I'm not who you think I am
Our minds are so beautiful. They want to know. They want to break things down. They want to understand. Our ego wants to understand.
When we see what other people are acting like, we immediately find a way to approve or disapprove, by translating our so-far experiences into theirs.
“I am so smart and complicated that I know all you are going through, all your needs, and all your desires,” we subconsciously tell others.
And so we rush to conclusions.
As for me: Guilty as charged.
When nothing goes right, go left
My life in Costa Rica has truly brought to my attention how judgmental and subjective people are. Beginning with myself.
Too many times have I been proven wrong. I’d meet new people on a weekly basis here, and over and over again would I get the wrong first impression.
By the end of every week, I’d be surprised by the deep and life-changing conversations I’d have with exactly the people that I initially misjudged as too shallow a few days before.
I’d find myself putting everyone into boxes, labelling everyone in a way that was convenient; egoistically claiming in this way that “my 26 years on this Earth have given me the knowledge and intuition to categorize everyone and everything under notions that make sense to me – and these notions are right.”
We love to be right, don’t we?
Well, Costa Rica has taught me a lot of lessons, the first of which being that right and wrong are manmade concepts.
And, in the same way, there is nothing right or nothing wrong with my subconscious preconceptions.
If anything, these are what helps humans survive. These are what makes the human brain so practical and admirable.
But the awareness that we are constantly doing this... The understanding that we use ideas that make sense to us in order to make sense of other, different ideas... The mindfulness in how we are triggered by other people and how we trigger other people... That’s what brings everything to a whole new level.
Our Unreal Realities
The fact is: Each and every one of us has constructed a reality they accept to be right. And there’s nothing wrong with that.
Most of us are brought up in a way that whatever challenges our beliefs has got to be not right. And that’s where it starts to get complicated.
If I start calling the different “wrong”, I’m automatically closing myself from the possibility of expanding the world that I know. And, subsequently, I’m closing myself from the possibility of expanding my potential. I’m narrowing down my possibilities.
Also crucially, I’m narrowing down other people’s possibilities. Because I’m adding to the Fear.
If we keep suppressing what's different, more taboos are created, less innovation is allowed, more backwards we go.
Be an encourager, not a critic
Please, choose Love over Fear. Start telling people what they can do rather than what they cannot. Start telling yourself what you can do rather than what you cannot.
Be open to the idea that there is more than what we learnt at school. Be open to the idea that your reality is only one reality, and only part of it is relevant to other people. And be open to the idea that other people’s reality might only partially be relevant with your values.
Words do not mean the same thing for everyone. Values are understood differently by people with the same background; imagine what happens with people that have had completely different influences than yours in their lives.
Which brings me to how I’m not who you think I am.
I cannot be who you think I am, because clearly you have not been what I have been through, and simply you do not see the world through my eyes. Or through my mind. Or through my Heart.
I know that you are not who I think you are.
We are all so much more. More than our boxes, more than our labels. More than what we’ve been telling ourselves again and again and again and again that we are.
We are so much more. And we are Beauty. Irreplaceable Beauty.
We are One
I’ve been teaching myself how to be open, how to choose Love, how to embrace Beauty. It's an everyday practice.
And I’ve learnt what it really means to be present. Which is the same as finding Peace. Which is Yoga.
En gros, Yoga is defined in the Yoga Sutras as calming the fluctuations of the mind down.
That is why I keep repeating that Yoga, rather than just the physical aspect, is more of a way of life.
Even if you don't know it, I’m sure you have found Yoga at a point in your life. A sense of comfort, a faith in your wholeness, a moment of utter security, oneness.
You definitely would not have felt that, had you been living in memories imprinted by your past or had you been obsessing over how the pieces of your puzzle should come together in the future.
So just be
And here’s one final thing I’ve learnt: Life knows better than us what’s better for us.
If you are 100% here and now, you are able to see all the doors opening, and you are able to invest your Heart and Soul into what you are called to be at the current moment.
“Life is what happens to us while we are too busy making other plans.”
I never planned to come to Costa Rica. Life brought me here. I was open to learn. I learnt. I am learning. There is definitely so much more to learn.
But life is now taking me back to Europe. Again, all I did was be present and give my best to what life brought to me without me intentionally planning it. At least not in this way.
This is how it is. This is how it should have been. This is how it should be.
I’m no longer depleting myself in my attempts to change everything that comes my way. I’m investing myself in doing the best out of everything that comes. I’m using my resources to help the changes be of benefit. I’m choosing to thrive under whatever circumstances and I'm choosing to lead by example.
Join me.
