Who Are You Being Today?

Who are you being today? I find this question a good wake up to cut through our own BS and begin noticing how we are actually living our lives.

We can get caught in old ideas of who we think we are or who we’ve never quite been. I used to be a freelance writer before I was a yoga teacher and I’ve carried that idea of myself with me even though the writing I’ve done the last eight years has mostly been corporate writing, not writing that challenges me to reveal some truth, something of myself.

I find myself wanting to write more, but there’s a great distance between wanting to and actually sitting myself down in a chair and doing it.

So last week, I set an intention to spend an hour a day. The first day, I got home from teaching my clients and I found myself completely exhausted. I sat on my couch and in that moment I felt like I only had enough energy to turn on the TV and lie back.

But I had this question my teacher had asked me in my head: Who am I being right now? And, oh man, while I so wanted to give in and just watch TV, I did not like the sound of actually being that person.

So I sat myself before my computer for an hour each day last week. And in that process of sitting myself down, confronting the writer I think I could be with the writer I am right now, which is rough and quite unorganized, I started to become. I started to feel that this is not where I want it but I am being a writer.

We can take that question deeper into all areas of our life. Am I actually being a loving person or are my actions oblivious to myself and others? Am I being nice but not truthful in my relationships so that there’s no realness in them?

This question asks us to dare to look at who we are actually being. It’s not easy. It’s uncomfortable to start seeing the distance between who we are being vs. who we think ourselves to be.

But if we dare to ask, we can start to set off in that direction. Before I taught yoga, I remember being in a Pilates session and seeing myself in the mirror, how my body did not move how I thought it did. I thought I had grace, the mirror told me a different story. But it wasn’t the end of the story. It was the start of me learning to connect to my body. And that story changed.

In some areas of our life, we may not know how to bridge the distance between who we are and who we want to be. We may have to learn something. Yoga is saying if we stay focused on being who we want to be, our vision will become clearer. We will get closer to being who we want to be. We will become the change we wish to see.