Being Yourself – do you dare?
Caroline is the author of the book that I really like called Never Not a Lovely Moon and she has just pointed out to me that she had a TEDx video on YouTube. It’s such a great talk. Really inspirational for me.
Caroline speaks so well and covers the subject of being yourself in a passionate and inspiring way. This is really something everyone should hear. Just like everyone should read and contemplate Never Not a Lovely Moon.
I love the bit near the end where she says we aren’t our thoughts because we think them. There’s something deeper than our thoughts that is “you”. That’s a really good thought process to explore. I also really liked her discussion about the sky always being wonderful whether it’s up above stormy clouds or lovely rainbows. The implication is that the real “you” is always good, like the sky, no matter what good or bad thing might be going on around us at the time.
I recommend that you take the time to listen to Caroline’s talk.
If you like this, your probably like the film Finding Joe as well. This also explores the art of being yourself.
Caroline’s company website is http://idology.eu
Leave me a comment and let me know what you think of this talk. Thanks.
Transcript – The Art of Being Yourself
The chances are you’ve looked in at least one mirror today. You’ve had a shave, or you combed your hair, or maybe you checked your teeth for spinach after lunch, but what you didn’t know is that the face looking back at you isn’t the face that everybody else sees. It’s a kind of reversed, distorted, back-to-front image.
Some years ago, I was on a flight to New York, and I read an article in the FT, and it was an article about a phenomenon called a True Mirror – and for the Americans listening, that’s a mirror. The True Mirror was actually invented by a brother and sister team in New York, called John and Catherine Walters. What they discovered is if you take two mirrors, and you put them together at right angles, and you take the seam away, the images bounce off each other. What you see when you look in a True Mirror is exactly what other people see when they look at you.
So, I land in New York, and I phone John up, and ask him if I can go and see him, and I end up in his gallery in Brooklyn; it was like being at a sideshow in the circus. There were True Mirrors full length, face sized, all over this gallery. When I walked over to the True Mirror for the first time, and I looked in the mirror, it was one of the most disorientating experiences I’ve ever had in my life. The first thing you notice when you look in a True Mirror is that your head’s not on straight. Yours is kind of going that way, and yours is quite straight actually, and yours is going that way a wee bit; so apparently most of us tilt our heads one way or another. So when you approach a True Mirror, the first thing you try and do is fix your head, but, of course, because it’s reversed you go the wrong way; so it’s very, very disorientating.
But more importantly, I had a flashback. I had a flashback to when I was a wee girl. I grew up in Glasgow – in case you haven’t noticed, I am Scottish. I grew up in Glasgow, and my mom, when she was putting her makeup on, I used to love sitting and watching my mom putting her makeup on, you know, with my chin in my hands. And I would tell her occasionally: “Isn’t it funny how one side of your top lip is higher than the other side of your top lip?” She’d look in the mirror and she’d say, “It is not.” And I’d say: “No, it’s only a couple of millimetres, but that side of your cupid’s bow is definitely higher than the other side of your cupid’s bow.” She’d say, “Caroline, you’re havering.” When I looked in the True Mirror, there was the lip that I had been wearing, at that time, for maybe 45 years, and I’d never seen it.
The difference is when you look in a regular mirror, you look for reassurance. You look for reassurance that you’re beautiful, or you’re young, or you’re tidy, or your bum doesn’t look big in that. But when you look in a True Mirror, you don’t look at yourself, you look for yourself. You look for revelation, not for reassurance. And this was deeply interesting to me because what I do for a living is I help people be themselves. Not in any narcissistic or solipsistic way, but because I believe that social reformation begins, always starts with the individual.
When you look at remarkable individuals – and when I say remarkable or successful individuals, I don’t mean monetarily successful; I mean people that have been successful at achieving whatever they set out to do – you’ll find that the thing they have in common is they have nothing in common. These are people who, you know, work in many of the fields I work in. I work with people in corporations, I work with captains of industry, I work with selected politicians. I’ve worked with geophysicists. I’ve worked with chamber orchestras and ballet dancers and pop star and opera singers, and I’ve identified the thread that links them.
These are individuals who’ve 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.
I think 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. It doesn’t dictate your choice of job; what it dictates is how you do it. When we see these people we invariably call them larger than life. You know, you’ll see somebody like Roberto Benign, and you’ll say, “Oh my goodness.” Eve Ensler, she’s larger than life, which always makes me smile because how could you be larger than life? Life is large. But 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 you 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.
And all the work I’ve done has led me to believe that individuality really is all it’s cracked up to be. In fact, people who are frightened to be themselves will work for those who aren’t afraid. Now your job is not to be anything like any of the people that I put up behind me. In fact your job is to be as unlike them as you can possibly be. Your only job while you’re here on the planet is to be as good at being you as they are at being them. That’s the deal.
So I want to start today by asking you an incredibly personal question. Not the one that says, “Why are there so many syllables in the word ‘monosyllabic’?”. No. Not even the one that says, “Did you know that Britney Spears is an anagram for Presbyterian?”. No. (Laughter) Something a wee bit more pivotal. In fact, this is a question that’s been looking for you your whole life. It’s probably the simplest and the most complicated question you’ll ever ask. Yet how many times in your life has somebody offered you that well-meaning piece of advice that you should just be yourself?
How many times have you said it to somebody else? One of your kids comes to you, or one of your team comes to you, and they tell you they’re nervous, they’re scared. They have to go and do something and their bold goes, and you say to them, “Darlin’, just be yourself, because when you’re yourself, you’re fabulous.”
Now it always resonates because it’s all we want to do. If you tell John to be himself, he doesn’t want to be Mary. He’s quite happy being himself, but it’s the use of the word “just” that I find interesting because it would imply two things. Number one, that that was an easy thing to do. Number two, that it was an original piece of advice. You know, John had never thought about it himself.
When it comes to being yourself, when it comes to being in the world, the minute you showed up, the minute you incarnated, you were given a life sentence.
Now, you don’t know how long you have. Maybe you have 70 years, and I have 62. We’ve no idea how long we have. Although, where you’re born, when you’re born, to whom you’re born, all these things have a certain influence or impact on how you become who you become. If you’re born in Switzerland, chances are you’ve got a long time to figure this shit out. If you’re born in Zimbabwe or some parts of Glasgow, and I’m not kidding, you’ve got significantly less time.
So what I want you to think about is not what your life expectancy is, but what do you expect from life? And what does life expect from you? Those are more interesting questions. And the two places in life where you are awesome at being yourself, you’re fantastic at being yourself, one of them is when you’re a kid. When you’re a kid, you’re fantastic at being yourself because you don’t know how to disguise your differentness. That’s why you see kids on the beach, you know, naked up until the age of five, and then suddenly at the age of six or seven they want a bathing suit, they want a bikini.
Who’s got a four-year-old boy? Anybody’s got a four-year-old boy? I’ll take a three-year-old. Jose, you’ve got a three-year-old boy. I want you to imagine I go into Eduardo’s class in school, and it’s a class of three-year-old boys, and I say to the boys, “Who’s the strongest boy in the class?” What’s going to happen? Every hand, right? Every single hand in the class will go up. They’ll be competitively strong. If I go into the same class, but it’s full of seven-year-old boys, and ask the same question, they’ll say, “Him,” because they know by time they’re seven. He’s the strong one, he’s the fastest runner, he’s the funny guy, he’s the bully. Society archetype emerges around about the age of five, six, seven, eight. That’s why the Jesuits say, “Give me a boy until the age of seven, and I’ll show you the man,” because that’s the birth of consciousness. And from then on you become more self-conscious and by default less good at being yourself.
The other place you’re fantastic at being yourself is when you’re a wrinkly, because you can’t be arsed. You get to that stage in your life where you realize there are more summers behind you than there are in front of you, and everything intensifies. You become more honest; you become less compromising. So you’re going to tell people, “I don’t want the spinach, I’m not going to eat it, I don’t like it. And I don’t like jazz, so you can shut that noise off. And while I’m at it, I don’t like you!” (Laughter) We call these people “eccentric.” We call our oldies “eccentric.” In fact, what they’re doing is being authentic.
So it’s kind of like an hourglass effect: when you’re young you’re great at being yourself; when you’re old you’re great at being yourself; but the bit in the middle is sometimes the most problematic. That’s the bit where you have to socialise; you have to accommodate; you have to adapt.
So I’ve developed the “I complex,” and the “I complex” is a model to help you figure out which “I” you mean when you say “I.” You’re very familiar with the superiority complex. If you have a superiority complex, you pretty much think you’re the most important person in the room. If you’ve got an inferiority complex you suffer from an over-modest self-regard. These are both signs of a fragile ego. One of them is about delusions of grandeur, and the other one delusions of insignificance.
There’s a third way of being in the world, and I call it “interiority;” this is one of my made-up words. The word “interiority” describes a particular disposition, and there are two reasons it might be useful to you. Number one, it’s completely uncomparitive. If you have a superiority complex or an inferiority complex you need other people around. For a superiority complex you need other people to be smaller. For an inferiority complex you need to suffer from the I’m-gonna-be-found-out syndrome, so somebody needs to find you out.Interiority is entirely unrelative, so to operate from this position of interiority, it’s like a perceptual vantage point. It’s a sensibility. It’s an orientation. And it’s the only place in your life, the only place in your life, you have no competition. Try and find a comparison to yourself, and you’ll draw a blank.
I could talk to you about interiority till my tongue bleeds,or I could just show you what it looks like. So I want to introduce you to a woman called Jill Scott. You might have her on your iTunes playlist, but Jill’s a singer, and she’s just about to go on stage and perform,and in case you missed the question, there’s a French filmmaker who’s filming her. She’s going on stage after Erykah Badu,and he says to her, “Are you nervous, you know, going on after Erykah?” And I want you to listen to what she says.
(Video) Jill Scott: That chick right there has definitely led the way for me and a lot of other sisters.You know, I appreciate it.
Interviewer: Are you nervous you’re going to perform after her?
(Laughter)
Jill Scott: Have you ever seen me perform?I am the lady Jill Scott. I am a poet, and a singer, and a lot of other things. We all have our own thing, that’s the magic, and everybody comes with their own sense of strength, and their own queendom. Mine could never compare to hers, and hers could never compare to mine.
Caroline McHugh: See, you didn’t even know you had a queendom. That’s what it looks like.
When you figure out how to be yourself it’s an incredibly liberating, untragic way to go through life. You don’t develop an identity that’s predicated on being a patchwork personality. You’re not a composite, an amalgam, of all your experiences and influences. You’re not just somebody’s boss, or somebody’s mom, or anybody’s anything. You’re yourself.
However, the chances are, there are at least four of you sitting in each of those chairs, so let me introduce yourselves.
The most visible “you” that you represent to the outside world is what everybody else thinks of you, and there are as many opinions of you as there are people. I want you to imagine you’re like a big USB stick that you plug into the world. You show up on the desktop of the world. That’s the power of context. If you don’t understand that bit, being yourself can be an ill-advised strategy. So of course it’s important that you understand perception, but one of the things I’ve noticed, in terms of gender, and I’m terribly, untragically woman by the way. I don’t find myself tragically woman. I describe myself as a womanist, rather than a feminist, but I’m also a card-carrying feminist. There are very few things that I think are gender-specific, but one of them is something I call “approval addiction.” The need to be liked, the need for approbation, or recognition, or for somebody to tell you it’s okay. I find more women suffer from that affliction than men, and I think it’s one of the most debilitating things. When it comes to being yourself needing other people’s approval, loving somebody else’s opinion, and mistaking it for your own is one of the most debilitating things you’ll do on the road to being yourself.
You will never, ever be perception-less, but it’s important to be perception-free. One of the things that is going to help you to be perception-free is to tune into the next circle of the “I complex.” This is your wish image. This is what you would like everybody else to think of you, and it’s not about being fake, or fad, or pretending. It’s about moving; it’s about possibility; it’s about potential; it’s about supposition. So, whilst there’s a part of you that’s like your backbone, this part of you is like your wishbone. This one is your adaptive personality, your construct self, and even that’s unique because nobody in the world has had the same experiences or influences that you have. But this is the you that keeps moving, that keeps changing all the time. And it helps you avoid being one of those people … You know the people that say to you they have 15 years experience when they mean one year, 15 times? They literally repeat themselves, year, after year, after year.
What I want you to think about is with every passing year, your job is to be better and better at being who you already are. This is not a cosmetic exercise. You’re already different. Your job is to figure out how, and then to be more of that.
Now, there are certain times in your life that lend themselves to change, that make change quicker, deeper. I call them intervals of possibility. Now, they’re not always as well sign-posted as this one, but you know those times in your life when you come to a bifurcation on the path, and you sense that the potential for change is heightened. You meet a stranger in a bar; you have to decide what you’re going to do. Your boss comes to you and offers you a new job. What do you want, you want to keep doing the same thing, or do you want this job? And you know that if you make that change, the speed of your life will change.
Unfortunately, some of these interventions, some of these intervals of possibility, are catastrophic. In fact, most of them are catastrophic ’cause most of us would rather sleepwalk until something happens to wake us up. And what will happen is somebody you love will get sick, or you’ll get sick, or you’ll get fired. Or maybe it’s something impersonal. Maybe 9/11 happens, or the tsunami happens, or the Kashmiri earthquake happens, but something happens that rocks you back into that inner self, and makes you ask the question I asked you at the beginning of this talk.
The problem is when it happens catastrophically is you’re vulnerable, you’re weak. And my question is, why wouldn’t you ask yourself these questions when you’re strong, from a position of health? When you’re in a job, when you’re loved: that’s when the questions become most useful.
So the question on this one is, “If you could be the woman of your dreams, who would you be?” And my tongue’s nowhere near my cheek when I ask you that question. The thing that might stop you being the woman of your dreams is the next circle, and that’s what you think of you. So now you’ve got what others think of you, what you would like others to think of you, and this is what you think of you. And you have good days and bad days, right? There’s days where you wake up and you think you’re the bee’s knees. And other days you wake up and you can’t even say your name. Even your cellphone feels too heavy. On the days when you wake up and you feel like the bee’s knees, it’s not even like you’ve got a reason. It’s like free-floating joy in your body just looking for a target, and you know how it feels on those days because (sizzling sound). You just think, “Somebody give me an audience; I’m on fire! Quick, point me somewhere!” And your hair’s fabulous, and everything just works, everything works on those days. But the other days nothing works. Your legs don’t work, your mouth doesn’t work. The word thief comes and steals your entire vocabulary.
Those are two extremes of your ego, and one of them is about self-congratulation, and the other one is about self-castigation. Now your entire life, I don’t care who you are, I don’t care how old you are, your entire life, from birth up until now has been about building a stable relationship with your ego. You need an ego to live in a Western, capitalist world. If you didn’t have an ego you’d be toast. But your challenge is to take the ego from its dominant position and pull it back, so that it’s in service to yourself. That’s when it becomes useful, and in order to do that you’ve got to find the still point right in the middle of those two extremes. That’s what I would call equanimity, or equilibrium, and it’s the kind of state of mind that cannot be perfumed in any way by anything that happens outside you. This kind of confidence that comes from there is like the confidence of the sky. Right now it’s dark outside, but you know if you went up in a plane, even in the stormiest of days, the sky’s brilliant blue underneath. When you look at the sky, and it’s made a rainbow, and it’s absolutely gorgeous, there’s no question that the sky’s up there going, “Ha, did you see my rainbow?” Or when it’s a terrible, bleak, you know, gray, gloomy day, that the sky’s going to apologize. No, the sky just is, because the sky sees the impermanence of the clouds, and the impermanence of the rainbows, and you have to develop an inner state of mind that’s as impervious to all the good shit and bad shit thathappens to you as the sky is to the weather.
We would also call this, in a Western context, we would call this feeling a feeling of humility, and one day last week where I got to work with UK Sport, and particularly, I got to work with the amazing coaches, who worked with the amazing Olympic athletes, who got all those amazing results at the Summer Olympics. It was incredible to be in the same room as 400 of these people. The woman who runs UK Sport is a woman called Baroness Campbell, and she gave me a definition of humility that’s as good as any I’ve ever found.
She said, “Humility is not thinking less of yourself; humility is thinking about yourself less.”
And I remembered learning that lesson when I was a wee girl and probably no more than seven or eight, it was the woman with the squinty mouth that taught me the lesson. She had no idea, my mother, what she was doing to me as I was growing up, but when I grew up in Glasgow, particularly working-class, steel-industry Glasgow, nobody had any money, so nobody could afford to go out and be entertained. Everybody’s social life happened in a house, o at the weekends, all the wrinklys and all the kids would show up at people’s houses, and they would drink ’til their kneecaps were on backwards, and all that kind of stuff, but everybody at some point in the evening had to perform. And it was a riot, because these people were bus conductresses, and welders, and carpenters by daytime, but then they’d show up at nighttime and come and be Frank Sinatra, and Dean Martin, and Sarah Vaughan, and Billy Eckstine. They were all… in my house it was like a star-studded affair, living in my house, and all the kids were taught to perform as well. And so, I’m the oldest of four girls – my mother had four daughters. So did my father, interestingly enough. But we were brought up from any age to perform, and we’d be wheeled out at these family parties, me with my guitar and my sisters around me, and we’d have to sing. We’d be literally positioned, Jose, like the Von Trapps. You know, my father would say, “Beneda there, Louise there,” and then we would sing, and we were terrible. We were absolutely rubbish. One night my mother came up to get us and we were having pillow fights she showed up and she said, “Right lasses, everybody’s ready. Go down and give them a song.” And this night I was just overcome. I said, “I don’t want to sing.” She said, “Why do you not want to sing?” I said, “I’m shy.” She said, “What’re you shy for?” I said, “Well, everybody’s going to be looking at me,” and I’ll never forget her face. She looked at me, she said, “Caroline, don’t flatter yourself, darlin’.
(Laughter)
You think anybody downstairs is interested in you? They’re not. Your job’s to go and make them happy, so go and sing.” I said “okay”, and I picked up my guitar and I picked up my sisters, and you know what? That advice has never left me. But what it has left me with is spectacular disregard for where my abilities end, and spectacular disregard for being the center of attention. In fact, since that day, I have never been the center of attention. You’re the center of mine, and that’s a very different feeling.
So last, the last you, and the opposite of least, is the ever-present unchanging you. This is the you that you’ve been since you were seven, and the you that you’ll be when you’re 107, please God. I spend a lot of time in India, and in India you’re raised with this feeling that you’re a spiritual being who happens to be in a physical body, whereas we in the West are much more into our physical bodies, and then if we get old enough and long in the tooth enough, we kind of get interested in spirit. But, if you’ve ever been to the Gandhi museum in Delhi you’ll know that this is the line that is above the door, and it was actually a response by Gandhi to a question from a journalist.
Gandhi was getting on a train and the journalist called after him, “Gandhiji, Gandhiji, what’s your message to the world?” And Gandhi turned around and said, “My life. My life’s my message.”
And your life is your message, too. It might not be as big a message as Gandhi’s – mine certainly isn’t – but your life has to be your message. Otherwise, why are you here? It’s not like you’ve got a spare. So when you think about your identity, when you think about what it means to be alive, when you think about why you deserve to exist, you’re not your thoughts, because you think them. And you can’t be your feelings, because otherwise, who’s the you that feels them? You’re not what you have; you’re not what you do; you’re not even who you love, or who loves you. There has to be something underneath all that.
When you look at people who have managed to transcend all these judgments that we put upon them – You know, this man here, he couldn’t be judged as a man, or a black man, or young, or old, or Democrat, or Republican, nor a gay, or a straight. It really, really wouldn’t have mattered because he knew why he was here. Yes, we can. So you see, he seemed to be a verb.
Even when you’re born without many of the attributes that some of your peers may have, even when you’re born in a way that may lead you to feel impotent, if you can tap into that voice, if you can tap into that inner voice that I’ve been talking about, you might just end up being, at 12 years old, the youngest person ever called to the National World Champion Swim Team. You might even end up at the age of 13 being the youngest Olympian gold medal winner, ever. You might even end up at 14being the youngest person ever to get an MBE. That’s what happens when you dial in to the personal pronoun.
So if you can do this, not only will the speed of your life get quicker, not only will the substance of your life get richer, but you will never feel superfluous again.
(Applause)
Thank you.
Serge Merland says
Refreshing, it is much easier than most people think The only problem is: “How do you know what most people think let alone where they have been and when?”. Most call me crazy, so be it:, I can only say that they should be so lucky”.
Pete says
Serge,
Do you mean that you think “being yourself” is much easier than most people think? If so, it hasn’t been very easy for me over the years.
Jess says
Kasia says
Inspiring video 🙂 thanks for posting, Jess!
Pete says
Wow. Cool video. Thanks Jess.
I like “I don’t want to look young… I want to look great!” and “there’s no time limit to anything!”.
carlota smith says
I would appreciate if there would be a transcript for the speech. I usually use ted speeches in my converstaion classes and without the transcripts Some students could not cope. Thank you very much.
Pete says
Hi Carlota,
I’m interested in listening to this speech again, so I’ll aim to create a transcript and post it here before too long.
All the best!
Peter says
Wow. Just realised I forgot to do this. Sorry. Will do it soon, especially with Theresa’s comment added below.
Peter says
At last, I’ve added a transcript to the page above. It’s quite long, but it’s a very interesting talk.
Kasia says
I’m very grateful to you, Peter for posting the transcript! Very helpful in pondering this remarkable talk 🙂 And it made me find your website!
Peter says
You’re welcome Kasia. Thanks for finding my page and thanks for leaving a comment. Best wishes.
Theresa Gaignard says
I listened to the talk, and I really responded very well to Caroline McHugh as a person, but the talk was not inspiring to me (or rather, not helpful for my purposes). I wanted to learn how to know what my “thing” is. I have friends who are writers, artists, atheletes, teachers, mechanics, mothers. They all seem to know what makes them them. My “thing” has eluded me my entire life. Sure, I’ve been interested in many things, but nothing long enough to put energy into it for it to become my thing. I guess when I watched the TED Talk, “The Art of Being Yourself,” I was hoping for some tips about finding out who I am.
As for authenticity, I think that I’m pretty damned authentic. It is probably one of the reasons I don’t fit in anywhere. I find that when I’m truly myself, I get myself into trouble. For instance, the true me speaks my mind a lot. I have had to learn to continue to do so but not be so blunt about it so that I can still get my point across while having it received (and not reacted to).
The true me is not that remarkable, either. This was a hard realization to swallow about 15 years ago when I was 35 and looked around and realized that I was not half as smart or as clever as most people. When I accept the fact that I am a copper wire and not fiber optics, I’m usually content with life. When I strive to hope to achieve something, I usually end up depressed. Here I am going on 51, and I still don’t have a passion. Again, I’m happiest when I accept that maybe not everyone has a calling or talent. I get depressed when I wish I had some reason for being on this planet. Sooo, I usually just ignore it.
I would love to find someone to help me uncover a trend in my life that reveals my calling.
Peter says
Hi Theresa,
It made me so sad to read your comment, but I can so understand where you’re coming from. I can relate to a lot of what you say.
Firstly, I’m sure that everyone does not have to have a “thing”. In fact, if it’s a “thing” that defines someone, then they are selling themselves way short. We all deserve, and have at our disposal “everything”, not just a “thing”.
Behind your body and your existence here in this world, is the same piece of perfection that is behind all of us. None any more than any other. Whenever we see some people as better or worse than others, we are not seeing reality, we are only seeing judgments we’ve made up based on made up rules.
It’s sad to hear you say you’re not that remarkable. You can’t help but be remarkable. You must be. This thought, this belief, that you’re not remarkable is exactly the thing that puts a constraint on you. You can change this thought/belief in an instant whenever you’re ready. Nobody else can change it except you. (I know it’s hard though).
I’m glad to hear that you’re authentic. I like authentic (the opposite is not nice yet all too common). I like people that speak their minds and who are blunt. The world needs more of you.
If you’d like communicate in private with me, please use the “Contact Me” link at the bottom of the page. I can’t guarantee that I can help you, but I’d love to converse with you.
All the best,
Peter.
Theresa Gaignard says
Hi Peter, I never even knew you responded to my comment. I happened upon it today as I Googled myself and scrolled through tons of data about myself and my online comments that I didn’t even know where out there for the whole world to see. 🙂 I’m glad I’m comfortable owning my comments.
You are so kind. When I said that I’m not that remarkable, I wasn’t putting myself down. You see, I work at Harvard Business School. I’m surrounded by truly remarkable people every day. I’ve been here going on 16 years. I have my strengths. I’m kind, honest, creative, lovable, organized, hard working and conscientious, but I’m definitely not remarkable. I’m fine with that. I’m just a regular person who strives to be a good person. As for knowing what my “thing” (or reason for being on this planet) is, maybe that is a concept born out of living in such an affluent society? (All that being said, there is always that little itch inside to want to get more out of life, but people often talk me out of that kind of thinking.)
Theresa says
Hello Peter,
I Googled myself incognito again today (as I do from time to time) and find myself revisiting this old thread. I do not know if you will ever see my comments, given they were posted long after your kind message, but I am putting this out there, anyway.
It is now January 16, 2024. It seems as if your message to me was more than just kind words. It was a stepping stone on a path that I was meant to take. You wrote, “…this belief, that you’re not remarkable is exactly the thing that puts a constraint on you. You can change this thought/belief in an instant whenever you’re ready. Nobody else can change it except you.” I just was not aware of it at the time.
Wherever you may be, I send you thanks,
Theresa
Peter says
Hi Theresa,
Your comments have got to me! It’s great to hear that you’re doing well. I really appreciate you getting back in touch again.
Wishing you all the best,
Peter.
Soy La Isa says
I am 60 years old and at about the age of 50 I started filling in Domestic Engineer on applications or any kind of forms where it asked what was my profession or when asked. I am trying to find out who I am and what is my message. I have been a wife for 38 years and a mother of 3 for 37 years. My children are all grown up and moved away so I feel like my profession has slowed down. Therefore I am now seeking myself
Peter says
Hi. I can feel a sadness in you about the state of your life right now, trying to find out who you are and what your message is. I think this a common problem for a lot or people (perhaps the majority of people). It’s like we’re trying to find out what makes us different from others to define our value, when actually it’s what we all have in common that makes us infinitely valuable.
Just think of what you are capable of. Realise that you are capable of being peaceful, you are capable of being loving and you are capable of feeling joy. These might sound a little trite, but just think about them for a few moments. Nothing else in the universe is as amazing as the fact that you have these capacities. In order to find the next step forward in your life, try finding a way to bring more peace to the world, or a way to bring a little more love into the world, or a little more joy. If you do that, your next step will be a good one. These things don’t have to be big, flashy things. Small things are just as good. All peace is good. All love is good. All joy is good. The fact that you can bring these to the world makes you truly awesome.
It’s easy to get depressed when we measure ourselves against standards others have created. If you measure yourself against the things that are important in the universe (like peace, love and joy), you quickly see how important you really are.
All the best,
Peter.
(Use the “Contact Me” link at the bottom of the page if you want to contact me privately)
Eileen says
Yes, we are infinitely worthy, just as we are. But I believe we all have an inate drive to follow our own unique bliss. Barbara Sher has devoted much of her life to helping people find out what their passions are, and then develop them in the real world.
Her book “Wishcraft” changed my life.
Peter says
Hi Eileen. Thanks for leaving a comment and thanks for the tip about “Wishcraft” – I’ll take a look at that.
I wonder if, when we break it all down, all of our unique bliss’s are actually the same… different ways to get to the same result…
Peter.
Mukul roy says
Its indeed a very beautiful talk. It gives a very different and true perception of life which is orherwise masked in our day to day lives.
I loved it absolutely and it got me back on my tracks.
Sometimes we just get derailed and lose ourselves and inspite of all the spiritual knowledge and n number of perosnal development courses we take…things get blurry and fuzzy and i have reached at one such point in my life and have come to a sudden jolt.
It is so true. Thank ful to such lovely wonderful.people helping people to find their true selves.
I will surely read the book.
Peter says
Hi Mukul. Yes, the book is definitely worth a read. And, you’re right how things get blurry and fuzzy regularly. Seems like soon after having a major period of clarity, the blurriness and fuzziness comes right back in. I assume it’s just meant to be this way. All the best of luck with your journey. Peter.
Chris says
Hi Peter
Thank you so much for this post and for maintaining such a meaningful, beautiful blog.
I came across this talk around 2015, two years after my sister died from cancer. I resonated with the bifurcation of path – when someone got sick and rocked me to the core of myself, it forced me to check again who am I? I told many friends and my daughter about the clip, though nobody have heard of it at the time, I hope one of them will finally go to watch it.
Seven years on, many cold and unforgiving nights on my walk back home from night school, I kept asking myself repeatedly the same question at the beginning of the talk.
I still don’t have a definitive answer, but in the seven years, I quit the cushy dead-end job and went to night school, I overcame my fear of being unable to accomplish academic studies and became a qualified counsellor…I think I want to become someone that can empathise, I feel at home doing that.
The achievement is nothing big, not some sort of champion nor a president of a country but to become someone I can truly identify with is good enough. I feel that I finally begin to understand myself and learnt how to figure out this sh**!
I did not plan it but now I’m living in Glasgow. Today I watched the video again because I was reflecting back on my journey, I got curious as to who may have been quoting Caroline’s talk and I found your blog! It felt like came a full circle!
A smile and a bow
Christine