Who are you trying to be like?

Do you incessantly question yourself about the direction you are taking in your life, the decisions you make or the person you are trying to be?

From the minute we are born we are exposed to many experiences, television shows, magazines and role models that are part of our everyday growth. But to what extent are all these things making us someone we are not? Do you ever stop to think,

“Who am I trying to be”?

I remember being obsessed in high school about what others thought of me. Will my friends like what I am wearing, am I acting in a way that I will be accepted in the group, how can I make the most popular girl in high school like me? When I knew someone didn’t like me or I wasn’t invited to a certain party I felt like a nobody. I was crushed and hurt.

Thank god I found yoga when I was still a teenager! Those years seemed to cause a lot of suffering for me, and made me confused about who I was. All I knew for sure is that I wanted to be the ideal person that would be liked by my peers. Even though through many learning experiences and through my yoga practice I have learned to become authentic, a few months ago I heard a sentence from an amazing yogini that really seemed to imprint an important message in my mind.

What other people think of you is none of your business. ~ Hemalayaa Behl

If we spend our lives worrying about what others think of us, we are leaving out the most important aspect of our life, what we actually want.

Follow your truth.

Lately I have been encountering many people, articles and books that have been bringing me back to the big picture of who am I, what my path is and why am I doing the things I do. Even as Yoga Teachers, we tend to follow certain ways of teaching because we are inspired by a yoga style or a certain teacher. The question is, are we just letting ourselves be inspired, which is great, or are we becoming something for the wrong reasons? It’s easy to follow someone else’s path, not so easy to authentically follow our own.

One of the things that has fallen into my life lately is an interview of Ellen DeGeneres and how success and happiness grew in her life when she began to follow her truth.

All this is not rocket science, but rather just simply being mindful of the actions and choices we make and taking time to stop and observe. Just like when you cross a street, you stop, look both ways and then cross rather than just crossing…and being hit by a car. If we just live our lives without any mindfulness at some point it might feel like we have just been run over, and it can be very hard to get back up after.

The book ‘the not so big life’ by Sarah Susanka is a great workbook for your life. Take some time to stop and observe during this wonderful journey called life!