Taking charge of yourself, rather than do things because of the “voices of your past” (aka, well-intended friends and loved ones), means you first have to know who you are and who you are not. It means you have to be aware of what you like, what you are good at, what makes you joyous, what you want in life.
As a result of several months of introspection and soul-searching for the authentic me and what I like and want most in my life, I learned a lot of things about myself.
After I made the list, I reread it and I was surprised.
I said to myself, “Wow! That’s me? I can work with that.”
We know that the choices we make or don’t make in our lives, determine our path through this life.
When we stand there scratching our head and asking ourselves, “How did it come to this?”, we can probably figure out the reason or reasons if we examine the choices we made along the way.
After I built the boat desk, I declared to myself that I am a creative type and I need to focus on that. I thought to myself, “Why did I always undervalue this facet of me? So I became introspective.
I started to search through the mental reels of my life to recall other times I had been creative but just took it for granted. I thought about the first thing I ever built. I was in high school and I ordered a kit for a canoe, which I built with a high school friend, in my basement. I christened it, the “Henriette”, after my high school sweetheart.
I launched it in a friend’s swimming pool to test for leaks before I took it out on the rivers in Missouri where I grew up. So the boat desk was the first thing I ever designed, but it was the second thing I ever built. Building the canoe was the first time I realized I like building things and I was good with my hands.
But I didn’t see the connection between the fun I had building it and the gift of being good with my hands. I didn’t realize that it was a gift I was given and I should develop and nurture it.
I have many interests and they are all appealing to me in their own way. But if I do one thing, then that means I’m not doing all the other things that scream for my attention and seem to have equal priority. I want to do them all.
It’s like getting on a horse and trying to ride off in all directions. You can’t do that. I wasn’t always this way. I don’t know when this all started. (Or maybe I do.)