You can be whoever you want to be

Yes You Can

Sometimes it feels like you’re stuck. Corralled by your past, your job, your family, or your nature. The possibilities that light childhood and set adolescence aflame have dimmed. The horizon, so vast and inviting as a college student, has narrowed, the path now treacherous, with steep, ragged cliffs and perilous, dark forests. You have become the person who you will always be. You are carrying too much baggage now to change course or – god forbid – turn back. And so, with a sense of duty, or of powerlessness, you continue, the path ever more narrow, the light of the sun shining more briefly each day.

I suppose, for those who attain a path of self-actualization early in life, that this scenario is unfamiliar. But for everyone else in the world, you have surely, at one time or another, felt the sense of limitation creeping into your world. Where once the confidence to conquer all filled your heart with fire, the realities of unrealized dreams, broken hearts, and the weight of life’s responsibilities conspire to douse the flames of your soul.

But this blackening is not inevitable. The flames of our souls should never go out. Though they may flicker, and life can bring hardship or even just the somberness of routine, that is not the end of the story. The truth is, this world, and each of our lives, is whatever we make it.

Old habits are hard to break, it’s true. Egos are fragile things. And fulfillment is not something attained with ease. Like most things worth having – or feeling – self actualization takes work. It takes time to think, to consider your own dreams, to clearly determine your goals, and to chart a path of attaining them. And then years, or even decades, of constant, endless, effort to realize those goals.

The wonderful thing is that no matter who you are or how old you are, or where your are in your life’s journey, each of us has the power to be exactly the person we want to be. Artist, entrepreneur, activist, cook, cat-burglar, preacher, lawyer, teacher, husband, wife, mechanic, mathematician, welder, plumber, writer, blogger, yogi, freak, fighter, or anything else, all these roles are achievable!

You can be who you want to be!

It doesn’t matter who you’ve been up until now. If you once were tough, but you want to be sensitive; Bitter, but you want to be open; mean, but you want to be nice; lazy, but you want to be diligent; afraid but you want to be brave; selfish, but you want to be selfless; poor but you want to be rich – it doesn’t matter! It may take work, it will be a challenge, it might seem impossible. But there is no doubt, that the potential inside each of us is so grand, so astronomical that it often takes only a small – but consistent! – change to set us on a path towards actualization of our dreams.

Take a moment today, think of just one single thing that you once wished or dreamed of being or doing in your life, great or small. Something that maybe you had set aside as just a dream, but that still resonates in your heart. And when you think of it, remember this truth – you can be that person, you can achieve that goal. It will take a personal realiztion deep inside, and an unfailing committment, but it is absolutely yours if you choose. It will take work, focus, discipline, and sacrifice. But if it is truly worth it to you, I have no doubt – and neither should you – that you can be that person in your mind.  You can be whoever you want to be.