Who I Am

“I’m just trying to be myself. I’m not trying to be anyone else.” Conor McGregor

A lot of time and energy has been wasted trying to be someone else.
A lot of people spend their time and effort in being the next Icon.
There's a serious victimization in people that want to be other people, I know this because I felt like that for a very long time. It's not until around the time I moved to Norway that things started to shift.
For people keeping track, that's probably around 11 years of wishing I was someone else. I remember it very clearly in my teens, this urge to not be me. I felt overwhelmed with the things I thought I could not fix about myself. So I bathed in being a victim, every time I saw someone that resonated with me, I just wanted to be that person. Not like them, but be them. Free of my problems, free of burden of self, free of the doubt. Only later did I stat emulating the qualities of the people I admired without this sense of diminished self worth. Like somehow I wasn't worthy or unable to be like who I want to be. It's not necessarily an inherent trait of depression, but it does seem to do the rounds. Even post depression that feeling lingered.

“What do you wanna be?
Here's another thing: I don't want to be anything. I am, I am everything I want to be.
You're always gonna want, I've always felt like I have. Like I always felt like I could everything already.”

• Conor Mcgregor

I think that's a profound statement. I can't say I've heard a lot of people echo this sentiment before. Of course I've met people that are more comfortable with who they are. But maybe my perception of life has been tarnished by the things I was watching and people I spent my time with. A lot of stories or remarks I've heard about how people's life didn't turn out as they wanted, I got that feeling all too often. I don't think people necessarily gave up, but maybe that who ever has said these remarks lost faith in that they could be X or Y when they got to a certain point in life. Like getting married and having kids, probably a demanding job on top of that. I'm not saying this is always the case, that's just how I've experienced a lot of my teens and early twenties. Hearing those things leads me to the same diminishing of self belief. It generally feels like those things are a self fulfilling prophecy.

“It might make sense just to get some in case it catches on. If enough people think the same way, that becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.”

• Satoshi Nakamoto

The power of belief is something that's immensely underestimated, and will continue to be for a long time to come. It's same reason people most people don't believe in visualization, breathing or meditation: It's too simple. If believing in myself is all it took, that's too easy. AAAAND YET! It's like one of the hardest things around, believing in yourself while everything else is going nowhere or everything is falling apart. I think the essence of the “secret” is missed, it's not just believing in yourself, but that comes first, it's being actionable towards that belief. If you don't believe you won't act, so it has to start somewhere. It might sound silly now but I believed with every fiber of my being I would move to Norway. I got called a lot of different things by many different people because it seemed so far fetched. An unemployed Belgian kid with no education except for high school that doesn't really know the language and on top of that: doesn't even live there is gonna get a job how? People have laughed right in my face when I said I was working on moving to Norway. One of many I vividly remember was one of the unemployment service people whom I had to sit with in order to discuss my options. When I told her : I'm applying for jobs in Noway her face sort of went blank until she managed to smirk and say: “Aha, I see, good luck with that.” I could fill the rest of this post with people that never have taken me seriously about anything I've said I wanted to do. Just to satisfy my ego for a sec: Where are ya'll now?

I had no idea when it was gonna happen, or how, but I knew one thing: It is gonna happen and I didn't care how long it was gonna take. I didn't date any girls because I mentally had one foot out of the country already. This ties back to what is quoted above, it was a self fulfilling prophecy. I just didn't see a future where it didn't happen. I honestly couldn't stay in Belgium, I felt like there was no alternative. This was my first taste of deep and unwavering self belief. Just the same I had my doubts about reaching E1 in Krav Maga, and even though I feel I'm (still) unworthy of the title, I still managed to wrestle a lot of conflicting emotions to get it. To this day I haven't really been able to figure out how I felt that way about moving to Norway. But I've been trying to use that situation to fuel the rest of self belief. Which has honestly faltered more times than I can count, but I keep picking myself up. That's the other thing people never really believe about people with such self belief: that stuff ( in most cases) is not a constant. Conor said just the same that there were times he thought about quitting, these are times when the external pressures override self belief. And I think for most of us it hits hard when we look at it from a financial side. Even though every successful person I've been following says the same thing: The money will come later. That is the thing I personally struggle the most with, because unlike other people's opinions and ridicule, money is something we need to survive. I'd be lying if I said I didn't feel the allure of just being mainstream and whatever comes with that territory.

“Make no mistakes about it – enlightenment is a destructive process. It has nothing to do with becoming better or being happier. Enlightenment is the crumbling away of the untruth. It’s seeing through the facade of pretense. It’s the complete eradication of everything we imagined to be true.” -Adyashanti

Here he goes again with his enlightenment quotes. You'll just have to forgive me, or don't but read on nonetheless. This is something I deem important. The more I “advance” the more I feel like it's more like I'm shedding traits or beliefs. Somewhere the thought came to me that I'm just becoming who I feel deep down I already I am. Or that I start acting towards the traits,principles and virtues I feel I encompass. And I think that's maybe what Conor meant when he stated the above. There are without a doubt people that don't have or have very little illusions about who they are and what they're capable of. Then there's people like me that have lived on the other end of the spectrum, not necessarily by choice. I remember instances in my childhood that have prohibited me from taking of my masks, illusions and detrimental beliefs in fear of the consequences that come with doing so. My biological father had strongly imprinted in me it wasn't ok to be myself, that I should be (more) like my brother. What a horrible thing to say to a child. If you hear that often enough that's exactly what you're gonna do. You start forming separations between who you feel you are and who think you should be. And thus you become limited. So I think I can attribute recent breakthroughs to shedding and working through these false beliefs. There's another root to happiness, being comfortable with who you are. I've been in a lot of places, situations and times where I felt I couldn't be myself , probably largely because I wasn't comfortable with who I was to begin with. That fear of rejection and ridicule kept me from expressing myself to the degrees I wanted, if I expressed myself at all. These are not the hallmarks of a happy person.

“Enlightenement or awakening is not the creation of a new state of affairs but the recognition of what already is.” Alan Watts

I don't really meditate on self belief, I know its in there somewhere though at times it's quite elusive. What has helped shape these thoughts and the process of shedding was been reading certain books that explain the mechanics of self belief and the vast potential of our minds. The one thing that usually does it reading about other people overcoming immense odds. It's also interesting to note that people that have become house hold names didn't want to be the next insert name here. Steve Jobs didn't want to be Bill Gates. This is just an example but It helps affirm to myself it's possible for me. So in that way the same energy we spend in wishing we could be someone else we can put in reverse to help build to who you really are. You become an Icon for who you are more than what you can do. Investing that energy in stripping the illusions and building new traits. Should you need some tinder to start the fire I'd check out:
Unbeatable Mind – Mark Divine
The Rise of Superman – Steven Kotler
Mindset – Carol Dweck