Be yourself – just better

I detect that most if not some of us are hard-wired in sensing energy levels of environments, particularly from people who we meet, whether its a stranger, an affiliate, some one who knew from the past or those who we meet and converse with on daily basis.

Energy in broad terms can be used to indicate i) type of energy typically positive or negative and ii)level of energy .

On at least 2 different occasions, 2 different people indicated how my energy level shifted from high to low; when I talk about sports and health related issues compared to when I talk about my career. Sounds familiar? Psychology can help us understand ourselves better with just this example. Knowing and understanding the sciences of behaviour gives us better advantage at different levels of what we are pursuing professionally and other wise.

For most of us, we use intuition to assess a situation where we are in, to effect our judgement, action and speech. Speakers and academicians apply it all the time without , perhaps, knowing its sciences. Theoretically speaking,  that gut feeling or hunch, serves as a radar to our behaviour. Lufityanto, G., Donkin, C., & Pearson, J.  (2016) in their publication Measuring Intuition: Nonconscious Emotional Information Boosts Decision Accuracy and Confidence. Psychological Science mentioned : “the ability to quantitatively measure intuition could be a boon to many different fields, especially when it comes to workplace hiring: “This could be applied in the workplace, taking the place of existing questionnaires which really only test people’s opinions about their own feelings of intuition. We do have intuition and we can measure it scientifically.””

 

 

If you have or are watching The Mentalist, you can immediately correlate the method used by Patrick Jane (Simon Baker) when helping solve a murder case. He typically uses (as defined in the opening credits) mental acuity, hypnosis and/or suggestion. As a regular watcher, I see his mental sharpness comes with repeated accurate gut feelings which were proven correct.

 

Back to the initial example I was sharing, I couldn’t fake the obvious when on 2 different occasions, similar feedback was given regarding my energy level. Whether or not this person knows me well, my energy level was a give away, and acted as a trigger to this person’s hunch. By reason, this person might or might not know the different areas of my interest. By hunch, this person I was talking to was on point. ‘I can’t fake it’ was my blunt and honest reaction.

The lesson is this. Do not be afraid to show your true selves, in fact BE yourself no matter what you do. You are who you are because of the values and principles that you believe and hold on to, and not as merely an external reaction ‘just’ to show others that you are great/noble/perfect etc. BE YOURSELF. Success comes easier in the things that are closer to you in value and principle.

***

Someone falls to pieces
Sleeping all alone
Someone kills the pain
Spinning in the silence
To finally drift away
Someone gets excited
In a chapel yard
Catches a bouquet
Another lays a dozen
White roses on a grave

To be yourself is all that you can do
To be yourself is all that you can do

***

The above the opening lyrics to Audioslave’s ‘Be Yourself’.

Ain’t it easier just to be innately yourself, then pretending to be somebody else? The following conflict that this may cause (in case we pretend to be some one who we are not), can be severe. Some to the point of not having life goals just because we never learnt how to say ‘No’. The ‘Yes’es were obligatory to make others happy. Than what? We do not have a sense of purpose and direction, and will find it hard to make decisions.

As we progress through the phases in life, naturally we assume bigger and important responsibilities. No one is there to coach or ‘mummy’ and tell us what to do, what not to do, what’s good and vice versae. It is fine if we do ‘discover’ ourselves much later in life. But more importantly, we understand the essence of being ourselves, and not just reacting to our environment, trying to ‘fit’ in into something which doesn’t give us life pleasure. In simple words, don’t fake it. Be yourself, just better.

 

You may relate to my words based on your own experience. You know we have all done mistakes in the past. We learn from them. We move on. We get on with our lives. We do not pacify the role of legacies which our mothers or children will NOT be proud of, but we know we are only humans who are prone to mistakes especially during life phases where we are either too adventurous and see life as a lab for us to test different experiments, AND/OR when we were mostly unguided and easily influenced.

If you are a parent, realise that if you want to better your family’s well-being,situation and relationship, each family members play a role. In your case, it begins with you. Have a higher purpose, recalibrate your goals and purpose if needed, have more compassion and warmth — and hopefully with that all will fall unto place just like the rain droplets rolling down an opened umbrella.

 

If you are an employer, a manager, its important to know and be yourself, and align that with the vision of your organisation. Most likely they are all for the greater good. Be humane in your actions and words. Employees are not machines. They have their values and principles which you need to respect.

The writer is a mother of two, wife,triathlete and an adventurer of life. Life is a series of explorations to achieve a higher goal unlimited to the worldly life span but beyond.