Be Yourself

Dear loving people,

Are you your true self? Our true self is who we really are when we let go of all of the stories, labels, and judgments that we have placed upon ourselves. It is who we naturally are without the masks and pretentiousness. It is who we really are when we let fall to the floor the cloak of other people’s stuff that we have taken on.

To be able to be yourself, Adam Smith says “The first thing you have to know is yourself. A man who knows himself can step outside himself and watch his own reactions like an observer.”

Self-knowledge is all-encompassing. What is learned on one scale of experience can be applied to all scales. It is the highest form of knowledge, surpassing all other knowledge. Self-knowledge is also timeless, which means that what is gained in one era, benefits all subsequent generations.

Once a king came to his garden and saw fading and dying trees, bushes, and flowers. An oak said that he dies because it can’t be as high as a pine. Applying to a pine tree, the king found her falling down because it can’t give grapes like a grapevine. And the grapevine was dying because she couldn’t blossom like a rose. Soon he found a single plant, pleasing heart, bloomy and fresh. After questioning, he received the following answer:

I think it’s a natural event, because when you planted me, you wanted to get a joy. If you would like to grow an oak, grapes or rose, you would put them. So I think that I can’t be anything else than what I am. And I try to develop my best qualities.

Look at yourself. You can only be yourself. It is impossible for you to become someone else. You can be joyful and blossom or you can fade if you do not accept yourself. You can die of poverty in a world of plenty or you can take action and get a fair share of the world’s riches depending on whether you accept yourself or not.

I have come to realize that self-knowledge is one of the key sources of strength mentioned by almost all successful people. I mean those who have opened wide the gates of individual achievement. Self-knowledge allows you to operate smarter and more efficiently. It puts you more in control of your destiny.

Self-knowledge draws you toward work that fits your skills and values. Consider Bill Gates, how will history view him? As a founder of the world's most influential software vendor and one of the biggest creators of wealth ever? I strongly think his unique approach reflects a deep awareness of his values and experience. For example his time-honored devotion to philanthropic work, is a perfect fit for his focus on value creation and it will not be news if he is remembered perhaps as the greatest philanthropist the world has yet to see and just like Andrew Carnegie, who today is remembered more for his charitable largess than his exploits in the steel industry, Gates' business legacy may fade over time in comparison to his work with the namesake foundation that he set up with his wife Melinda.