‘Just be yourself’ – the advice you get when nervous, fearful, anxious about something your attending. Good advice, but who is that self? How can we find that me to be? I’ve come to realise, through personal experience, and through working closely with others on this very thing – that when I recommend taking time for oneself, many of us are not sure how to really do this.
How long has it been (I hope it was in the recent holidays) since you have gone on holiday and let go of the ‘doing’ and instead basked in the sweet moment to moment? After some time, you say “ahh, I feel like myself again” – That comfort, that settling, that content feeling of connection. There’s nothing like it right?
So how do we lose sight of that once back in the world? How come we just touch on it like some other reality and live mainly in the land of ‘who am I?’
We need to take time to keep that connection / or make that connection. Essentially by listening – to your own soul self. That inner 
space, heard through the silence of the heart. Create a connection there. That connection is seeded through love for yourself. Compassion is the seed of permission to love, permission to be you.
Set aside, just for now, the need to become someone better, become richer, become an improved version of yourself. Instead, make time to reach for yourself, to find that inner quiet. ‘The secret is, don’t discover yourself, don’t transform yourself and don’t recreate yourself. Nurture yourself and see what you become’ Siri Atma Singh.
I think our biggest crisis issue is not that we aren’t achieving, it’s that we lose sight of who we already are and have always been. When we lose touch with that, we run the risk of acting in ways that are not in line with our truth, (no one else’s, just our own) and we resent that. It’s hard to be positive and confident when you know deep down you can’t rely on yourself. And if you can’t rely on yourself, how can you trust others?
It’s the beginning of a new year, and I invite you – after settling into YOU a little more through the holidays – to focus on setting new year intentions on BEing you rather than becoming something. Set intentions around building on a life FOR YOU. Yogi Bhajan said that ‘the universe is ready to serve you, if you can just be you‘.
Make plans to create a life that more closely reflects your most content connected self. Perhaps look out for a job that is more in line with you; a home environment that is more nurturing for you; friends and activities that are more closely aligned with your own conscience. An intention is an honouring of oneself. It doesn’t matter when or how that may play out.
I’d also like to recommend a beautiful meditation, recommended by Shiv Charan Singh for this time as a daily practice. A breath meditation for 2015 for opening the inner heart and sharing the fluid light of compassion with the world. Check it out here.