Be Who You Are

Transcript

I want to talk to you about being who you are.

I’ve been reading this book by Carl Roger’s “On Becoming a Person” and this is one of the finest texts that I’ve ever read about psychotherapy.

And also it’s kind of spiritual if you didn’t label this book as a book about therapy you might think it’s a book about spirituality or religion, getting in touch with your inner self.

It’s as much about helping others as it is about helping yourself like the conditions that Roger’s describes for a productive beneficial therapy session are very similar to the conditions that you require to grow as a person within yourself.

So the same conditions that we create for others you can also create for yourself.

As suggested in the title it’s kind of a paradox or weird way of saying it. “On becoming a person” like hang on, aren’t I already a person?

He talks a lot about becoming who you are. People realizing that they are what they are. It sounds a little weird but I’ll just read this passage to make it a little clearer.

He says in this section “Willingness to be a Process. I should like to point out one final cahracteristic of these individuals as they strive to discover and become themselves. It is that the individual seems to become more content that there’s a process rather than a product.

When he enters the therapeutic relationship the client is likely to receive some fixed state, he wants to reach the point where his problems are solved. Or where he is effective in his work. Or where his marriage is satisfactory.

He tends in the freedom of the therapeutic relationship to drop such fixed goals and accept the more satisfying realization that he is not a fixed entity but a process of becoming.”

And this is in a sense what we are trying to achieve through meditation and of course when someone like Rogers conducts therapeutic process.

Instead of trying to be something else or in some other state, trying to be “not unhappy” or “not sad” we can just observe or go along with the process, whatever it is in the moment. In doing so we can find this state of contentment in a sense because even when we’re unhappy we can know that we are a process, constantly moving.

Even when things in our life don’t go as planned we can know that it is simply a process moving on, always moving on. Never finishing, never being complete.

As I’ve told you before, you don’t have to be perfect. You certainly don’t have to be perfect today. It’s enough to enjoy the process.

As Rogers says, be what you are.

Thank you for listening and I hope you have a wonderful day.