Just Be Yourself? – I Don’t THINK So!

Okay, before all my friends, family and readers gather up arms and have me run out of town on a rail, let me explain what I mean.

We hear all the time, “Just be yourself,” and/or from OUR perspective, things like, “That’s just not ME!” or “That doesn’t FEEL right to me,” or “that’s not WHO I am.”  And while I’m all about authenticity, listening to the little bossman inside my head, and truthfully showing up in the world, I am even MORE about not just “being me,” but being the “VERY BEST VERSION of  me.”  And here’s where the rubber meets the road.

Haven’t we ALL known someone who demonstrates some less than flattering behavior (let’s say, losing their temper) and then explains it by saying, “Well, that’s just who I am. It’s how I’m wired.”  Maybe you know someone who takes umbrage at the slightest provocation, who continually gets their feelings hurt by things people say, don’t say, do or don’t do (I call these people a “walking possibility of being offended.”)  And when you suggest they “took it personally” they respond with, “Well that’s just the way I am.”

Let’s give the world, and ourselves, a break.  I suggest we all just take a quick inventory.  What habits, behaviors, proclivities do you engage in that don’t serve you?  Things you have written off with, “Well, I’m just being myself.”  What are they?  Why not start working on those things, deliberately, consciously and consistently.

Now then, would someone please share this blog with that person who lets various forms of gas escape his/her body – and then rationalizes it with, “Hey! That’s a natural thing! People DO this! It’s just who I am!”

Please.

From your motivational speaker, Linda Larsen, who has someone in mind…