Hi I’m alex,  I stumbled across a quote the other day by a pretty interesting guy called Ralph Waldo Emerson. “to be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.”

I just wanted to share some thoughts on the confusion and turmoil of becoming ‘yourself’ and how the environment we are in can impact this. I’m interested in hearing other experiences of personal development and the struggles that occur.

I often feel as though i’m split, on one hand I know where I want to go in life, roughly who I want to be and to some degree, how I am going to get there. This is my self aware side.
On the other, i am deeply insecure, waaay to agreeable and live my life through the eyes of others. The old me that I can’t let go.

The problem is that there is a constant battle between the two sides. Interestingly most of my mental health problems, for the most part, only present themselves in the ‘old me’ state of mind. I lose myself in old patterns of thinking.. victimisation, being over ambitious and having poor or unrealistic self image. I guess this must be some sort of regressive pattern of thinking.

Just one example of what drags me back down is social situations that threaten me in someway, someone exposing an insecurity or me anticipating my ambition being crushed. I’ve come to the conclusion that this kind of regression is like the idea of a ghost, stuck in limbo with unfinished business. Until you identify and address the insecurity, it will always haunt you.

The unfortunate thing is the most people (in my experience) don’t encourage existential thinking or self development, they actually seem to be intensely offended by it, almost everyone I know will pick each others dreams and ambitions to pieces. I constantly see people dragging each other down and getting lost in social politics. relating this back to the quote, i think it makes it difficult to share who you really are and be completely true to yourself if this is the standard response. Maybe it is the people I have surrounded myself with and I should make more of a conscious effort to find some like minded people, maybe I need to be more resilient..

I just wanted to share some thoughts as a rarely get a chance to.

What problems stop you from being yourself?

How do you overcome them?