~ Caroline McHugh
Nothing. They were unlike each other. They were themselves.
... when you look at remarkable individuals, ... people that have been successful at achieving whatever they set out to do. You’ll find that the thing they have in common is they have nothing in common. ... These are individuals who have managed to figure out the unique gift that the universe gave them when they incarnated, and then put that at the service of their goals.
So what is one thing we can learn from them?
Your only job while you’re here on the planet is to be as good at being you as they are at being them.
For that, it's good to develop an "interiority" complex, which unlike superiority or inferiority complex, isn't relative.
When you figure out how to be yourself it’s an incredibly liberating, untragic way to go through life.
Okay, we should strive to be ourselves, but who are we? There are four of us.
Here, the most important thing to note is not too care much about this.
When it comes to being yourself needing other people’s approval, loving somebody else’s opinion, and mistaking it for your own is one of the most debilitating things you’ll do on the road to being yourself. You will never, ever be perceptionless, but it’s important to be perception free.
Key point: This will be changing, and that's fine. In fact that's how it should be.
with every passing year your job is to be better and better at being who you already are
Also, usually changes to this are brought upon by external circumstances (maybe a tragedy, or a change in job description, etc). Most of them are catastrophic. So why not think about this from a position of health, when you are strong?
One thing that stops us from being who we want to be is the next self...
It can have a big command over us. Some days we are feeling awesome, some days we are blue.
Now your entire life, I don’t care who you are, I don’t care how old you are, your entire life, from birth up until now has been about building a stable relationship with your ego.
The challenge is to not let it dominate us:
But your challenge is to take the ego from its dominant position and pull it back so that it’s in service to yourself. That’s when it becomes useful, and in order to do that you’ve got to find the still point right in the middle of those two extremes. So that’s what I would call equanimity, or equilibrium, and it’s the kind of state of mind that cannot be perfumed in any way by anything that happens outside you. This kind of confidence that comes from there is like the confidence of the sky. All right, and now it’s dark outside, but you know if you went up in a plane, even in the stormiest of days the sky is brilliant blue underneath.
Be the sky. Also, humble (in this sense):
“Humility is not thinking less of yourself; humility is thinking about yourself less.”
This is the core you. The you "that you’ve been since you were seven, and the you that you’ll be when you’re 107".
The key is to tap into this, to be unconstrained by boundaries, labels; to make your life your message.
I come back to this talk quite a bit.
I also realized during this particular REwatch, that I hadn't grappled with the message here at the intellectual level. For instance, how being yourself (if taken as finding and then being yourself) could reconcile with creating yourself which is what I believe: that we create ourselves more than we find ourselves. But of course, the bundle of genes and flesh and sweat that we are, there is indeed an unwavering self within us.
Another thing I realized (I admit it now) is that I come back to this mostly for a spiritual shot in the arm more than anything. For instance, the clip in the middle of Jill Scott talking about her (and everyone's) queendom never fails to move me. (I almost cried the first time I watched it). But I think that's more of a personal thing for me. I have always found it hard to be--unapologetically, unwaveringly--myself. I digress.
Anyway, this is an important topic. We have this one life and, as cliche as it sounds, it is important to be ourselves for if we don't walk in our own shoes, we are in for a troubled walk.
Could pair with: Know Yourself, the guide from the Book of Life by the School of Life.