You Don’t Need to Become Someone Else. Remember Who You Are.

For much of our lives, we are encouraged to become something. Become successful. Become financially independent. Become a good partner, parent, entrepreneur or leader. Become healthier, wiser, more attractive, more productive, more spiritual. Become a better version of yourself.

I understand that. I spent a large part of my own life achieving, building, creating and moving towards the next thing. But somewhere along the way, I began asking a different question.

What if I don't need to become someone else at all?

What if underneath everything I have learned, achieved, accumulated and experienced, there is something much more fundamental that has been there all along?

You don't have to become who you want to be. You only have to remember who you already are.

Ronald, Founder Transformation Nomads

We become very good at being somebody

We are, in many ways, the sum of our experiences. Our upbringing, family, education, relationships, successes and disappointments. We inherit opinions, beliefs, fears, ambitions, do's and don'ts. Some are given to us by others. Others we create ourselves.

Eventually, they become the lens through which we see ourselves and the world. We become so accustomed to looking through that lens that we start calling what we see reality.

We build an identity around it. Our profession. Our achievements. Our house. Our network. Our reputation. And then we spend an extraordinary amount of energy protecting it. But all of that belongs to the person we have become in this life. What if that isn't the whole story?

I found my answer by going inward

My own search took me much further inward than I expected. Through my own experiences and through guiding others in deeper states of consciousness, I came to see human existence differently.

I see us as eternal consciousness having a temporary human experience.

You don't have to believe that because I do. But if our existence extends beyond this lifetime, so may the experiences, knowledge and understanding we carry with us.

That opens a very different perspective on the question “Who am I?”

Beyond what other people have taught us, beyond what happened to us and beyond everything we subsequently told ourselves about who we are, there may be much more waiting to be remembered. Again and again, underneath layers of identity, expectation and fear, I encounter the same themes: love, freedom and choice.

Imagine it. Speak it. Act upon it.

And there is something extraordinarily peaceful about that. You don't have to prove your right to exist. You don't have to convince everyone that you are good enough.

You can simply be.

Fear is postponed trust

All through society, fear is imposed on us. By the tell-a-vision, newspapers and in conversations. I have come to see fear as postponed trust. Fear influences what we expect, what we say and how we act. It can quietly become the architect of choices we later call our reality. When fear becomes quieter, something else has room to grow.

Love.

Especially love for yourself. Not narcissism or believing you matter more than someone else, but accepting yourself without first demanding that you become someone different. For me, love and freedom belong together. If I am free to choose, so are you. If my life has value, so does yours. Freedom therefore also brings responsibility. Our choices affect other people, animals and the world around us.

I increasingly see Earth as a school in that sense: a place to experience, choose, create, make mistakes, discover and grow. And underneath so many of those lessons, I keep finding the same thing.

Love.

Imagine it. Speak it. Act upon it.

There is another lesson I have learned from my own life: we are not only experiencing reality. We participate in creating it.

I have seen it too many times to dismiss it. Something begins as an idea or deep sense of direction. I give it words. I act upon it. Then people appear, circumstances change or doors unexpectedly open. Sometimes a door I desperately wanted to open stays closed, only for me to understand later why. I don't mean that wanting something today magically makes it appear tomorrow. Creation asks something from us. For me, three things need to come together:

Imagine it. Speak it. Act upon it.

See what you want to create. Give it expression. Then start living and acting in accordance with it. When thought, word and action begin pointing in the same direction, I have repeatedly experienced life responding in ways I could never have planned.

This is where transformation begins

This is why our work at Transformation Nomads starts by looking inward. Before changing your relationship, career, business or the world around you, it can be extraordinarily revealing to meet the person underneath everything you have learned to be.

What do you actually want? What belongs to you and what did you learn to want? What are you afraid of? Whose approval are you still trying to earn? And who are you when all that noise becomes quiet?

We don't give people those answers. We create the space in which they can encounter their own. And from there, we look at the reality around them and ahead of them. Because transformation doesn't always require adding something new. It begins by removing enough noise to recognize what was there all along.

You.

You don't need to become someone else.

Remember who you are.

And then decide what you want to create.

We are all visitors to this time, this place. We are just passing through. Our purpose here is to observe, to learn, to grow, to love... and then we return home.

Aboriginal Proverb

Freedom also means responsibility.

For me, remembering who we are does not mean withdrawing from the world. Quite the opposite. If I am free to choose, so are you. If my life has value, so does yours. That changes the way I think about relationships, organizations and even the systems we create around ourselves. Freedom isn't doing whatever we want regardless of the consequences. Our choices affect other people, animals and the world around us.

To me, that is part of the experience of being human. We choose. We experience what those choices create. We learn. And we choose again. I increasingly see Earth as a school in that sense. Not a place where we have to become perfect, but a place where we are allowed to experience, create, make mistakes, discover and grow. And underneath so many of those lessons, I keep finding the same thing: love.

Including one of its most difficult forms: loving yourself without first demanding that you become someone else.