Living North Column

This question is so often asked by so many, suggesting that people assume there is a simple, plausible answer. Almost as if who we are, our identity is one fixed static concept. It is not! The first question to ask yourself is not “who am I?” as quite frankly that is irrelevant. What you ought to ask yourself is “who do I want to be”?  Maybe our actual focus should be on creating a more improved version of ourselves, someone better. The emphasis should not be on discovering who you are but rather on facilitating the emergence of what you would like to experience in your life. The irony is that the more you seek to identify who you are, the more fragile and insecure you are likely to feel about yourself. People often want to define themselves, to have an ideal image to portray to the world. We can spend our lives on self-analysis trying to find out what lies beneath our skin. We seek to fully understand what makes us who we are and how, exactly, our minds work, only to discover that our mind has a will of its own. It can trick us into thinking that…

We are all in the same boat, but we are all facing different weather. I am often asked, “what should I be doing with my life?". To those who ask, I say that becoming more self-aware is an act of courage, since most of the time, our thoughts and actions are on autopilot. The problem is, when we are on autopilot for so long, that we forget we are on autopilot. And when we are not aware of our own habits, routines, impulses, and reactions, then we no longer control them - they control us. It is easier to lead an unexamined life than to confront your own dark side.  It is easier to surrender to materialism or cynicism or a hundred different ways of ‘comfort living’ - even if that is unsatisfying and unfulfilling - than to face our own fears. If we really challenge ourselves, we are resisting the seduction of simpler paths. When we insist on finding out and declaring the truths that hold us firmly to the person we are, we set ourselves on the path to the person we can really be. So, to those who are willing to face some truths, I say: It’s…

“Don’t Tell me to be positive. Don’t tell me to love myself more. The more I try to ‘be present’, the more all-over-the-place my mind becomes. I just get lost in overthinking”, said Alice in one of my coaching sessions. When my father-in-law was diagnosed with an incurable illness earlier in the year, he felt fear, despair and ... an overwhelming pressure to stay upbeat. A challenge we all face in this new normal is the tsunami of people popping up all over social media and TV telling us to be positive. And on the basis of that very statement, we should all move forward with a big cheesy grin on our face as if everything is ‘just great’ in our world, seemingly because of said attitude. For most people that is so untrue. The ideology of positivity given birth by our optimistic American cousins and raised into adulthood by the ‘personal growth’ industry, is now a global phenomenon. For many, including new age warriors, 'being positive' has become the new way of telling someone to 'cheer up'. Of course, we know we should be cheerful. Of course, we have heard it a million times before. And it’s downright annoying…