{"id":224,"date":"2014-09-15T00:50:14","date_gmt":"2014-09-15T00:50:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/becausethisisyourlife\/?p=224"},"modified":"2014-09-15T00:50:29","modified_gmt":"2014-09-15T00:50:29","slug":"what-makes-you-who-you-truly-are","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/becausethisisyourlife\/2014\/09\/what-makes-you-who-you-truly-are.html","title":{"rendered":"What Makes You Who You Truly Are?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Well it&#8217;s the time of year that happens every year.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s that &#8220;what seems like&#8221; a one day event when a certain area of your life goes up but doesn&#8217;t seem to come down.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s the one thing most people dread because it&#8217;s that area of their life that continues to increase&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>And as weird as it sounds reading this, most people will do anything to avoid it. In some cases they&#8217;ll even try anything to reverse it.<\/p>\n<p>What I&#8217;m talking about is your age.<\/p>\n<p>And the day I&#8217;m talking about is your birthday.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s that one day of the year when people claim they&#8217;re getting older, which may be true chronologically.<\/p>\n<p>But I like to look at it in two different ways&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>First, you can&#8217;t get old without also getting young. So in addition to getting &#8220;old&#8221; where is it that you&#8217;re getting &#8220;young?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>You can also use my method of counting backwards. That works quite well in a number of ways as well.<\/p>\n<p>The second way I like to look at this does have to do with even my own birthday.<\/p>\n<p>Yes my birthday may be on a certain day of the year but that day is also your birthday too.<\/p>\n<p>That is&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Your Birth Day.<\/p>\n<p>And what I mean by this is that it&#8217;s the birth of a new day for you.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s yet another opportunity to do away with what seems like the never ending struggle of trying to turn your life around.<\/p>\n<p>Because after all I don&#8217;t know anybody who gets up in the morning and says, &#8220;I&#8217;m glad I feel stressed out about going to the job I don&#8217;t like. I can&#8217;t wait to come home today feeling exhausted, and then have to go through it all again tomorrow.<\/p>\n<p>And on top of that I just love watching the bills pile up and even less money coming in. I really look forward to being depressed over just about every area of my life.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>No one has this as part of their life&#8217;s vision.<\/p>\n<p>But if this is happening in your life what can you do about it?<\/p>\n<p>Well it starts with the birth of a new day.<\/p>\n<p>And this leads into something that is the driving force behind having the peace of mind and freedom you deserve while being in control of your life.<\/p>\n<p>It starts with asking&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;What makes you who you truly are?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>To begin answering this question, think about how you handle and deal with what life throws at you on a daily basis.<\/p>\n<p>In what ways do you react to what comes at you?<\/p>\n<p>Because this certainly plays a big part in determining the level of success you achieve in any area of your life.<\/p>\n<p>But also know that along with success comes failure. But not just ordinary failure. I like to call it &#8220;feedback failure&#8221; because it&#8217;s helping to refine who you are, what your mission is, and how on track you are to achieve it.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s easy to get all happy, elated, and excited when things go your way&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>And down, upset, and even depressed when things don&#8217;t go your way.<\/p>\n<p>We all do this to some degree.<\/p>\n<p>However, it&#8217;s wise to be aware of both the positive and negative in each of these situations because they keep you centered, present, and poised.<\/p>\n<p>Just know that the very events taking place in your life right now that seem negative on the surface have a hidden order in them.<\/p>\n<p>In other words if you feel like you made a bad decision and failed because of it, this is your &#8220;feedback failure.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>This &#8220;feedback failure&#8221; has the positive contained within it. This is part of that hidden order I just mentioned a minute ago.<\/p>\n<p>And your ability to acknowledge this hidden order during the apparent chaos allows you to be true to who you are. It also gives you a tremendous opportunity to change your life around.<\/p>\n<p>So how can you remain centered, present, and poised when things aren&#8217;t going your way?<\/p>\n<p>One of the ways I mentioned earlier is to look for the positive and negative in each situation.<\/p>\n<p>Another is to realize that whatever it is you see others doing that upsets you, look to see when you did that same thing in some way.<\/p>\n<p>This will humble you and give you a greater appreciation of who you are. It will also train you to react less. And as a result you&#8217;ll be less distracted and more focused.<\/p>\n<p>Yes, it&#8217;s one thing to read about it here and then when you&#8217;re in the heat of the moment have a tendency to forget about it and go back to those &#8220;old ways.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Well that&#8217;s why I&#8217;m mentioning it here&#8230;as your reminder of what to do in those difficult situations.<\/p>\n<p>Always remember&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Your &#8220;birthday&#8221; may come once a year but in actuality every day is the birth of a new day for you&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>A new day with a new beginning&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>A new day to get a fresh start&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>A new day to learn something new about who you are and what you&#8217;re here to be, do, and have in your life&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>And certainly a new day to shine by showing the world how unique and magnificent\u00a0 you really are&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>While helping others do the same.<\/p>\n<p>Thank you for being you!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Well it&#8217;s the time of year that happens every year. It&#8217;s that &#8220;what seems like&#8221; a one day event when a certain area of your life goes up but doesn&#8217;t seem to come down. It&#8217;s the one thing most people dread because it&#8217;s that area of their life that continues to increase&#8230; And as weird&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":556,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-224","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>What Makes You Who You Truly Are? - Because This Is Your Life<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/becausethisisyourlife\/2014\/09\/what-makes-you-who-you-truly-are.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"What Makes You Who You Truly Are? - Because This Is Your Life\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Well it&#8217;s the time of year that happens every year. It&#8217;s that &#8220;what seems like&#8221; a one day event when a certain area of your life goes up but doesn&#8217;t seem to come down. It&#8217;s the one thing most people dread because it&#8217;s that area of their life that continues to increase&#8230; And as weird&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/becausethisisyourlife\/2014\/09\/what-makes-you-who-you-truly-are.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Because This Is Your Life\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2014-09-15T00:50:14+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2014-09-15T00:50:29+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"cweiner\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"What Makes You Who You Truly Are? - Because This Is Your Life","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/becausethisisyourlife\/2014\/09\/what-makes-you-who-you-truly-are.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"What Makes You Who You Truly Are? - Because This Is Your Life","og_description":"Well it&#8217;s the time of year that happens every year. 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