To be who you are
Your genetics, your environment, your parents, your friends does not choose you to be you.
You are shaped by who you choose to be.
Oftentimes, our life circumstances dictates who we are, right?
List the top 5 people you spend the most time with or who have been there the majority of your lifetime, do you see them in you?
The truth is, we are very likely to become replicas of our parents, guardians, or care givers, because they are there during the majority of our lives or atleast during our formative years up till adulthood. Without any realization, we inevitably shape into them and become who they are.
From the way we conduct ourselves to the way we talk, to how we think and how we treat others, we become reflective mirrors of them. These hardwired behaviors manifest in subtle ways and are often not within our control until we take actions to rectify unwanted behaviors in ourselves.
While there are supporting scientific evidence that we become the average of the five people we spend the most time with based on neural synchronization, we could gain enough consciousness and awareness to tap into our natural and habitual behaviors and traits, and re-built who we want to be.
To become who we are today and not how we were by evolution and origin “made” us to be, boils down to one word: CHOICE
But before that choice is made, we need to first
- Educate ourselves about distinctive types of behaviors, traits, and mentalities: If you have felt, especially from your younger days that a certain behavior is not right, then your feelings (or your intuition), is trying to tell you that something is wrong. Don’t ignore and dismiss them but try to explore your feelings instead. Educating and helps yourself understand why you feel the way you felt.
- Be exposed to people of different backgrounds and cultures: Embrace diversity, because it opens you up to a plethora of new perspectives, outlook, opinions, and ways of lives. This is a very crucial step as it paves the road to self re-construction and re-identification.
- Cultivate self-awareness: Reflect on your identity, what are your existing traits and behaviors? Pay attention to how you interact with others and what you think about when you think about certain matters, situations, and people. Learn to identify your habits and behavior similar to looking at yourself in the mirror and pointing out your physical features (like I have brown-colored hair, thick eyebrows, etc). Ask yourselves if these behavioral traits are repetitive patterns originated from who you spend the most time with or are closest with. Are they unconsciously inherited from others or are they what you choose for yourself?
- Assess and evaluate whether these patterns of behavior and traits are what we chose to ingrain in ourselves : Do you perceive them as wanted or unwanted behaviors for yourselves?
What I would do is visualize individual behavioral and mental patterns in individual storage cubes of a shelving unit, and then pick & choose which I want to choose to be parts of me, and after integrating them all together, made me ME.
5. Finally, ask the question “Is this the version of me that I want to see myself in?”
Old habits die hard and hardwired patterns are difficult to break but it is always possible. It requires constant mental effort, self-awareness, and most importantly a strong desire to want to develop your own set of traits and behaviors which determines your intrinsic qualities and nature. Nobody will be able to determine who you are if you won’t let it happen.
For me personally, it is a strong refusal to be shaped like a certain group of people “just because” of the time spent most together, but rather gain control to develop a unique set of traits which I observe and mindfully derive from different people to call it my own.
By the end of the day, who is it to tell us who we are and later destined to be?
Can we start envisioning who we want to be and create who we truly are instead?
Enjoy reading this? Subscribe for more of my upcoming articles by clicking here or below
