73. Just Be Yourself

Have you ever stopped to think about how much energy you spend—and how much you complicate your life—by pretending to be someone other than who you are? We all do it. It’s part of being human, and it was also a big part of the fast-paced life-style of the 1980s.

A good exercise is to sit down and go through all the major areas of your life and decide how each would be different if the only person you had to impress was you. Would you have a different career? What kind of house would you live in? Would you drive a different car? How would you dress? How would you spend your spare time? Would you be married to the person you’re married to? Would you have the same friends?

Often we assume various layers of pretense not so much out of our own needs, but because of someone else’s. How often are we untrue to ourselves because of the pressures of our family, the demands of our mate, the entreaties of our children? If your life-style reflects someone else’s idea of how your life should be, take a few moments to imagine how much simpler it would be if you dropped the pretense and learned to just be yourself.