Our lives builds on cycles. The most common is the need for acceptance. At some point in our lives, we want to be accepted by all, and we do what it takes for it. We adapt ourselves to the others, we change “who we are” at any given situation and observer. We create masks, we play roles, and the more we keep on doing it, the more distant we are from who we really are. We lose ourselves in the process.

 

We should ask ourselves, is it really that bad to be who we are? Because if we don’t like what we see in the mirror or feel from within, why not just change it to what makes us happy, without losing our identity? Maybe we don’t like what we see, because we are not seeing ourselves, but our masks, fears and other people’s expectations. As long as we do not accept ourselves, nobody ever will, and that’s our own doing.

 

Depending on the life circumstances and our emotional maturity, let’s say adolescence for example, the need to be accepted lead us to the “don’t want to be accepted at all” stage, the rebel phase. It’s a learning process, or more like an unlearning process of the conventional and mostly imposed by society to be a people pleaser.

 

We are who we are. It can’t be no other way. If we wouldn’t have our own particular perspective, there would be no reason for existence. We would not add anything new. Individuals are not repetitions of mass production. The factors authenticity and uniqueness are the keys.

 

We don’t have to be accepted by everyone. The bottom line is to be accepted by Self. The rest builds on that fundament. If we are not truthful to ourselves, we cannot find our path, and we will keep on failing in life. It’s like trying to fit the square piece in the triangle shape space. The more we try to fit in someone else’s shoes or live other people’s lives, the more we grow in anger and frustration. Who are we angry at? Ourselves, for not accepting and acknowledging who we are.

 

We can only find our passion in life when we find ourselves, when we embrace our uniqueness. Then peace and happiness follows as a consequence of our most precious self-love act. Embrace yourselves, as you lose nothing but who you are not!

 

Eli de Lemos

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