To Thine Own Self Be True - episode 109
We are entering our third season officially with this episode. You have all made this experience more than I could hope for or imagine. Thank you. Truly thank you…
It was a pleasure reconnecting with today’s Believe guest, Rachael Baciocco. We worked for the same organization several years ago. Now she is a twenty-something woman discovering who she is. Rachael is exploring all the different parts of herself to find out what is true. Part of that is revealed through our relationship with others. Connection and finding your people are paramount. As she says, What do we have in this world except moments with each other?
Like Rachael said, being kind is what matters. Being open is essential to understanding. I like that she is being intentional about what she believes and why she believes it. It’s an important step in adulting to see if the belief-system you were raised with is really your own or not. She is trying on different things and seeing what aligns with her, keeping what works, and discarding what does not. Along the way she is taking the larger perspective on it all as she focuses on the difference between being our best self and our true self. In my opinion, she’s already there.
Thinker. Teacher. Fun.
— Rachael Baciocco
It’s All Me
Thoughts from To Thine Own Self Be True
Rachael’s point about your best self vs. your true self got me to thinking. Am I being my best self or my true self? That’s a good one to ponder and you know how I like to ponder. Hmmm. Let’s go down an exploratory road. According to thesaurus.com, where I visit frequently, the definitions are as follows:
best - most excellent, correct, right
true - real, valid, concordant with facts
Ok, so perhaps being our best self can have an element of pretense. I’m not sure I thought of it that way before. When I think of my best self I think of being the fullest self I can be. And I do like the word excellent as in excelling because the personality I have likes that as a descriptive, as an act of doing, as a committed way of being.
I was at my first physical therapy appointment for chronic neck pain. The therapist was showing me the exercises he was assigning for homework. As he demonstrated he told me to mimic what he had done. The very first one I did had extra zest as I was motivated to do my best, to excel. He said, You don’t have to crush it. That really stuck with me and I have remembered it many times since. I thought I was doing the exercises in an excellent way when trying that hard wasn’t needed. It was too much. Sometimes gentle or soft is better. Sometimes it’s even excellent.
In terms of being my true self it is being authentic for that definition has the word true in it. So synonym cousins if you will. I do want to be authentic and I want to have authentic people in my life. I want to have authentic experiences. Part of that means it will not always be excellent. Sometimes it will be hard, sad, disappointing, scary, frustrating, confusing. I welcome that too.
Not too long ago I went through a very hard time. I was hanging on by a thread. I was at a women’s event and I shared my disappointment with the host that the event was not being held at the original, agreed upon schedule. She was doing what she could and I wasn’t extending understanding or grace. In my mind I was thinking about two of the other women who had made special arrangements and needed this time away. Later on yet another woman and I spoke on the phone and she told me, You can be very inflexible. Ouch! Yes, that stung. Some tears, and time later, I realized why. I was feeling so out of control in one area in my life that I overcompensated in another area, trying to exert some sense of things given, and known, something I could count on. Thankfully I made it through the hard time and I understood my true self, better. I subsequently apologized to the host and the friend who corrected me. They extended understanding and grace. Was I being my true self? Yes and I fell quite short. Sometimes we do.
If I look at myself like a gemstone then I think being my best self is one facet. It’s the facet in which I want to excel, I want to do well, I want to have full experiences. And if I look at my true self as another facet it’s where I want to embrace it all. The good, the bad. The highs, the lows. The ins, the outs. The ups, the downs. (It’s like a Dr. Seuss book!) All of it, every aspect, every angle. It’s all me.
The gem cannot be polished without friction, nor man without trials.
— Confucius
