Go Into the Gap and Blossom!

“Well, what happens is while you’re projecting who you want to be, this gap opens up between who you want to be and who you are. And in that gap it shows you what’s stopping you from becoming who you want to be.”

Glen, Weekend

There is great tension between who we are and who we want to be. For the most part, I believe who we really want to be—to the absolute fullest extent—is exactly who we are. Yet few of us understand or know that being our real selves is what we truly want most in life.

We’ve spent so many years running from that real self that we’ve gotten completely confused about who we want to be. All we’ve known is that, as children, we didn’t want to be the “not good enough” person that others told us we were. And since we decided we couldn’t be ourselves, we were faced with trying to emulate and be like someone else.

In school, we wanted to be a “cool kid.” We sometimes tried and we certainly failed. As we became adults, we wanted to be like certain actors, celebrities or sports figures. We tried and we failed. We failed because “being like” someone else is artificial. No one can be like someone else. We can only be ourselves.

And so if we take the time to really look into that “gap” in our souls; the one where our false self and our true self meet, we will find the answer to why we aren’t happy. It’s a simple answer. We aren’t happy because we’ve wasted our time trying to be someone other than ourselves. And the only way to be happy in this life is to be completely happy with yourself by being your real self.

What we learn in that “gap” is to change our focus. First, our focus needs to turn away from other people and our false desire to be carbon copies of them. Second, our focus then needs to turn to us. We need to get in touch with the real “us;” the person inside that we have been so desperately trying to bury under the image and likeness of someone else.

Next, we need to start owning and growing the person that we are. We need to each and every day grow more fully into being the person God created us to be. We are the person that we have always wanted to be, but we've stunted our own personal growth over the years and we’ve never allowed ourselves to know the joy of being who we uniquely are.

So get in touch with your soul. Sit down and allow yourself to fall into that “gap” between who you are and who you’ve thought you wanted to be. In that gap see that you can only be yourself-- and start growing that self. The more you grow that self, the more you will be the person you always wanted to be. You will then begin to share that person with the world around you and your relationships will begin to blossom in all of the same positive AUTHENTIC ways that you yourself are blossoming.