0:02 I may fit in for you, but I no longer belong to myself. Brené Brown.
0:17 I heard her talking on something this week and she said that quote, and it just hit me
0:25 so deeply and it just made me think how much my life I've tried to be. Everybody
0:33 else, tried to fit in with everybody else. I'm a people pleaser And I spend my life so much trying
0:39 to conform to the way they think, simply because I think they'll like me more or I will feel less
0:47 uncomfortable.
0:53 But I may not fit in for you, but I no longer belong to myself. And on today's podcast,
1:00 discovering the real you,
1:03 overcoming expectations, and finding your true self. I'm going to talk about this topic. And I'm going going to look
1:10 about how much we're influenced by our parents and mentors and our friends, and all around us. We're going to
1:16 look at the peer pressure, we're going to look at the many masks we wear. And then finally, I'm going
1:22 to end with embracing our authentic self and who we really are and what that means for us. I'm going
1:28 to share a story about Albert Einstein and Jim Carrey, The way they
1:34 were really held back by this and how it changed them when they decided to be who they really were.
1:40 And I'm going to share my story a little bit about my foundations and what's important to me. And when
1:47 I go to what's important for me, that's where my passion lies. That's what makes me angry. That's what makes
1:53 me really come alive. That's what, if someone mentions those subjects to me, that's where I come alive. It's like,
2:00 yes, you're talking my language. And I feel at home at that point And you know those ad hoc conversations
2:07 where you don't expect that conversation and you just click. It could be a complete stranger. It could be just
2:13 a friend or it could be a family member that you never realised thought in a certain way, and suddenly
2:19 you have this conversation. It's like, oh wow, where did that come from? And you feel nourished and you feel
2:24 alive. That's what we're talking about on today's podcast, discovering the real you, overcoming
2:32 expectations, and finding your true self.
2:35 Welcome to Stillness in the Storms podcast. I'm Steven Webb, your host, and this podcast is here. I share my
2:41 experiences. I share different things. I haven't really got an amazing tagline, and it's just about seeing life a little
2:48 bit different and finding a little inner peace where you can. So there was a couple of anonymous coffees this
2:54 week, so I want to say thank you to them. Thank you to Audra and Mo, and thank you to
3:02 Trish, Andrea lisette and Joe, thank you guys. You are awesome. It makes a huge
3:09 difference. Um, anyway, let's get on with today's show who you really are that's that's all become
3:17 a little more authentic and genuine to our true selves. So first of all I want to go back to
3:24 that quote. I may fit in for you, but I no longer belong to myself Brené Brown
3:32 Why did that hit me so much I think it hit me because I spent so much of my life
3:37 pleasing other people trying to fit in. I was one of those ones at school where I got on with
3:44 a lot of people and there was those groups that were cooler than me.
3:50 The, you know, the female groups that I could never date, they were all much better looking than me. They
3:56 were all like with the in crowd. They were intelligent, and they were clever, and they were brilliant, and they
4:04 were very popular. I knew them. I got on well with them They would lend me their pen when I
4:09 got to a lesson, when I didn't have one. But I would never be that close to them And then
4:16 there was the other group that used to get in a lot of trouble and all that, but they seem
4:20 cooler People used to really like them and all that. I'm thinking about the boys in particular now. I was
4:25 kind of friends with them and I used to get in trouble with them a little bit, but never really
4:29 fitted in with them either. So whichever way I was like I, I could be a bit of a geek
4:34 I could be a bit of a troublemaker. I could also be whatever, and I was trying to be everybody
4:41 else. And I didn't realise I can remember at one point a friend of mine walked a little bit
4:49 funny and dragged his feet and I was like, I want to walk like that. I thought that was cool.
4:54 So I practiced walking, dragging my feet. I think I got in trouble at home for it. You know, it's
5:01 crazy how much we try to fit in. We think if we fit in we'll be a little more comfortable,
5:07 or they'll like us more, they'll love us more. They'll accept us more But we try to change who we
5:13 genuinely are instead of trying to find out who we really are. And when I say find out who we
5:20 really are, I mean, what is it that drives you? What is it that drives me? What? What is that
5:26 passion deep inside that makes you come alive when that topic comes up? When you could be half asleep and
5:34 someone mentions it and it's like, this is me This is my moment. This is, you know, I know about
5:41 this, and you just come alive about it. And it's really difficult because very often we're in situations
5:49 where we're trying to drive it towards what we're passionate about, but instead we're trying to fit in and we're
5:56 just trying to go towards them rather than, and it is so difficult. It's so hard. It's so much hard
6:03 work being everybody else you know what seven billion people are live now Not one of them are like me.
6:11 And trying to be every single one of them was just way too hard work. Okay. I want everybody, but
6:17 I said certainly certainly give it a fair crack to be a lot of people, and it was just tiring
6:23 and I would be caught out because it wouldn't be genuine. It's like when you lie and then you've got
6:30 to have a really good memory when you're trying to be Like other people, the mask falls off
6:38 and you see it with other people, don't you? When the mask falls off. But it does. It doesn't mean
6:43 they're not being genuine. It means sometimes when we don't feel like we're fitting in there's nothing wrong with, I
6:51 suppose, changing and being open-minded to change for the sake of.
6:58 You know being so rigid. This is my only identity and I won't change, or when it's a fluid identity.
7:06 You know, you move with your life. I get that. And I'm not saying you cannot be and change, but
7:13 what I'm saying is it's when we're trying to fit in so much with things that we don't even enjoy,
7:20 we might, we might even choose a project because a friend's doing it and because we like that friend
7:27 and we we say yes to it because we think we'll fit in better, but we don't give it our
7:35 100% all because we're not enjoying it. And we do all that all the time I'm a yes person. I'm
7:41 learning to say no and A lot more what I say yes to now, which is a wonderful gift for
7:47 my current role going into my new role, is that I've got so many opportunities that I can now say
7:54 yes to. The things that really drive me passionately, the things that are so important to me, and then
8:02 I don't feel like I'm working, I don't feel like I'm doing anything because it's, it's what genuinely drives me,
8:08 our mentors, and our Parents and our friends, they so steer us when
8:15 we're children. When we're born, we're a blank canvas and everybody's giving us their colours. You know, let's take the
8:23 metaphor of a blank canvas. You know, our parents give us their favourite colours. You're no good at math, so
8:29 have this, you know, nobody in our family was any good at mass. Well, you know, that's an opinion. There's
8:37 no reason why I might not be good at mass. Well, if you tell me nobody in our family is
8:42 good at it, I'm not going to study it. I'm going to believe I'm no good at it, so that
8:47 I'm, that's going to become true.
8:49 If they say there's no artist or anybody creative in our family. Well, that's an opinion of a parent. Doesn't
8:56 mean it's true for me, doesn't mean it's true for you or your children. But that's what we do all
9:03 the time, don't we? We allow our family's identity what we believe is in the blood to influence what we
9:10 do and what we don't do, so therefore it becomes true.
9:16 And that's very, very true when it comes to talent. We think we've got this born talent, but
9:24 the truth be known, there isn't a born talent. It's whatever you work at, you become good at you know
9:31 If you put hours and hours into anything, you'll become good at it. So if your parents tell you you're
9:38 no good at the creative and you don't do it well, it's going to be true. And that's how our
9:45 parents shape us you know Albert Einstein had the same problem with his, you know, this is crazy. Albert Einstein's
9:53 parents wanted him to do a certain kind of science, and they said, no, you don't want to get into
9:58 physics. You don't want to do that. Don't go to that university. And it wasn't his passion. So he ended
10:04 up dropping out. He failed his exams, and even going to the next university, he failed the entrance exam
10:12 Because it wasn't his passion. It was what his parents were choosing for him. And then when he did find
10:19 his passion, well, you know the rest e equals mc squared Don't ask me to explain it. I have no
10:25 idea. It's something to do is putting an atom and making a fizzy drink.
10:32 I've seen the film, but
10:36 yeah, the peer pressure is crazy for us to fit in And I understand why. You know, if you're fitting
10:42 in and then you feel like you're, it's more comfortable, you feel like it's more genuine and you feel like
10:49 you find your tribe and you find your niche and you find your,
10:53 and like I said, it's very fluid moving between these different things. What you fit in within the morning may
11:00 not be what you fit in within the evening. You know, I don't always like the same
11:05 genre of movie you know If I'm with a friend, I like comedy. I don't like comedy by myself am
11:12 I being ungenuine when I say, well, I don't like comedy if I was it's what I enjoy, what I
11:17 like doing. But very often we'll bend, won't we? And I can remember even as a teenager and even an
11:25 older one, when I'd start dating a new girlfriend or something like that They would say, oh, what's your favourite
11:30 kind of movie? And I would say, well, I like this, this, and this. And then they would say something
11:35 I go yeah, I agree with you. Yeah. Well, when I said I like that, that's not entirely true it's
11:41 like, what was I doing? I feared, not being liked I
11:48 may as well turn around and go, well, what's your hobbies? Yeah, I do the same as that. And it's
11:52 complete bs, isn't it? But that's what we do and we do it so subconsciously because in evolutionary terms and
11:59 psychological terms, it makes sense to fit in. It feels awful, not fitting in, and school is
12:07 terrible for it. School is all about the fitting in, you know, school is it's mental how we look at
12:15 school. So take this scenario, you, you have a playground where very often between a hundred or a thousand
12:23 children are in a playground. They're all going through all kinds of things in their home life. They're going through
12:30 all kinds of changes. They're learning about all different things. Their minds are expanding, their emotions are everywhere. They're
12:38 learning this whole thing called life and human and all these things And yet we expect them all to get
12:45 on and play and be really, really good. And teachers can't even get on in the staff room. You know,
12:52 they form groups, they, you know, they have all kinds of trouble, not knocking teachers there, but I'm just saying
12:58 how ridiculous it is when we expect everybody just to conform and be good and fit in the groups. It's
13:05 complicated and hard work to be anything other than what you are and
13:13 You imagine if there was some kind of way in school where we could find out who our true self
13:19 is and we write down what's truly important to us, what's really passionate, our foundations, and then we could be
13:26 put in that group. Oh
13:29 boy, you watch how much we fly, how well we do, how much we grow our wings, because I know
13:35 when I found what I find passionate about I I don't have to be motivated to do it. I'm
13:43 there. You know, I love helping people. I love reducing suffering, and I don't mind how that happens,
13:50 whether it's through politics, whether it's through the podcast or anything. It makes me come alive when someone says, you
13:58 help me out. You changed my life. You give me a little more inner peace It's like, wow, okay. I
14:04 want to run from it because I'm like, what can I do next time you know That that fear of
14:10 showing up and having the spotlight on me is terrifying, but I think that's part of being genuine, right?
14:19 Wouldn't that be, wouldn't you be non-genuine if it didn't frighten you? If
14:25 you didn't have that fear of letting people down, then you're on the wrong track. If you don't, if you're
14:32 doing something in your job And like, you're a decorator there's there's just pick on decorators for a moment. And
14:40 not really, I don't mean it. Um, but if you're a decorator and you don't care whether that person is
14:46 happy with your decorator or not you're in the wrong job. So of course they care that they must paint
14:52 a house and then come back and they say, you've done an amazing job. It's incredible. If they're, if they're
14:58 like, yeah, that was dead easy. I can do that. I can do that all day every day. Then it's
15:03 not Maybe it's not that genuine. You know, there's there's a fine line between confidence and
15:10 cockiness. I suppose.
15:13 I'm going a bit off topic, but I always do that, don't I? So let's bring it back to the
15:17 many masks we wear, and that comes down to I'm just saying about a painter and decorator. You know on
15:24 a normal day, we're a parent, we're a friend, we're, um, a friend to ourself. We might be a doctor,
15:31 we might be a nurse You
15:34 know, we're a driver. We're all these things, you know, the phone goes and we go to, I'm now a
15:40 daughter or a son. Um, you know, I'm not talking about changing sexes while you're on the phone. I'm just
15:47 saying you, you might be a female and you might be the daughter when your mum phones, or you might
15:54 be that person that is offering advice about health or something like that to a friend that's phoning up. So
16:00 we change our many roles But what's really important is that we have that foundation of what's below us, who
16:08 we genuinely are, what's really important to us, and bring that to the role rather than trying to do the
16:15 role based on how people think you should do it. You know what's really important to me? Independence. A
16:23 person's independence. I'm so passionate about that. A person, if they can make their own decisions in life, they should
16:31 be able to do it Being paralysed or being, having something wrong with them, which is, in my case, I'm
16:38 paralysed and someone coming along and saying I should and should not do things when they have all the choice
16:45 of doing those things because they're able-bodied How dare they say to me that, well you've got to be in
16:50 bed by a certain time. You've got to do this by a certain time and things like that. Just because
16:54 I'm paralysed. No, I'm sorry. That's not the way the world should work. The world should work around
17:02 our disabilities, around our, um, things that we find difficult, whether it's mental, whether it's, um, disabilities
17:10 or whatever, but we don't, we conform the world to the, the ideal able-bodied person,
17:18 the ideal. Normal person in that quote, and everyone else should adapt to
17:25 try to be there as close as possible. And it doesn't work like that. And that's why we feel so
17:30 incongruent most of the time. That's why our actions are not fitting our thoughts or our feelings.
17:37 And that's why there's so much mental health maybe it's the fact that we're asked to do things that we're
17:45 not really comfortable with doing We're not really authentically comfortable with it, or we're feeling something different to our
17:52 actions or our thoughts. You imagine when all those things line up, so your thoughts and your actions
18:00 and your feelings line up as one, and you feel congruent and you feel alive, you know?
18:08 We're not talking about riches and money. We're not talking about all those other things. We're just talking about being
18:14 in a situation where everything just aligns. What you're doing is what you enjoy is what you're passionate about is
18:21 what is important to you, and what you're thinking is what you like thinking. You know that ad hoc
18:28 conversation I mentioned earlier that you don't expect to have and suddenly you have this conversation And it could be
18:35 a complete stranger in a tea room over a cup of tea as us British people do. You
18:42 know? So how do you embrace this authentic self? It's really about sitting down and really getting
18:50 to grips with what's important to you, what makes you feel comfortable, what do you enjoy doing? It's as simple
18:58 as that. And
19:00 you can do a simple exercise of a gratitude and reflection exercise in the morning and night.
19:08 So in the morning you can have a gratitude exercise. So you pick three things that you're grateful for that
19:14 day that's going to happen, or things you have, and a reflection on how you bring an
19:22 authentic, genuine, true self to that day and those things. So if you're a deeply caring person, how does that
19:30 person show up caring in this situation It might be an awkward family barbecue but if you're deeply caring
19:37 and it's not normally goes that way at a family barbecue, how do you show up as that deeply caring
19:43 person at the barbecue If you're open-minded and wise, or if you're the funny one, or how do you show
19:51 up as that of the barbecue so you feel genuine rather than trying to show up as the person they
19:57 think you are, the person you've been labeled all your life. Imagine that. Imagine showing up as you really are,
20:06 and then the practice in the evening would be grateful for three things that happened that day, and how did
20:13 you show up genuinely as your true self.
20:20 I, hopefully that helps. Hopefully it gives you some thoughts on who you really are, what's really important to you,
20:27 and if you want to carry on this topic Maybe I can do a second podcast that spells out the
20:33 actual practices and how we do it and why it's important. And we can do exercises that helps us
20:41 discover simon sinnet says it in a similar way is discover your why and
20:48 it's so important. You've only got one life. You've got one life. Do it your way from, do the actions
20:56 that you want to do. I know it's difficult We're living through a time where money is fundamentally important. We've
21:04 got a capitalist system that is genuinely unfair. We've got a health crisis on our hands. We've got a cost
21:11 of living crisis. We've got all these things. So it's really difficult when you're working and when you're doing these
21:17 things to do what you truly want to do. I'm not saying give up your job and suddenly going to
21:24 all the world. If that's in your blood and all that But I'm saying read the books that you feel
21:29 genuine about. Listen to the podcast that resonate. Have the conversations with friends. You know, if you are
21:37 doing a job, how do you show up as you doing that job as opposed to somebody else doing the
21:43 job You know, you may be a carer and you may be a really well-organized carer How do you, how
21:50 do you show up as A deeper caring, kindness carer, a wise carer, you know, I don't know, whatever. Whatever
21:58 really, really floats your boat, I suppose. Whatever really makes you feel genuine. How do you do
22:06 it?
22:07 It's really, it's really quite difficult. It's, I spent a lifetime trying to find it and I think, I think
22:15 I found it.
22:16 What, what bugs me What is really important? What injustices do I feel? That's where it's really important. What challenges
22:24 do I enjoy doing? Do I never tire or run away from, you
22:30 know, that's where your passion is. That's where your gift is. That's where your joy is. That's where your inner
22:34 peace is. You know, you have this one life imagine getting to the end of your life, and they said,
22:40 yeah, you never really did find what Um really drove you. And I'm not saying there's one particular thing this
22:47 changes through your life. Don't think that you'll get to, you've got this one single purpose and you've got to
22:54 find it. You've got to turn over every haystack. You've got to look in every part of the world to
23:00 find this one action that you need to do in your life, because Destiny has told you that. No, I
23:06 think that's bs I think it changes. It depends on how you're feeling. It depends on what's happening at that
23:13 time. I, I don't think you've got a single purpose. I think your purpose is to be true to yourself
23:18 at any given time. There you go. There's your purpose on the fly. Your purpose is to be genuinely
23:26 to your true self and show up as that at any given time And
23:33 that can change as you get wiser. If you're a wise person, that will change over your life. That will
23:39 grow and it will deepen and it'll, and it'll have a bigger impact and effect on you.
23:47 That, thank you all those that support this podcast. Thank you for listening. Thank you to anybody that gives a
23:53 review. You guys are awesome. These podcasts are really starting to Help people. I think, um,
24:00 if it helps you, that's awesome. You know, and thank you to the ones that treat me to a coffee.
24:07 It makes a big difference. It enables me to get more podcasts Out there for the simple fact I can
24:14 get it edited by somebody else because that's not my passion editing. It really isn't. I don't
24:22 like doing it and it takes hours and it's just a nightmare for me. So you could really you ease
24:28 the burden on my life. If you can help me to get someone else to edit my podcast, if you
24:34 go to thankyousteven.com Take care. You're awesome and I love you.
