Author Topic: Becoming the Person You Were Meant to Be: Where to Start  (Read 1728 times)

ann3

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Becoming the Person You Were Meant to Be: Where to Start
« on: November 06, 2009, 08:52:25 PM »
I loved this article.  Very inspiring. 

http://www.oprah.com/article/omagazine/200911-omag-purpose-anne-lamott

Becoming the Person You Were Meant to Be: Where to Start By Anne Lamott

We begin to find and become ourselves when we notice how we are already found, already truly, entirely, wildly, messily, marvelously who we were born to be. The only problem is that there is also so much other stuff, typically fixations with how people perceive us, how to get more of the things that we think will make us happy, and with keeping our weight down. So the real issue is how do we gently stop being who we aren't? How do we relieve ourselves of the false fronts of people-pleasing and affectation, the obsessive need for power and security, the backpack of old pain, and the psychic Spanx that keeps us smaller and contained?

Here's how I became myself: mess, failure, mistakes, disappointments, and extensive reading; limbo, indecision, setbacks, addiction, public embarrassment, and endless conversations with my best women friends; the loss of people without whom I could not live, the loss of pets that left me reeling, dizzying betrayals but much greater loyalty, and overall, choosing as my motto William Blake's line that we are here to learn to endure the beams of love.
Oh, yeah, and whenever I could, for as long as I could, I threw away the scales and the sugar.

When I was a young writer, I was talking to an old painter one day about how he came to paint his canvases. He said that he never knew what the completed picture would look like, but he could usually see one quadrant. So he'd make a stab at capturing what he saw on the canvas of his mind, and when it turned out not to be even remotely what he'd imagined, he'd paint it over with white. And each time he figured out what the painting wasn't, he was one step closer to finding out what it was.

You have to make mistakes to find out who you aren't. You take the action, and the insight follows: You don't think your way into becoming yourself.

I can't tell you what your next action will be, but mine involved a full stop. I had to stop living unconsciously, as if I had all the time in the world. The love and good and the wild and the peace and creation that are you will reveal themselves, but it is harder when they have to catch up to you in roadrunner mode. So one day I did stop. I began consciously to break the rules I learned in childhood: I wasted more time, as a radical act. I stared off into space more, into the middle distance, like a cat. This is when I have my best ideas, my deepest insights. I wasted more paper, printing out instead of reading things on the computer screen. (Then I sent off more small checks to the Sierra Club.)

Every single day I try to figure out something I no longer agree to do. You get to change your mind—your parents may have accidentally forgotten to mention this to you. I cross one thing off the list of projects I mean to get done that day. I don't know all that many things that are positively true, but I do know two things for sure: first of all, that no woman over the age of 40 should ever help anyone move, ever again, under any circumstances. You have helped enough. You can say no. No is a complete sentence. Or you might say, "I can't help you move because of certain promises I have made to myself, but I would be glad to bring sandwiches and soda to everyone on your crew at noon." Obviously, it is in many people's best interest for you not to find yourself, but it only matters that it is in yours—and your back's—and the whole world's, to proceed.

And, secondly, you are probably going to have to deal with whatever fugitive anger still needs to be examined—it may not look like anger; it may look like compulsive dieting or bingeing or exercising or shopping. But you must find a path and a person to help you deal with that anger. It will not be a Hallmark card. It is not the yellow brick road, with lovely trees on both sides, constant sunshine, birdsong, friends. It is going to be unbelievably hard some days—like the rawness of birth, all that blood and those fluids and shouting horrible terrible things—but then there will be that wonderful child right in the middle. And that wonderful child is you, with your exact mind and butt and thighs and goofy greatness.

Dealing with your rage and grief will give you life. That is both the good news and the bad news: The solution is at hand. Wherever the great dilemma exists is where the great growth is, too. It would be very nice for nervous types like me if things were black-and-white, and you could tell where one thing ended and the next thing began, but as Einstein taught us, everything in the future and the past is right here now. There's always something ending and something beginning. Yet in the very center is the truth of your spiritual identity: is you. Fabulous, hilarious, darling, screwed-up you. Beloved of God and of your truest deepest self, the self that is revealed when tears wash off the makeup and grime. The self that is revealed when dealing with your anger blows through all the calcification in your soul's pipes. The self that is reflected in the love of your very best friends' eyes. The self that is revealed in divine feminine energy, your own, Bette Midler's, Hillary Clinton's, Tina Fey's, Michelle Obama's, Mary Oliver's. I mean, you can see that they are divine, right? Well, you are, too. I absolutely promise. I hope you have gotten sufficiently tired of hitting the snooze button; I know that what you need or need to activate in yourself will appear; I pray that your awakening comes with ease and grace, and stamina when the going gets hard. To love yourself as you are is a miracle, and to seek yourself is to have found yourself, for now. And now is all we have, and love is who we are.

binks

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Re: Becoming the Person You Were Meant to Be: Where to Start
« Reply #1 on: November 07, 2009, 04:47:53 AM »
Every single day I try to figure out something I no longer agree to do. You get to change your mind—your parents may have accidentally forgotten to mention this to you.

Really inspiring! I am going to do this. I am fed up with being a push button person and doing things I really don't want to or need to, often because I don't want to be perceived as a horrible person and I don't want people to then be unpleasant to me.

I really think doing this will give me a chance to grow and as the subject says 'become the person I was meant to be'.

I think I started on this journey about 8 years ago in my early forties, when I went to university and trained to be a teacher. I could only do this after I had begun to detach myself emotionally from my mother.

Ami

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Re: Becoming the Person You Were Meant to Be: Where to Start
« Reply #2 on: November 07, 2009, 03:17:16 PM »
Thanks ((((Ann)))) !                                            xxoo Ami
No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.        Eleanor Roosevelt

Most of our problems come from losing contact with our instincts,with the age old wisdom stored within us.
   Carl Jung

ann3

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Re: Becoming the Person You Were Meant to Be: Where to Start
« Reply #3 on: November 07, 2009, 06:31:39 PM »
Hey Guys {Gals}!

I was so inspired by this article, had to share it.   I really absorbed what she wrote & immediately felt different, better.  Here's some of my favorite lines (including the one binks quoted):

"You have to make mistakes to find out who you aren't. You take the action, and the insight follows: You don't think your way into becoming yourself."

"I had to stop living unconsciously, as if I had all the time in the world."

"You can say no. No is a complete sentence."  This is my favorite line:  "NO IS A COMPLETE SENTENCE"  I kept repeating that to myself over & over!! :lol:

binks, as mentioned, this really grabbed me too:
Every single day I try to figure out something I no longer agree to do. You get to change your mind—your parents may have accidentally forgotten to mention this to you.  I'm still working to detach from NM emotionally and I think that is a huge part of what Anne Lamott discusses:  detachment.

Hey, CB:  I just ordered one of her books (forgot the title).  She sounds wonderful, celebrating all the muck & yuck of life & saying it's all normal & it's all OK.  Good to hear you've reached these stages, but not surprised because you're very evolved.

Hey, Ami, hope you're well.

Ami

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Re: Becoming the Person You Were Meant to Be: Where to Start
« Reply #4 on: November 08, 2009, 07:48:59 AM »
Doing well  ((Ann))). How about you?                               xxoo  Ami
No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.        Eleanor Roosevelt

Most of our problems come from losing contact with our instincts,with the age old wisdom stored within us.
   Carl Jung

CB123

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Re: Becoming the Person You Were Meant to Be: Where to Start
« Reply #5 on: November 08, 2009, 08:24:10 AM »
Ann,

I'd love to hear which of her books you are reading and what you think of it.  The first book I read by her was "Bird by Bird" which is a book about writing--but everything she says about writing is just as true about living life.  I inhaled her. 

Here's one of my favorite quotes:

Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people. It will keep you cramped and insane your whole life, and it is the main obstacle between you and a shitty first draft. I think perfectionism is based on the obsessive belief that if you run carefully enough, hitting each stepping-stone just right, you won't have to die. The truth is that you will die anyway and that a lot of people who aren't even looking at their feet are going to do a whole lot better than you, and have a lot more fun while they're doing it."

She uses a lot of imagery about dancing when she writes about life and that resonates with me.  I really see life as a dance...so many of us don't want to go out on the dance floor because we think we don't know the steps.  The fact is, dancing is just plain joyful and the steps come once we start.
CB
When they are older and telling their own children about their grandmother, they will be able to say that she stood in the storm, and when the wind did not blow her way -- and it surely has not -- she adjusted her sails.  Elizabeth Edwards 2010

ann3

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Re: Becoming the Person You Were Meant to Be: Where to Start
« Reply #6 on: November 08, 2009, 05:55:20 PM »
I think perfectionism is based on the obsessive belief that if you run carefully enough, hitting each stepping-stone just right, you won't have to die. The truth is that you will die anyway and that a lot of people who aren't even looking at their feet are going to do a whole lot better than you, and have a lot more fun while they're doing it.

I gotta read that.

I just ordered "Letting Go of the Person You Used to Be: Lessons on Change, Loss, and Spiritual Transformation" by Lama Surya Das .  It's supposed to be good.

So many books, so little time.