How to live with who you are not who you want to be …

"... both nature and nurture 
shaped me 
to be just so
if I can’t let go 
perhaps I can 
accommodate ..."

If you follow this blog you’ll know that I’ve been on an extended trip this year to the Faroe Islands and Iceland.  Now I’m finally home, I’m thinking about the next chapter of my life. I retired earlier in the summer and, in many ways, this overseas trip has acted as something of a circuit breaker.  My old life in full time work truly feels like a world away.

But what the trip has reminded me of, is that despite all the variables impacting on my life, at the core, I reflect the same values, outlook and, yes, hang ups I always have.  I do think that autumn is a good time to re-evaluate where you are in life and consider any changes you want to make.  I was in an online meeting with a group of other women last month who were invited to share what in their lives they wanted to retain and what to release.  I really struggled with the exercise, but finally wrote that I wanted to rid myself of anxiety.  Now, that’s a tall order. 

In the days that followed, I thought more about the gap between what we may want to be and what we actually are. Watching the waves crashing against the rocks one afternoon, it dawned on me that so much of what happens in life is beyond our control.  This doesn’t just impact on us as humans, but on every living thing on the planet.  

Even the ocean, that appears incredibly powerful and a law unto itself, is not in control.  It’s the weather that mostly determines how the oceans meet the shore; it’s the moon that dictates the tides.  

As for me, a combination of nature and nurture shaped who I’ve become. It’s the way I was parented and schooled, the friends I made, and the place where I grew up. I cannot help but be who I am, but that’s not the whole story.  Nurture takes you so far but you always have nature to fall back on, and that’s what inspired me when wave-watching.  The oceans have so much to contend with: the moon is pulling them one way, and the wind another, yet they just keep moving.  They are powerful enough to move mountains, quite literally.  They continue to re-shape our shorelines, cutting through rock, leaving us gasping with awe at caves and sea arches the world over. 

Anxiety is part of who I am and I’m naive to think I can ditch it.  But accepting that anxiety is part of me, doesn’t mean I have to necessarily give into it.  I can rage against it if I choose, I can ignore it, negotiate with it, even welcome it.  It doesn’t define me.  It’s part of me, but it’s not the whole of me. 

Learning to love and accept the parts of ourselves we might not like can be a struggle, but it’s worth the effort to try.  It makes life a whole lot easier, that’s for sure.  I feel much happier accepting that anxiety is a part of me that I must learn to accommodate, rather than constantly punishing myself for feeling anxious.  

This week, I invite you to reflect those parts of yourself you’d like to ditch but then acknowledge, that without them, you wouldn’t be who you are.