Are you who you claim to be?

It’s one of the most beautiful things that we have and yet we reject it! We are given a gift and yet we don’t appreciate it. There may 7 billion people in the world, but it keeps blowing my mind. I’m talking about our authenticity…our uniqueness. There is not another single person in this world who is JUST like you.

I think we have all been tempted at some point and even fallen to the temptation of trying to be someone else. This someone else could be someone very close to us, like one of our parents or perhaps someone in the celebrity scene. Don’t get me wrong here…role models our healthy and very much needed for our success in our personal and professional development…in most cases.

It becomes troubling and concerning when a person completely rejects who she or he is and tries to be an exact image of another. I’m sure you can recall of people you know who constantly keep mimicking others.

I have no definitive answer to what triggers this mechanism in certain people. A number of factors would have contributed to this ‘fake’ build-up of character – childhood, significant experiences in one’s life, internalised messages, etc. But I think that if you dig deep down in these people’s fears you’ll find a great fear of feeling unworthy or that sense of being a nobody. They see themselves as not worthy of being loved and thus they put on other masks to protect themselves. Or maybe they have had experiences in the past when they tried to act out on their own behalf, and they were shunned or punished.

How do you give these people a much needed reality check? Do you literally grab them by the shoulder and shake the hell out of them? Do you use subtle messages? I don’t know, and I wish to know. If only there was a magic formula….

What suggestions can I provide on this issue to those people who are trying to be someone they are not -

• Realise that you are truly a unique human being. By embracing who you truly are you become the potential that you are destined to be.

• Be open to people and their feedback. By being warm enough to accept any kind of comments, people will feel comfortable enough to tell you if you are heading in the wrong direction. If you re-act on the defence and always try to take the upper hand, people will eventually disassociate from you and won’t bother to help you grow.

• Read on how successful people made it to the top. By identifying certain qualities in them, you will learn that it is not by imitating that you will succeed, but by being.

• Appreciate failures and criticism as part of your journey towards success. The BIG people have been through the toughest and lowest points as well.

• Reach out to different experiences and if you feel that you belong to that experience, see how you can contribute.

• It is better to be quiet and listen in most of the times than preaching and trying to impress. People like to be listened to. So try to do that first before telling them what they should and shouldn’t do.