Getting to Know Myself

How do you determine what you truly value and what you really think when you have all these other voices telling you things about who you are, what’s wrong with you, what you SHOULD do, etc.?  Or when the voices inside are just as bad (or worse!) at making you feel ashamed and guilty for your every move? 

Between family and schools and churches and media and art and random people on social media and epigenetics and childhood experiences and our own messy, beautiful brains, we are BOMBARDED with messaging from birth.  And sometimes it feels like a crapshoot trying to figure out what to follow. 

I know I’ve gone down some paths that later I was like “WHAT WAS I THINKING?”.  I can’t be the only one.  Right?

Anyway, now that I’m coming out of some serious cognitive dissonance, I’m determined to get to know me better.  I want to know what I truly believe and value in life, and not just when I’m around certain people or reading a specific genre or experiencing a crazymaking hormonal spiral.  Who am I? 

(BTW, I think perimenopause is an appropriate time to have this type of existential crisis.  It really is like puberty all over again in terms of massive changes to my body, so let’s go full-on teenager and get introspective.)

For me, an exercise that helps is to imagine my eulogy.  I’m not trying to be morbid or emo (is that something kids still say these days?), but I have gone so far as to write it out.  As a creative writing exercise, I mean.

I imagine I have just died – WAY far in the future, of course – and I take the 30,000-foot view of my whole life story.  What do I want it to say?  What is the ideal version?  What version would be written if I died tomorrow instead?  What would I really regret if it weren’t in there?  It’s like doing a bucket list, but the glass-half-empty method.  And what it leads to is an urgent need to fill my bucket with things I seriously MUST DO.

This exercise also helps when I’m meditating on a massive decision to be made.  Which narrative is one I’d be proud of having in my eulogy?

Here are some examples.  In another recent post, I talked about the AHAA moment that led me to quit my job.  What if I had decided to stay?  What would my end-of-life story have been?

Megan loved her job for the first ten years.  Then she realized it was no longer the right place for her, but she stayed anyway - for the health insurance and stability and retirement.  She became more and more jaded by the institution of academia and eventually got too tired to keep fighting to make it better.  She sank deeper into depression and accepted her fate as an alcoholic (predestined by genetics, no doubt), living out her days wondering where her sparkle had gone.

Yeah, that’s not okay.

So how about this one?

Some might have considered Megan reckless, but when perimenopause hit, she realized she was no longer willing to waste another minute of her life trapped in storylines that didn’t align daily with her values.  She was committed to personal growth and lifelong learning, which meant sometimes her values shifted, too; change became her norm, and Megan spent the second half of her life as a true life traveler, collecting experiences and just trying to do better each day.  Megan may not have lived a "stable" life, and was never financially able to retire, but her life was all the richer for it. 

She met amazing people who reminded her daily of humanity’s potential.  She surrounded herself with beauty through music and architecture and nature, traveling extensively whenever possible.  She was a devoted advocate for reforming education and destigmatizing mental health.  She learned multiple languages in her 40s and took up surfing in her 50s.  Megan truly celebrated life and refused to mourn it before her dying day.  And even then, she left knowing she had learned all the lessons she was supposed to and had done her best to leave ripples of positive change in her wake.

This one captures me – at least, the me I want to be.  It gives me more insight into understanding my core values and priorities, which now can help me when deciding what careers to focus on next and how to balance my time.  And it makes me feel less shameful about the fact that I suck at business and making money – whenever that voice creeps in saying “you must get a high-paying, stable job with benefits NOW or you will DIE!”, I can politely tell it to BAKAWK off.  I get by on very little, and I like it that way.  I’ll take a life of art over luxury any day. 

Obviously, I have to state that I recommend talking to your therapist before doing this exercise yourself; even though it motivates me towards change, I imagine it could cause negative spirals into anxiety and depression for others. 

Speaking as a human and NOT a guru/therapist/licensed professional, all I can say is that we each only have this one life (that we are aware of).  YOU get to write what they’ll talk about in your eulogy someday; make these stories meaningful to you.