1. So … who are you?

We all seem to have a pretty good idea of the kind of person we are. If I would ask you to describe yourself you might come up with something like „bla bla bla bla …. etc, etc“. And you would think, THIS is who you are.

This is not who you are, this is merely who you THINK you are. These are just some of the qualities and behaviours you display but not all the qualities you possess. It is merely the behaviours and ways of beings you have come up with in the last few decades to manoeuvre yourself through life, to find your own little niche in relation to the people around you. Some of these behaviours might actually be the opposite of who you are …

1.2 How your past determines your future

Any characteristic or behaviour you display today is the result of your experiences and social conditioning of the past. Had they been ANY different you would show up as a different person today. In other words you have all possible abilities and qualities within you but are displaying only those that you thought would somehow help you get through the past. This way you have your past determine your future.

1.3 Permission to show up any way you want

 So “freedom from who we think we are” gives total permission to show up in any other way any time of your liking. If you feel this is difficult, it is a good indicator that you are keeping yourself unfree in that dimension.

Take a person that would describe herself as quiet and soft spoken. Does she have the physical ability to speak out loud and raise her voice? Of course she does. Put her in a social situation and ask her to do just that. If she is free from who she thinks she is, she will have no problem doing just that. If she is not free, she will stop herself. And that is true for any other behaviour or ways of being.

1.4 Free to change

You will have realized that we are talking about change here already. Change means nothing else than showing up different today than you showed up yesterday. Resistance to change is often rooted in our insistence on who we think we are. Breaking free from this insistence opens up the possibility for effortlessly showing up differently.

Many times when we talk about change, we are actually talking about „growth“. We are not really changing, we are adding. Say if a quiet, soft spoken person adds the ability to raise the voice when she thinks it is useful, she is of course not loosing the ability to be quiet and soft spoken in other situations. We are simply adding an additional behaviour to our (hopefully) ever growing repertoire of possible behaviours. Needless to say that the greater my repertoire the better I am equipped to master any situation to my fullest satisfaction.

By the way … our dissatisfaction with ourselves usually stems from all those times where we were unable to display a behaviour that we think would have been appropriate, because that behaviour was not part of our repertoire at that time or in those circumstances.

1.5 The fun of being free from “who we think we are”

 The behaviours, patterns and characteristics we show on a daily basis is what we commonly call our „comfort zone“. We call it that way, because it is what we are used to, so we feel comfortable as we know exactly how it feels when we show up this way. It is also incredibly boring. Adding new behaviours, showing up differently and allowing ourselves to be different today than we were yesterday is the biggest fun on earth. You will feel being alive, powerful and growing every time you allow yourself not to be restricted by your past behaviours and characteristics. It is also a clear statement of not allowing your past to define your future. To be free from „who you think you are“ gives you access to the complete range of possible human behaviours and allows you to show up as the person you choose to at any moment in time.

For more insights: Torsten Lueddecke