Being Yourself Can Be Difficult

Who we truly are, what we find deeply interesting, and how those interests manifest in our best set of characteristics and skills are often covered up by imposed expectations from which we need to break free.

One of the things that happens as we age, at least if we bother to put some brain cells in charge of a bit of self-reflection, is realize we’re the same person throughout life but we’re also at the same time not the same person throughout life. At least not all of us.

This thought crossed my mind as I was reading a recent The Imperfectionist newsletter post from Oliver Burkeman, one of my favorite writers. I wrote about Burkeman’s remarkable book in “Your Life Will Be Absurdly Brief.” It’s a book that now sits comfortably within my personal list of top 10 favorite books of all time.

The post that spawned my recent self-reflection on the person I’ve been all my life and the person I’ve been at various stages of my life was Burkeman’s “Becoming who you are.” Check it out. Burkeman never fails to provide some useful insight into living life in better ways.

Burkeman writes in his post about how making progress on whatever creative work one undertakes is influenced significantly by accepting being who you are. The real you. The authentic you. Burkeman contends that all of us, if we get honest and witness our…