Embrace the unwanted parts of yourself and find the real you

Try this: get dressed up and go call on your inner demons, the unwanted parts of you.

Invite them for tea and cookies, gluten free if you prefer. Say hello to your unwanted bits when they arrive, and ask them to sit down and join you for a friendly chat.

Be nice, especially if you’ve gone out of your way to avoid them in the past. You might not have felt like being seen with them before.

Give it a try now, it’s worth it. They have some useful things to tell you, so try to listen without judgment. Don’t roll your eyes or sigh loudly, that will chase them away, or stop them from telling you anything. Right now you’re here to learn.

Ask them questions – what do you really want to know?

Be honest and direct. Are you holding a grudge against yourself for something? Is there a part of you that you wish was different? What parts of yourself have you denied?

There may be things you don’t like about yourself, things that make you squirm at times. There could be a few regrets left over from a previous version of you. Maybe you still have some of your energy caught up in a former identity, and you haven’t been proud of it.

This is where forgiveness comes in, self forgiveness in particular. Whatever happened back then is over. Do your best to release it, so you can free yourself from that old version of you.

Whatever choices you made then, they helped you to get to where you are now. Find gratitude for the you that got you here, even if you weren’t as conscious about it as you would have wished.

Be where you are now, and forgive the past. Doing this will help you fully embrace the present, so that you can live here, instead of in the past. You might consider that you’re pretty fortunate to have made it this far.

When you’re able to release what was, you’re more powerful. There’s more of you available to live your life, and to create.

You are always creating yourself, so you might as well have fun doing it.

Sometimes you reject a part of yourself because somewhere along the line you were told it wasn’t good to be that way. Maybe you were different from others around you while growing up, and you just wanted to fit in. You might have decided that how you were wasn’t good, as a result.

Being exactly who and how you are right now is the thing you’re here to do, no matter what anyone else thinks.

You’re not here to please others, you’re here to be authentic. There may be a version of you that you don’t know yet, and if you can allow for all the parts of you to exist, you’ll find it. If you keep on rejecting bits of yourself, it’ll be more confusing to get to the real you.

If you haven’t fully embraced an aspect of yourself as being yours, you can still toy around with it and see if it fits. You have an opportunity in every moment to ask yourself what you’d like to have and to become. You get to change, and you get to do that as often as you wish.

None of the rest of us have the right to tell you that you’re being you the wrong way.

• ©Kris Cahill
  ‘Cold Moon’ ©Seemann on Morguefile