AND WHY BOTHER ANYWAY?
We joked the other day about “finding ourselves.”
MANY EXPERTS ADVISE US TO “FIND OURSELVES.”
But the philosopher Thomas Szasz and the writer George Bernard Shaw both say,
“The self is not something one finds: it is something one creates.”
What?
S#*!
Many wise guys coming to opposite conclusions?
Big help they are!
If they can’t agree –what chance do WE have of figuring this stuff out?
No wonder people never get to know themselves, I can hear you saying.
The bloody experts can’t even get it straight!
“Find yourself” say some.
“No, You don’t find yourself, you create yourself,” say others.
That sounds like a contradiction.
NOT A CONTRADICTION
But it isn’t.
We CAN talk about finding our true selves if we use the term FINDING to mean we go deep inside ourselves to discover our natural gifts.
The ones that have the capacity to be identified and nurtured.
When you find your gifts (that is, RECOGNIZE them)… (and I can teach you how to do this) …you then CREATE your SELF from them.
Your abilities, talents and gifts will tell you what your self is.
You can discover them now even if you don’t already know what they are. Even if you are ‘older”–whatever that means.
Then you USE them to CREATE your SELF.
We are all unique in our human make-up, in our essence, even if we do not see it.
Other people will see it though.
Other people DID see it.
Your friends, teachers, relatives saw it in you when you were little.
Maybe those people did not nurture those things that make you unique.
Maybe they were preoccupied with their own problems.
Maybe they weren’t good at noticing these things.
Maybe they weren’t smart.
Maybe they were jealous.
Who the hell knows?
And now, who cares.
Well, actually WE both care. You and I.
However, we’re not going to spend our lives on it.
We’re not going to be victims and mope around about it.
RECOGNIZING GIFTS
You probably(at least partially) recognized your true gifts too when you were younger but maybe you weren’t paying attention either.
Why do you think you start wanting to do weird stuff when you get to be 30 or 35 or 40?
Stuff you’ve never done before–like playing a musical instrument or learning a language or reading about math?
Or picking up something that you vaguely remember liking to do when you were a kid?
Or starting to do something that intrigued the hell out of you when you were younger but somehow never had the time or the courage to try then?
We CAN go into this deeply (and if you stay with me we will).
And you’ll HAVE to do some deep work to some degree, even if it’s just to figure out how the hell you missed all the obvious signs that indicated you were an amazing creature.
- Even if somebody did point these gifts out to you but you ignored their observations.
- Even if you have failed to recognize your gifts.
- Or abandoned them.
- Or traded them for what you thought was shiny gain, or easy opportunity.
- Or wrong-headed self-sacrifice.
(There’s a lot of THAT going on out there!)
The potential is still there.
So “finding yourself” or “creating yourself.”
Call it whatever you like.
If you want to be happy, you still have to do it.
You can begin by getting my Ebook.
FOUR QUESTIONS TO CHANGE YOUR LIFE!
It’s at the top of the page to your right.
I’ll be with you.
Frank
Next:
The Self Part 2: Searching for yourself? Flying blind?
If this article was of interest, please click here to join the free registration for Self-Knowledge College. I’ll be sending you a lot of free solid information about YOU!
Frank Daley
daleyfrank0@gmail.com
