I am currently sitting in a tiny plane cruising from Seattle to Edmonton. I decided to write about something not technical. Who am I you ask?? Well, I am just a guy who decided to write about a fancy topic while looking over the clouds from above!! Sometimes, I try to imagine how my great great grandparents would react a couple hundred years ago if they were given the opportunity to watch the skies, the mountains, the seas and the whole frickin’ world from above. For them, it would have felt like temporary possessing divine powers. For us, it’s just another day. For me a simple observation like that represents how magnificent the human race is!!

If you started asking yourself how the hell the above paragraph is related to the title I said I’d talk about then wait no longer!! Today I wanted to talk\write about you being yourself -or me being myself rather !!- so let’s start by asking the very simple question that our elders typically overlook when they advise you to be yourself: What is the definition of being yourself?? In my own humble opinion: Being yourself is pretty much doing whatever the heck you feel like doing whenever you feel like doing it. For me, that sums it up without getting into lengthily galactic philosophical discussions.

Now let’s jump into the second question that any reasonable brain should flash once it gets past the definition stage: is being yourself good or bad? Is it a blessing that should be embraced or a curse that should be avoided? The typical answer in this day and age is BE YOURSELF!! My humble opinion is that it is never that simple!! We are really never completely ourselves at any extended period of our lives even though some of us try with passion !!

Why is that?? Let’s first discuss what we need to do in order to be ourselves. Being an engineer, I enjoy breaking down my thoughts into bullet points in order to come up with a conclusion:

What I need to do? 

Find out how to be myself

How I can do it?

• Identify things in your current life that make you bored, dissatisfied, or   hate yourself
• Identify steps needed to change things identified in bullet 1
• Act!

If you consider the above points and apply them on your life, you will realize that being yourself is difficult because some of the things that you have to do in order to be yourself may affect others that you care deeply about.  Not only that but it may even put you at odds with the culture you live in or even with the law!!

Am I saying that being yourself is bad? Absolutely not!! What I am saying is that we simply need to be realistic when we push to be ourselves. But why do we typically push to be ourselves? The simple answer is because we see it as a way to make us more happy!! Pretty much most of the things we do for ourselves (assuming we don’t have suicidal tendencies or that we are not in sacrifice mode!!) are all about staying  happy or happier than our current state .

Being truly you is an art, a rare skill that grows with time if you pay enough attention to it. It’s a balance.A balance between you and the reality of your surroundings, a balance that will take time to master: You will have to identify who will get offended or hurt or just plain drops out of your life if you push to only do the things that you want to do. When you  push to only do the things that interest you, that wouldn’t bore you. You will have to think hard about it and be ready to do what it takes for you to be happy at the end. For some people, they will reach that balance by being mostly themselves without tearing their world apart and that will make them happy.  Others will end up having to cut loose the fabric of their universe because their current world simply doesn’t include the right formula for them to be happy and strive. Both cases are okay, what is not okay is not trying, not pushing to reach that balance, not experimenting with your life by taking calculated risks.

Do you remember the first paragraph in this article, one might argue that it is not related to the topic which is a valid proposition except that I felt like I really wanted to write about how my great grandparents -back in the middle ages maybe- might have felt if they were looking over the skies from a flying vessel, and I also felt like I really wanted to write about it at the time I started writing this article so I decided to include it. This is a simple act that made me feel a simple form of satisfaction, a simple act that didn’t hurt anyone or hopefully didn’t annoy anyone. You can start trying to achieve the balance of being yourself by doing simple acts like these, acts that theoretically don’t have any effects on other people, but give you a simple form of satisfaction.

Start by these simple acts and take it from there. Every one of these acts is a step further into acquiring another piece of that ultimate puzzle that we all thrive to collect which is the puzzle of our happy selves!!

Remember,  Don’t start pushing by making drastic changes to your life!! There is absolutely nothing wrong with taking simple steps.