
Of course it is, to a large degree.
But how much of who we become is actually us from who we are in our essence? And how much has been shaped by learning how to navigate the expectations of others and the world around us?
Perhaps we don't really notice until something changes.
Whether that's from a relationship ending, redundancy, retirement, illness, or simply reaching a point where the life we've built no longer feels right.
And then we're faced with a question:
Who am I when I’m no longer defined by the expectations of others?
I wonder whether we can spend so much time trying to become more successful, more accomplished, more confident, and more like somebody else, that we lose sight of what is already ours and what we already have.
Perhaps becoming ourselves isn't always about acquiring something new.
Perhaps it is about becoming curious enough to discover what is already there.
I've explored this idea in greater depth in my full essay, Embracing The Person You Already Are, on The Worth Project Substack.
Read the full essay on Substack
And if this reflection speaks to a point in your life where you're questioning who you are, what matters to you, or whether the life you're living still feels like your own, perhaps some space to step back, explore what is changing, and make sense of what comes next could be useful.