How Do You Know Who You Really Are?

I don’t know about you, but I have this weird natural instinct to look inward for amusement, answers, and reassurance.

For As Long As I Can Remember, I’ve Explored Myself From Every Angle Possible.

I’d try on moods and character traits like Halloween costumes, fully embracing a state of being just to try it on for size before keeping what I love and discarding the rest of it. Aesthetics, music genres, foods, even types of physical movement, colors and style choices… I go through them in themes.

For me, discovering who I am has always like a never-ending game of dress-up.

It’s playing house from different shoes and learning to be the princess AND the frog in every fairytale. I don’t think who we are is set in stone by fate, but I’ve discovered core traits in myself that can’t help but shine through, no matter what sort of mask I’ve taken on in any given situation. For the past several months, I’ve focused my attention not on trying new masks, but instead on learning how to take all the masks off, finding the bare essentials necessary for that inherently loving core of traits and values to shine through.

Sometimes I’d try on extremes (remember my Fearless Little F*cker phase?), just to see where I really fit in a spectrum. This is how I found my balance between self-discipline and grace, like I told you about last summer. It’s also how I learned about the duality of abundance and grief and how I learned to feel and embrace joy. If you look through past blog posts, you’ll see example after example of how, by playing with an extreme opposite of what I’d always known, I found freedom and enlightenment in ways I might never have discovered otherwise. You can see how much fun I had along the way, and the powerful impact a little playfulness and courage can have when it comes to uncovering who you are.

The Time Spent Playing Dress-Up Wasn’t A Waste.

It gave me the opportunity to have fun exploring new angles of the world around me and my inner self. In some ways, it gave me the safety net and the confidence I needed in order to face my demons. Other times, it gave me the ability to be playful and unattached to the outcome- which made room for serendipity to work her magic in my life! To find yourself, you have to set that intention (and really mean it), but you also have to lighten up! You can’t take yourself too seriously along the way; seeking certainty prevents the inner child from being able to come out. Seeing yourself doesn’t happen overnight, but it is still an all-or-nothing commitment. You can’t see a part of yourself without be willing to see the rest- when you put rules on it like that, you end up living out a would-be/should-be/could-be kind of fantasy you’ve created for yourself because, for whatever reason, you weren’t ready to give the true you a chance to show. You aren’t ready to know yourself, so you put constraints on who you’re allowed to be- keep yourself in line, make sure who you are is reasonable and not outrageously crazy… You make sure being you isn’t going to be too uncomfortable. And in doing that, you dim your life and deprive yourself of the incredible opportunity to really live.

Mistakes aren’t anything to be ashamed of.

Failure is the only way to learn so many lessons in life- if you’re not failing often, you’re probably standing too still! You’re keeping yourself locked in a cage of not-messing-up, trying to be perfect rather than being alive. It’s a tragic waste of this one beautiful, divine, and totally your-own life you’ve been given.

I’ve learned so many lessons through making mistakes like constantly hiding away parts of myself and telling often-beautiful (but even more often fearful and ugly) stories on a loop in my mind about who I was. The protagonist, the victim, the heroine, the adventurer, the mature one, the giggle box. In so many ways, I told myself stories that kept me small. Two-dimensional (or maybe even three, but what is that compared to the truly infinite dimensions of this universe and my soul that is made up of and connected to that very same stuff?).

There’s a line between knowing who you are in your head… those stories you tell… and in living it out from one moment to the next.

If you want to learn who you are, find what lights you up. Not what you think is fun because you’re really good at it- be wary of those things, they might be things you’ve been trained to love because it won you approval. (Not always, but give something totally yours a chance before you go turning to a talent others strongly admire you for. It’s important to learn who you are beyond other peoples’ opinions, good or bad, so that you don’t have to question if it was really you or not should that praise and approval someday vanish.)

If you want to know who you are, find what lights you up and start doing it with devotion.

Make time for it every day. Make a list, you can love as many things as you want- and when you make time to do it- even just for 5, 10, 30 minutes each day, you can combine the things you love. Whatever feels inspired and fun for you in the moment, do that. The thing you can get lost in is where you’ll find yourself.

I’ve spiraled in loops and circles trying to understand myself over the past decade. There were wild ups and downs around every corner, truly never a dull moment.

But ultimately, I came back to the same conclusions every time:

I am love.

I am grace and compassion.

I am light.

These Realizations Can Sound Cheesy And Impractical And Larger Than Life, But The Truth Is They’re The Whole Point Of It All.

When I remember that I am love and grace and compassion and light, I show up differently to everything I do. Suddenly, the little details like where I live, how much money I make, where I am in my career, what I eat, and what I’m going to do that evening are all intuitive; there’s no gloom-and-doom end-of-the-world feeling over little things going wrong. Lost jobs, broken down cars, even the death of loved ones and natural disasters become manageable. Every bump in the road, every tragedy and heartache, every uncovered wound in the heart along the way to truth becomes an opportunity to root deeper into the loving core that guides me.

I Think, When You Really Know Who You Are, You Can Handle Anything.

You know you’re not alone, you know you’re part of something so much bigger. You see how wildly creative, resilient, resourceful, and capable you are. You see what a gift it is to be exactly the person you are in the exact situation you are in, and you see an abundance of opportunities to create, transform, and embrace the life you’re in. When you know who you are, you don’t need permission or validation or the weight of stress, guilt, and fear to be excuses for failure. You’re able to dance through life with serendipity, shake off the tough lessons with grace and confidence, glowing with kindness and compassion. You become a magnet for the deepest dreams you carry, even if you don’t fully understand what those dreams look like for you.

There’s An Art To Being You.

Don’t take your skills for granted.

You’re already you; it’s just a matter of peeling back the layers and trying new things to discover which parts really aren’t you- and then letting those things go to make more space of what IS you.

Let your light out.

The world is ready for you.

Written for you with so much love,

Jessica Bird