Gear up to build the Best ‘You’!

“No one will ever know you better than yourself. No one should have the power to define you more than yourself. Seeking approval from others allows them dominion over your identity. Focus on your relationship with yourself and what you need to improve from the situation you are in. No one knows what is best for you better than you. There is a lot of awesomeness hiding inside. All you have to do is explore.”  – from the book, ‘Unlearn’ by Humble the Poet! Since a week I have been listening to this audiobook, ‘Unlearn – by Humble the Poet’ and I am amazed with the simplicity in which the author has explained every truthful fact of life in utmost detail with brief chapters and every line has struck a chord to my heart. It is a must read and I am so fascinated by the book, I will be quoting the best lines that stuck to my mind in this blog for the benefit of the readers.

PS: This blog is in continuation with my earlier blog, ‘The focal point of your life – You!’ – I hope to set the tone and direction with this current blog underlining the importance of building your connection and relationship with your own self and creating the best version of you!

The longest relationship we will ever have in this world is with our own selves. At every phase of life, we have relationships – parents, grandparents, friends, spouse, other relatives etc but having the right boundary to blend ourselves with them is the key. If we go on changing ourselves to their needs, we will not be the best version of ourselves, which only we are aware of. The only best hero to play the role of you, is you yourself, nobody else can and if we play their version of ourselves, we will never be happy – we will be no less than puppets, handing our control in their hands. Never do that!

Like I reiterated in my earlier blog, I am not here to say ‘Give up all and rebel’. Just underlining the fact that with all the chaos, multiple roles of relationships, you can still be your best version, do things for yourself, be emotionally strong, capable and be the best you can be! It is not hard to focus on yourself and take care of yourself. Humble the poet says – ‘Putting yourself first is an act of survival. We can all easily drain ourselves trying to accommodate the whims of others. We can spend our entire life trying to make other people happy, and realize we have no life left for ourselves.’

My biggest learning has been during my solo trip when I met the 80-year-old Octogenarian. Learning from her life experiences so far, I have understood what life can be at each phase with your relationships and needs but in the whole process not to lose your individuality. When you are young, your parents become your everything – guide, support, friend etc. When you become an adult, you work on building a career, get married, have kids, look after their needs while yours take a backseat. When they grow up, the leave your nest for their careers and living leaving you alone and then you dwell on thoughts on what to do with life at the stage of old age which fills you with loneliness.

We must learn this truth that come what may, we must be our own best friend, our own guide. Too much dependence on others will result in losing yourself in the process – you lose your individuality, your decision-making strength, your voice, your story and most importantly, the true ‘you.’ The bitter truth of life is death for sure, and it will come to all of us but learning to make the best of our own lives, building ourselves in the best manner and making a life worth living and worth remembering is all in our hands. We face different hardships in life with relationships from separation to heartbreaks to grieving loss of our loved ones to death to changes in behaviour of our loved ones etc and in all this – when our self is entangled to the other person, then holding ourselves, lifting ourselves up, filling our empty selves back with self-love, healing from the trauma etc becomes a long process. It is painful at first and eventually when we say – ‘Time heals’ it is in our capacity to bring ourselves out of this trauma and build ourselves back because eventually our life must go on as well till, we near our end.

It is never difficult to take care of ourselves. Knowing ourselves first is the first step to building your best self. Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) outlines a key methodology called ‘Neurological Alignment’ that was adopted by Robert Dilts. It is a very simple and effective model to gain an understanding of ourselves and how we can choose to act or react in a specific context. See the details below-

Since the start of 2023 due to some unforeseen events that happened, my life took a huge turn and brought about some harsh truths about family and relationships. It still gives me goosebumps to think of those events and writing them down brings shivers to my spine so I am just going to summarize my thought process during those times. It was extremely difficult at first – I found everything scary, difficult, end of road kind of situations. I was very anxious, depressed, felt like I lost myself in the whole process of loving my people who turned out to be toxic later. I became so vulnerable, I had panic attacks for the first time, I used to cry the moment someone asked me if I was okay. If I must picturize this situation, it was like I am on a ship in the middle of the sea on a stormy dark night. The waves hitting so hard that I am not able to hold myself against the handles neither is my ship getting stable. I am being thrown up and down, the cold water thrashing on me and inside the ship, pushing me to the floor of the ship and I am all alone facing this. I see my people standing at the shore, calling out my name, waving to me, but they are just spectators to my situation. It almost felt like I had to handle this all by myself and I had to be strong during this stormy situation and only I could do this and bounce back after it recedes. I did reach out to my brother, some of my friends who have faced such issues – they gave me an assurance that things will be fine but at that situation I felt everything was breaking including myself. Till this day, I have not found a closure to those situations but the most important learning was how I handled myself and how in the current state, I try my best to not let those things or people affect me in any manner. Like Haruki Murakami mentioned once in his book, “Emotional hurt makes you independent”. Guess that is what came of me!

It has been a tough journey and a great awakening to find my true self here and there is surely no U-turn to go back but even amid my thoughts pushing me to the past and bringing all the ‘whys’ to my head (since I never found a closure to those times), I try my best to not step back to the same dirt I was put in before because currently my peace and my individuality matters the most to me.

How does one get back to the true self or embrace the true you or stand for one self – with all my learnings from my hardships, I am listing down the best practices for each of you to choose, practice and adapt little by little to your daily lives and build yourself strong and best so that you never lose even an inch of your sound mind or soul to situations or people, come what may.

1. Use the neurological alignment chart above and jot down details on your identity, your beliefs, your values, your capabilities. Remember knowing yourself makes all the difference.  
2. Embrace yourself – with your strengths, with your flaws – everyone has flaws of their own and that’s alright. Be less critical about yourself. The world is enough a critic to us pointing fingers and telling us what we lack, what we don’t do, what we wronged etc but stay true to yourself and accept your flaws. It is okay to be flawed and yet our true self.
3. Self-talk is important. What you tell yourself is very important. The dialogues, the adjectives, words you use. The more negative you speak (even if it is funny – like I look fat etc), the more adverse impact it can have on you. Remember to have a good self-talk – push yourself hard, tell yourself you are best, like the Bollywood actor and heart throb, Shahrukh Khan mentions – “I keep telling myself that I am the best. This way it helps me push myself to do best every day.”
4. Listen to your gut feeling and act on it. That inner voice of yours never lies. On a separate note, just remembered the recent advertisement of Pepsi Co that I found best – Though it is hyped up with the top actors and actresses promoting – the underlining motive stands out. The ad has this line – ‘Listen to everyone but do what you want.’ We will have everyone advising something or the other, but it is for us to decide what we choose to do. This way you take charge of decisions of your own life. You begin to trust yourself when things are in your control. If it worked out, you succeed and can bank on yourself and if it did not work out, you learn a lesson that adds up to your experience quotient. Why give the key of your car/life to someone else to drive it? You should drive it yourself, in ways you know best.
5. Be open minded. Be open to learning – There is no age for learning. Learning opens your mind to bigger perspectives, upgrades your skills, makes you adaptive and agile which is good. Learning allows you to get rid of rigidity. Remember the world is changing every day, when you learn you build the knowledge and experiences for yourself that will help you grow and help you in those situations that you may encounter in the future. So, keep learning, keep growing!
6. Remember nothing comes easy. This life is not for you to juggle just your career and fulfil others’ needs over your own. If you can give time to your favourite people, why is it hard to give time to yourself? Sleep and rest are good but true happiness comes at the cost of giving up these things. Achievement of goals and adding true value to yourself comes at the cost of giving up leisure. Do something out of your comfort zone that gives you a sense of fulfilment and puts you on a high. An apt sentence I came across – ‘When you pave your own road – there’s less traffic’
7. Do things that you love and make you happy. Start small. It could be painting, dancing, writing, going to the gym or swimming, cycling etc – take time for the things you love – even if it means a good 15 minutes daily – it makes a great deal to building you. Like I work on my blogs, go out cycling for 20 minutes daily, tender my plants etc and all of this makes me happy. Just think – when you give time to others, you are doing their stuffs right, same way when you give time to yourself – do your stuffs – it makes you happy and worthwhile. Go get some sunshine, work out, buy yourself roses if you love them (my friend does and she happily proclaims it and I found this really cute that I did the same). Everyone has the same 24 hours a day but how and on what you spend and on whom you spend is in your hands.
8. The best quote I have read on self-love – ‘Discipline is the strongest form of self-love’. When you discipline yourself with the schedule you create, with the things you do, you are in turn moulding yourself to be the best version and trust me, it is a great feeling.
9. Action on things you plan and execute them. All talks and no work do not take you anywhere. Instead, stop talking and start doing. Only when you do will you overcome your fears and will understand if a certain thing worked for you or no.
10. Believe in the divine force, the Universe. Connect to spirituality. You do not have to focus on your own religion or a certain religion or a certain Godly figure to do things or believe in somethings, you can connect to ideas that connect to your soul strongly and that makes you spiritual too.
11. Prioritize your self-respect – Do not lose yourself in the relationships around you – Remember, you are with them because of who you are and not what you should become because of them. Maintain your emotional boundaries. When you don’t find the other person respecting you or your space, walk out of such relationships for your own peace and sanity. Humble the poet says – ‘Everyone is bound to break promises, it is up to you how you want to hold onto yourself and stay strong’.
12. Speak for yourself – be it in your personal life when you have to take stand for yourself if you are right, or in your professional life, when your work performance is evaluated – remember, not even your boss can do justice by speaking of your performance – you have to speak for your own work and give every details even if it means you are boasting because no one knows the pain or struggles you went through to complete a project within the deadline or what strategies you used to overcome a particular issue you faced as a team or how you pushed your team through a difficult situation except you. Only you can speak for yourself. Remember, the version of your story can be told by you alone, nobody else.
13. Jot down the 3 things that make you happy daily. This exercise boosts the happy hormone and makes you feel proud of yourself – it could be the dish you made, the flower you received out of the blue, a ‘thank you’ note or if a kid smiles or waves back at you when they see you.
14. Take a solo trip – like I reiterated in my earlier blog, the best way to know yourself is taking a solo trip and doing everything by yourself and in your own company. You get to know your strengths, your interests, face failures, exciting moments and make memories all for yourself. One solo trip in life a must I would say!
15. Take care of your body. It’s the only place you live in. This quote touched me immensely and it’s true. All our emotions, thoughts and feelings have direct effects to our bodies – anything negative can create tensions within the body and hinder normal functioning and growth. We must ensure we expose ourselves to good thoughts, positive intentions, fresh air, sunlight etc and cut off anything that hampers our growth

The situations we are put through is a test for ourselves, test of our might, our strength and only we can come out of it with our inner best self. Remember, we are our own best friends, our own healers, our own guides. If I think of what I learnt when I studied Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) –

1. To heal ourselves from past trauma or abuse – We visualize our current self, meeting our 10-year-old self and striking a conversation, where we tell our 10-year old self that we are strong people and we have walked out well out of those situations that have broken us as a child and we have healed and those situations made us stronger.
2. For a great future – We imagine ourselves in fast forward mode – in the ‘Timeline exercise’ we see ourselves 10 years ahead, 20 years ahead being successful, walking the future timeline where we are healthy, wealthy, with great confidence and being our best versions.

These visualizations surely hint that the one to hold ourselves strong, to push, to motivate, to stand out, to be our best versions – only we can do it best for ourselves.

Another kind reminder – Keep your sanity of your own. We cannot control the situations that happen to us, the things people tell us, their behaviour or treatment or the environment, but we can surely control how we can react to it and how we can stay away from it and stay in our happy imaginary bubble of our own, doing things we love and keeping our mental state at peace😊.

Most importantly, believe in yourself, you will be unstoppable!