3 Questions That Tickle Your True Self Awake
We're pretty good at keeping others happy. The problem is, it often comes at our own expense.
Situation 1
You're sitting in an empty waiting room when another patient walks in and asks if the seat next to you is taken. You glance around at the many other empty chairs. You nod, shift over a little, and feel heat rising to your head.
Situation 2
You already have your jacket on, your bag over your arm, and you're about to leave the office when a colleague asks if you could quickly forward her an email. You roll your eyes on the inside, but hear yourself say "No problem!" and dutifully walk back to your desk.
Situation 3
Another mother calls you — not for the first time — from her car, asking if you could pick up her child from daycare and keep them at your place for half an hour. Her annoying boss has made her late again. You clench your teeth, say yes on autopilot, and watch your afternoon plans collapse before your eyes.
The problem isn’t the patient in the chair next to you, your colleague, or the friend with the annoying boss. The problem is that you’re doing something at your own expense to make others happy.
This is what you learned. This is what you were taught. It worked for a long time. But now you’ve reached a point where you know you can’t keep going like this.
Your Social Self
There’s no doubt that it’s good to say “please,” “thank you,” and “sorry,” to hold the door open for the next person, and to offer your seat on the bus to an elderly woman. We are social beings, and learning to do things for others — even when it costs us something — is an important part of growing up.
That’s what your social self is for — the part of you that knows what your culture and your surroundings value, and has learned to value those things too. The part that knows when to laugh, when to stay quiet, and how to listen. The part that polishes your résumé and picks the right outfit for the right meeting. The part that shows up on time and knows what’s expected of you in any given situation.
This part is not your enemy. It got you through school, through job interviews, through difficult family gatherings.
But adaptation has its limits. Being praised for functioning eventually stops being enough. So does being rewarded for performing. Chronic external control makes you sick, and betraying yourself leads to exhaustion.
Your True Self
There’s a part of you that you’ve forgotten — one you may not have even known still existed — your true self.
How do I know? Because you opened this post and read all the way to here.
Your true self is the original version of you that arrived on this planet. The one that knew, without any outside guidance, what it found interesting or boring, which activities brought it joy for no rational reason, what food it liked, and which clothes felt most like home.
I’ve seen this in my own children, and I see it when I think back to the child I once was: My daughter knew, somewhere between her fourth and fifth birthday, that a sequined skirt and tights were the only conceivable outfit. My son knew he didn’t want to learn an instrument — even though he had every bit of talent for it. And for me, as a primary school kid, the greatest happiness was sitting on the terrace in the sun, listening to audio plays, and painting pictures of landscapes.
Feeling Your True Self
Your task now is to rediscover this part of you. For a moment, you’re going to set aside everything you’ve learned about good behavior, gold stars on your worksheet, the perfect résumé entry, and the correct dress code at the office.
(Don’t worry — once you’ve answered the questions, your social self is welcome back.)
Take a few minutes to answer the following questions. Notice how you feel, and how that feeling shifts as you sit with them.
What did you do as a child during those endless summer holidays when you completely lost track of time?
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If you could only pack one outfit into your bag for the proverbial desert island, what would it be?
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Which people make you laugh until you cry? What do you talk about?
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Congratulations — you’ve just made contact with your original, true self. That took courage, and it’s an important step.
How do you feel right now?
Light | Awake | Wistful | Nostalgic | Surprised | Alive | Warm | Free | Seen | ...
Hold onto that feeling, and notice in the coming week when it shows up again. That’s your true self saying hello.
You are not broken. You've just been listening to other people's voices for too long.
One more thing: your social self is welcome back now, to do what it does best — make sure you belong. (More on that soon.)
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Judith lives with her family of six in Rheinhessen, one of the sunnier regions of Germany. She's happy to see the vineyards on her daily walks turning green again.
