What would happen if I were me? — Yoga The World

“What would happen if you allowed yourself to be who you are?”

My coach posed this simple yet powerful question yesterday. My immediate thought was: well, that’s all I can be anyway.

And yet.

So often, I find myself moderating who I am to fit who I think I am, who I think I need to be, or who I think others think I need to be. Sometimes, my being is misaligned with expectations related to a particular role I am in (e.g. “yoga teachers should be flexible, and I am not”). At other times, there is a disconnect between how I actually feel and my own expectations for how I should feel in a certain situation (e.g. “the sun is out so I should be happy”). Either way, in the past my reaction has often been the same: to override the actual feeling and forcefully seek to insert what should be there. The predictable result is more often than not a deep sense of disappointment when the desired feeling manifestly is not real.

But what would happen if I just allowed myself to be who I am?

I sat with that query this morning and felt all the strength of its wisdom. Whether talking about feelings, reasoned values, or deep spiritual impulses, there is no way to be someone I am not. Not sustainably. Not joyfully. Not anymore.

Originally published at https://www.yogatheworld.org on June 21, 2022.