How To Be Yourself

What does it mean to be yourself? It could be defined as being natural and spontaneous. To be as we are when we are fearless, alone or with people we trust.

It’s not just fears that make people less authentic; sometimes, for various reasons, we do not live according to our true being, according to our values, skills, outlook on life, etc … There are many factors that can influence and can distance us from being ourselves, such as, for example, tradition, not knowing yourself or simply doing things to please others.

It is essential to reflect and ask ourselves if we are living according to our true essence  or if we are creating a facade character for others, who we believe to be better than how we really are.

Being yourself: self-knowing

We must know ourselves to be able to live according to our true essence. It is important to know each other, so we should keep in mind three points:

Knowing our strengths, we could take the path that will lead us to success and well-being.

If we do not let ourselves be carried away by the current and do not allow gambling to guide our life, we will live a fuller life because we will choose it according to what we really want.

To help us understand what makes us feel good, we could remember our childhood and maybe we could find activities that we had not practiced anymore, but that made us feel good and happy.

Knowing ourselves better will give us the tools that will help us be more confident,  but often the lack of naturalness is produced by other factors.

3 enemies of naturalness

If we want to give the best possible impression and are overly concerned with pleasure, we will probably have the opposite effect, we will end up showing the worst picture, because you cannot be natural if we do everything to want to give the best impression of ourselves.

Accepting yourself is the key to improving,  we are unique and unrepeatable and we all have positive and negative sides, we decide, 

Let us ask ourselves this: if we can give a good image of ourselves, what do we gain? Others will have a good impression of us, but we will be dissatisfied for not having expressed our true essence.

We should never try to wear a mask to please others, what should matter most is our own well-being and this is achieved when we can show ourselves as we are.

If our center of attention is turned towards ourselves, we will feel more insecure and we will not be natural because we will be worried about what others think of us.

Naturalness comes when the center of attention is not on the image we want to convey,  rather when we prioritize having fun and enjoying our surroundings, without thinking whether we are giving a good or bad impression of us.

Tension also destroys naturalness, and it can arise for several reasons, but the most common is being worried about wanting to appear positively, for fear of rejection.  When we do not give importance to the image we give, because we accept ourselves as we are and we do not pretend to want to please, because the priority is to better enjoy what is in front of us, it is in these moments that we are most authentic and spontaneous , because let’s eliminate fear.

Image courtesy of Mr. Theklan and Alba Soler