How Do You Know When You Found Yourself?

Photo by Moon on Unsplash

A comedian would say that all you have to do is look down and, oh look; there you are!

Found you!

Even a spiritual guru might say that you are already found, and were never lost, you just didn’t like what you saw.

But you are always there, always were there, and, for as long as you can grasp the concept of being there, will be there.

In that sense, you were never lost.

But that is not what we mean when we talk about “finding ourselves”.

We mean finding our true self, the person we want to be or the heroic version we think we are.

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So where is that person?

I mean, if they are us, then they have to be somewhere inside of us already, right?

Or do we have to create them to be able to find them?

What if we just couldn’t see them because we were blocking with too much other things?

I think ‘finding yourself’ is more about letting go of everything else.

It is not so much in finding the needle in a hay stack than it is about removing the entire haystack.

That means, it is not so much about finding who you truly are, but about letting go of everything that you are not.

If it does not feel right, then drop it.

The problem is that who you are includes a lot of different, contradictory and unwanted personalities as well.

You do not always show up the way you want to, are not true to yourself in every moment, and put on many masks to be able to fit into this society.

It’s all of these masks that act as the haystack that you always carry with you.

You have to be all kinds of different people throughout the day, and so you must carry a mask for every single occasion, interaction and person.

Imagine how heavy that is.

No wonder most of us are so stressed.

Carrying a haystack worth of masks, personalities and characteristics around with us everywhere we go when all we truly need to carry, all we truly are, is but a single needle.