Who Will You Be, Even if it Doesn’t Work Out?

If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.

Marcus Aurelius

I’ve noticed life is more about letting go than becoming.

Probably because I have pushed so hard all my life to become.

In high school, that meant practicing basketball every day to change my status from bench-warmer to starter. In college that meant pulling out the stops to get that degree, because it wasn’t really encouraged in my family. The last ten years have been about making my business and family thrive, because people said what I was doing wouldn’t work.

So much proving.

And with the proving, I found my self-esteem and identity.

Don’t get me wrong. I appreciate all of those experiences. I’d even call them sacred.

It’s just that they’ve lost their power.

For most of this year, for no identifiable reason, I have been purging my social media feeds and emails. All I knew was that I was tired of the “experts” pushing their methods of success, all which tout more time and more money, as if those things will solve all of our problems. Even if I love these people and value their work, I can’t listen anymore.

Because success is different for everyone, and money and time won’t necessarily give you what you truly want.

I randomly ended up watching an interview with Celine Dion a week or so ago on You Tube. She mentioned she had never felt part of the show business industry. She had my attention at that point, because I feel the same way about the design industry. Shopping and pomp aren’t my thing, although I love the act of design that involves puzzle solving and creating. This statement really hit me:

Sometimes you are successful; sometimes you are not. Sometimes your dreams come true; sometimes they won’t. But you cannot hold onto one thing, you cannot hold onto one dream and say “This is my life…this is my whole life.” And then what happens if it doesn’t happen? You don’t have a life? Are you going to die? What’s going to happen? So my family, my parents, have given us a true sense of stability, of true values of life: love, affection, attention, music. My parents were musical…we always had music in our house, and we never had money, but we were never poor. And that’s a lot.

Celine Dion

Friend, you and I aren’t what we have, what we do, or who other people say we are. Finding ourselves beyond that is the real trick.