PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT


How do I be myself?


How do you know how to be yourself? Many of us haven’t a clue because we were never taught how. In our day to day lives, we are so busy with what we have to accomplish, we neglect getting to know ourselves. Here is one simple way towards this discovery.


by Claudia Merrill I


magine walking into school every day and feeling completely alone. Imagine how it would feel to dread lunch and


recess, because the only people to sit with were those that tormented you. When I moved schools at age eight, this was my life. Before I was ten, I knew what it felt


like to be alone, to feel as though no one valued me. I was so afraid to be myself, because of the tormenting that followed. I tried my best to fit in, but that only created more opportunity for the bullying to continue. I was a


50 JULY | AUGUST 2017


very optimistic child, so these years of bullying never caused me to become depressed. I did, however, have a very hard time being me. This early experience created the perfect situation for me to learn how to be myself.


WHO SHOULD WE BE? Many of us in today’s world have a difficult time being ourselves. We are subconsciously bombarded with images of who we should be. Billboards and magazines tell us to be more successful, more active, more hard-working.


But what about who we are already? Realising the importance of you is more important than ever. Until recently, I still didn’t fully


understand how to be myself. “What does it mean to be myself?”, I would often ask. It's a fair question, how do we know how to ‘be’ ourselves in a world that is telling us who we should be? My experience with bullying at an early age taught me to suppress who I really was. All my flaws, talents, dreams, and quirks were neatly tucked away for no one to see. I convinced myself that blending


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