In this short blog, I wanted to share with you a different perspective on a question most of us ask at some point in our life – and that is “Who am I?” This question – asked so often – suggests that there is actually a suitable answer, a way of defining our self, as if it were a fixed thing.
It’s amazing sometimes when I think of the number of choices we have in any given situation. Like the buffet at an Indian wedding – there is everything to be had and it’s unlimited. But, imagine if someone served your plate for you at that buffet, and you had to just eat what was served to you. Well, what is delicious to someone, may not be palatable to you. At a buffet, we could choose to keep the power with us, or give that power to someone else, and let someone else decide what we should eat.
Something similar has happened to us since we were born. When we were kids, all our beliefs about our self, family, friends, other people, the environment, was served to us by our parents, teachers, or friends. And so we got used to living those beliefs without challenging them, and it became a part of our character, and since then we have guarded those beliefs and protected this as our identity. Many of us have never challenged those beliefs and never wondered what’s the basis for such beliefs.
In daily life, we don’t just blindly accept things – we don’t purchase a brand new television just because the ad says it’s ‘the best tv ever!’ – we do our own research, check out the features, pick one that is our favourite colour, and style. But, in life, we have never really researched enough about our own beliefs – those beliefs about ourselves and who we have become. Just like that Indian buffet, we’ve actually had a million choices as to what to believe about us: beliefs such as ‘I am loveable’, ‘I am good enough,’ or ‘I’m fearless’ or ‘I’m unlimited,’ or ‘everything is possible’.
Up until now, many of us have unconsciously accepted limiting beliefs about ourself, and we have not exercised the power to choose our own beliefs and experiment with it and see what was palatable to us. When I asked myself the question, ‘who am I?’, my personality seemed pretty thin, and I realised that my personality was a result of social hypnosis and conditioning. So, I propose that the question should not be ‘who am I?’, but rather ‘who do I want to become?’
So the question is not ‘who am I?’, it’s ‘who do I want to become?’
Kash Desai
Now, I know I have a choice to let go of parts of me, people, and things that don’t align to who I want to be and I can become more of me.
Sure, in life there will always be bad experiences, just like a dish in that Indian buffet that we don’t like, but that only means that if you don’t like what you’re eating, you can let it be and try something else, until you figure out what you really like. It’s all a part of learning and growing.
So, we are just a choice away from living a delicious life that is palatable to us. We’re just a belief away from living a life that is phenomenal, because we become what we believe about ourselves.
