You may have heard about some people who decide to leave their jobs, pack their bags, and head out on some kind of nomadic journey in order to “find themselves.” They may go back to their cultural roots, navigating their way through the homeland in order to “get in touch” with “who they really are.” While I certainly approve of international travel, I don’t think that trying to “find yourself” is the best way to spend your time.
Go to the nearest washroom and look in the mirror. Guess what? You found yourself. You are not out there somewhere to be found. The “real you” is staring right back at you in the mirror. You don’t need to spend thousands of dollars to renew your sense of perspective. Instead of trying to “find” yourself, it is much more worthwhile trying to “create” yourself.
Life is what you make of it. If you’re not satisfied with your current lot in life, then you need to go out there and do something about it. Life is full of possibilities and you truly can achieve anything that you set your heart on. Want to move to Hawaii and become a professional surfing instructor? If that’s what you want to do, then make it happen. You really do have the ability within yourself to define who you are. It’s not out there; it’s in here.
Will it be easy? Probably not. Is that a bad thing? Not necessarily.
You will likely need to spend some introspective time to determine exactly what is most valuable to you, what is the best way for you to spend your time, and what kind of legacy you want to leave behind. The road can be rough, but that is exactly what makes life so worthwhile and so rewarding.
Don’t try to find yourself. Instead, make your life into what you want it to be.
I agree with you totally on this. You don’t need some sort of soul searching trip to find yourself. If you don’t like what is going on in your life, change it. Make it what you want, but don’t go hide from what the real problems are.
Really really great. Simply wonderfully put. Simple, not easy. People nowadays seem to make things complicated in order to make them easy.
Could not agree more. Great post Michael.
I’m at that point in my life where something has to change before I end up doing something silly again.
Sadly it only takes one minor set-back to hurl me into my old lifestyle again.
“Life is what you make of it”, so well said.
The world does not owe us a living, we reap what we sow.
I like the simplicity of your message here and agree with it.