I came across the YouTube video, “The Art of Being Yourself,” by Caroline McHugh. She absolutely floored me. She is now my newly adopted mother and I shall begin speaking in Scottish brogue from this point hence.

If being ourselves is an art form,
how many colors are left in our trays?
How many slabs of us go without shape?

If you actually watched it (sláinte!), let’s talk. If you didn’t, you can still check the highlight reel…

Discussion Point 1:

Revelation vs. Reassurance.
Which one are you looking for when you look in the mirror?

Discussion Point 2:

Eccentric vs. Authentic.
One has a negative connotation and the other, a positive accolade. I would argue they’re exactly the same and that “eccentric” is put upon the person whose authenticity is not widely accepted.

“You’re already different. Your job is to figure out how, and then be more of that.”

When we look at all the people who are “larger than life,” the leaders and wonder-kids and movers and shakers at work, “they glow; it’s like they swallowed the moon.”

See, I WANT that. I FEEL the moon in me. Don’t you feel it in you, too???

“When are you good at being yourself?”

I would add, in whose company are you unashamedly yourself?

In Day 2, I talked about these times of change as being “precious.” McHugh also says, they “lend themselves to change…and rock you back into the inner self,” and elegantly names them:

INTERVALS OF POSSIBILITY

They’re crazy scary! If I’m honest, my biggest fear is not losing the THINGS around me, but rather, losing myself in their midst.

Intervals in time, like in music, like in stories, (and definitely like in cardio workouts), are HARD. They burn because they’re short bursts of effort that only yield results if the effort is true and exerted. They take the next year, movement, chapter, (and your abs), to the next level.

But when you’re already tired, how do you go one more mile? And where are you headed, anyway? Would we put all that effort into circling back to where we left off? Or should we instead question, “If I were the person of my dreams, who would I be?” …and point our pedals in that direction.

So, before I go seeking Scottish citizenship, I leave you with this:

“Even on the stormiest of days, the sky is beautiful blue underneath. The sky just is. Because the sky sees the impermanence of the clouds and the impermanence of the rainbows; and YOU have to develop an inner state of mind that’s as impervious to all the good shit and bad shit that happens to you, as the sky is to the weather.”

---

More can be learned about Caroline McHugh’s work here.