Being Me

In the vein of telling my story I’m needing to learn and to continue being me. On the recommendation of a new friend I started reading Gretchen Rubin’s The Happiness Project. I’m definitely a much happier person these days and, in some retrospect as I began reading, I had definitely started my own version of a happiness project. That said, I definitely do not turn my nose at reading someone else’s story. Stories are how we, how I, like to connect with the world. It’s how I tend to best understand information and processes. Hard cold data is useful, sure, but story is in our hearts and DNA.

Back to being me. Gretchen talks about one of her commandments as “being Gretchen” meaning that she needed to stay true to herself as part of her project. I love the idea of “being Rachel” as a framework for making decisions. Especially because I have a habit of defaulting to the “easy” and/or “right” answer. Not necessarily the ‘Rachel” answer.

So what does it mean to be Rachel? That is the question I am adding to my days, to my decisions. It seems silly that I hadn’t really thought of it before. At least not on this basic or straightforward of a level. But it also isn’t that simple. ‘Being Rachel” takes a lot of work, a lot of thought...but the more I work towards it the easier it actually becomes.

So, yeah, sometimes I want to watch TV, and sometimes that’s ok, but sometimes being me means I need to turn the TV off and stop browsing social media. Instead I will write, will art, will run, and...whatever other things are truly important in the pursuit of “being Rachel.”

I’m still figuring it out, and definitely (often) make missteps. But in the pursuit of happiness and self they are all part of the process and the journey. To be too afraid to make mistakes is to be too afraid of forward motion, and maybe, just maybe, success along the way.

And how will you know what being yourself means if you don’t try...and fail sometimes?

PS. Feels nice to have my art up in my office. Definitely a step in being myself!