(34) Reconnecting with Yourself
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INTRO: Hello deep thinkers, this is your host Agrita and welcome to Mind Full of Everything, the podcast that questions the deeper and bigger things in life, from intersectional environmentalism to self-development and everything else in between. This episode is the final one for 2020 and really summarises what this year has encouraged me to discover more about myself as an individual, along with all of the struggles that we have gone through in 2020, the pandemic and beyond. A lot has been learned, but a lot needs to be learned and in this episode I have a very honest conversation with myself to better understand who the person, that I call myself, is that I'm eager to connect back to.
2020 has definitely been the year that we will collectively remember, mostly for the pandemic, of course, but also everything that we have achieved despite being affected by COVID-19. During the lockdown, I personally had plenty of time to do things, but also do nothing. Pick up on hobbies but also just sit out in the sun. Close my eyes, feel the breeze in my hair, essentially being still in that moment. Then spending quality time with my family, we had, luckily, two staycations as lockdown lifted and that really helped with keeping our mental health in check. I also had the opportunity to immerse myself with nature again, and it finally started feeling like life could slowly resume again.
But then university started and although I am very, very interested in my course, everything started to go messy again. There was a massive buildup of stress, for me my PTSD also peaked, there was this feeling of numbness about not knowing what to do, how to feel what's really going on. And then slowly returning to an equilibrium towards the end of the year where you have to balance everything out even though you don't fully know what to make of everything.
This year has definitely been super, super long, but I personally feel like I haven't been able to do everything I wanted to, especially in terms of reconnecting to myself, which is totally fine because we do have the next year to do whatever we didn't do this year! I feel like we all tend to downplay our own achievements a bit too much. If it isn't something major like getting a first in your degree or getting 100,000 downloads for your podcast, you just feel like you shouldn't be feeling proud of anything that isn't matching that level. Or you shouldn't openly be proud of something that really makes you feel good about yourself. You feel like other people just wouldn't want to listen because it's not big enough, according to your definition of “big”.
I came across a tweet recently by Julia Rock and I really wanted to discuss it in this final episode of 2020 because I feel like a lot of us do need to hear this right now. Essentially, she was saying how a lot of people, just like every single year in December, will be mentioning just how much they have achieved, and in 2020 people will be definitely saying how much they achieved despite being in a pandemic. But I think we all just need to be happy that we have survived such a deadly disease, and we have survived it together. And I think that's enough to be celebrated about. You don't need to have achieved something massive, because the only thing you really did need to achieve in this year was your health, maintaining health and also your mental health. We have all fought our own battles before 2020, which may have been bad enough, but fighting those through a pandemic, during this difficult time is a massive, massive achievement, so please do take the time to thank yourself for staying strong, perhaps helping others stay strong as well.
If I was to be really honest with myself, I feel like I haven't achieved as much as I wanted to, even though I did have that time to do whatever I did want to do. I've called this episode Reconnecting With Yourself, but I've realised how I didn't directly do that this year compared to the previous years. Which again is certainly fine, because we all had to just get used to a new, unusual norm, and like I said, we have the next year to complete the incomplete. But this really made me want to create this episode; what do I mean by directly reconnecting with myself? This episode is essentially a great way for me to clear up my thought process a bit more, really understand the ways in which I reconnect back to myself. What I mean by directly reconnecting back to yourself when things aren't really looking so clear. This is why I love Mind Full of Everything, and I really do hope that you love it as well, because I've made it that space to declutter my mind and set straight the way in which I function as a human, and I really hope that this can help you in some way. It may sound as if it's all about me and it's all about me helping myself, when in fact the way in which I think and the way in which I present my thoughts, that is really so you can perhaps replicate that in your life. Pick out some things that you do like and apply that to your life. Or maybe just be happy that it’s resonating with you that you do the same things or similar things to me.
So, let's start this episode off with a very, very big question. Who are you?
When we talk about reconnecting with yourself, who is that person that you call “you” that you want to reconnect to? Who are you? It's a very, very difficult question that I personally would struggle to answer if somebody was to ask me that on the spot. I will look at them and say, no idea. So, let's break up the thinking process.
When you hear this question “who are you?” what immediately comes in your mind? What do you start to think of? Your greatest achievement? So maybe your job position, where you work at, what year of your university degree you're at, what course you are doing, what you earned at the end of your degree?
Would you say your name, who your parents are? Your family history? Perhaps any famous people that you're related to? Or would you take a scientific approach and mentioned that you're from the Homosapien species? Would you take a spiritual turn and say you are a soul or an orb of energy?
When you start to see the different ways in which you can approach this question, you basically start understanding the different layers to not only this question, but to the person you are.
There is of course no set answer to the question of “who are you?”, and no answer is better than another. Every single answer is correct, because every single interpretation, every single perspective in regard to this question is valid. But I do understand that this just makes it even harder to pinpoint down who exactly you are and who it is that we have reconnected to, and then it becomes even harder to know at what point have we actually made that reconnection when we still don't fully know who we are.
So, I think it's important to break it down even further. What are the things that really define you? What traits really define you?
So, you can say things like it's your love for nature, it's your ability to sing, your amazing memory. The way you love, the way you smile, your open mindedness. Your ability to move on from a painful situation, your emotional capacity. Your creativity, your intellectual abilities, your patience, your ability to correctly read people.
Now let's go a little bit bigger. How have these individual things that you associate with yourself helped you to understand who you are?
For example, what does the way in which you love others tell you about yourself? What does your creativity say about your perspective of life? How does the way in which you express your talents show who you really are? What does your ability to read other people say about your wider understanding of life?
Let's step up a little bit more. What do these different pieces that connect to make you, say about your purpose? Your addition to the world, your role on this planet, the importance of your life?
At this point, if you're feeling overwhelmed, rest assured, because as I was writing the script for this episode, the little notes I do make, I got that jumpy feeling in my heart as well. It is A LOT to answer. It's a lot to think about as well, and it's very natural for you to go blank. So, I think to make it easier to answer these questions, I will be answering these questions for myself and I'll see if I can get anywhere to answering the very big question of “who am I?”
So, the first question I asked in this process is what are the things that really define you? So, what are the things that really make me Agrita, and what do they say about me? I know I gave some examples of very specific things, for example, the way you smile, your ability to sing, your amazing memory, etc. But I really wanted to group everything together and give more of a generic trait about me, generic quality.
So, the first thing that is a massive, massive part of me that really does make up who I am is my emotional capacity. Relative to those around me, my emotional capacity is very, very big, extremely big. For example, if I was to see someone, it could be a human or nonhuman, on television and they’re hurt, maybe they're bleeding, or anything along those lines, that same part of my body starts throbbing. I've realised this for pretty much every documentary or story on the news where someone is hurt and you can see the wounds and that same part of my body starts throbbing.
As much as I tried to deny the fact that I do have a relatively big emotional capacity, I do know that it is a massive thing about me. My compassion, my ability to care for others related to me, not related to me, close to me, not close to me, is really strong and the reason why I try to deny it is because, of course it's positively affected me, impacted me, but it has equally negatively impacted me. For example, my love for intimacy in relationships has really caused me in the past to over-love, to overdo a lot of things.
In the past, it has caused me to invest in shallow relationships, the relationships where it pretty much is one-sided, but the other person doesn't want you to leave because they know that your investment in the relationship is big, your love for them is unconditional. They know that you're not doing this because you want something out of it, you're just doing this because your emotional capacity is massive. So, they take that for granted.
I've had these experiences multiple times in my life. So, whenever someone does say that you don't really have control over your emotions, the way that you love people, way that you care for people, it does make you think that this quality, I'm calling this a quality now but in the past I would see it as a massive flaw that I needed to change, why is it that your emotional capacity is so big when others don't have the same emotional capacity as you or similar? Other people are caring for themselves and their loved ones and you are caring for everyone. Why is it that you have this flaw, that I now see as a quality, and other people don't? Why are you wasting time and abandoning those closer to you for those that are taking you for granted?
I can now say that I've reached a pretty much healthy balance in terms of who I love, how much I love, how much of my time and energy I invest in people. Essentially, I have set a limit for myself. I have limited my kindness for those that do deserve it, and I no longer aspire to be the nicest person in the world. Just a kindest version of myself that I am comfortable with, but that doesn't mean that I have changed myself. It just means that I ensure that my finite energy is invested in the correct places. I haven't reduced my emotional capacity, I've just restricted it to where it can reach. The intensity in which I care for people, that's the same, but who it’s going to has changed and that is what I didn't realise. I thought, you know what, I need to just stop caring altogether. I thought, in this selfish world you basically have to be selfish. Be like those around you. You don't need to stick out, but now I've realised that I don't need to change myself. I just need to change my surroundings and change my perspective of emotion, of compassion, of care.
The next quality about myself that really makes me “me” is deep thinking. I think that's pretty much evident in this podcast! I say this perhaps in every single episode where I'm talking about self help, self discovery, etc. That is a core value of not only my podcast, but also myself. Essentially superficial doesn't even exist in my dictionary. I hate small talk. With passion. It's perhaps only thing I do really hate, you can hear that in the More Big Talk Less Small Talk episode. I found that most people around me don't have similar thought processes as I do. I tend to go beyond the deep and most people tend to be on the surface, which I'm not saying is a problem, if you're comfortable with that, that's perfectly fine. I'm not here to judge. Not everybody is supposed to be like me, and that is perfect. You're perfect how you are. But then I start getting that disconnect.
Of course, you can't be talking about difficult things, deep things all the time. I don't! You do need that space, you do need that break. You can't be overloading yourself with so many different things at once, but it's the speed in which I rebound from that break, that's what I haven't really been able to see in most people around me. The closest people to me are super, super eager to get back into the deep end once they've had their break, and that's why I seek that ability [in others] to come back even stronger than what you left. So, what is this really talk about me? Well, it just shows how much I love intimacy because intimacy brings depth and that is what I love. I love to make connections to everything. Exactly why I'm so interested in the intersections between society and the environment.
I have this really strong belief that every single thing on the Earth and beyond, the universe, is all connected, both spiritually and also scientifically, although I haven't really looked into the science behind it (laughs). For me, the universe and everything in it is essentially a space full of energy, a realm of energy. All these different energies are essentially interacting with each other.
Although deep thinking has taught me how much I seek out for depth, I do understand that it can go haywire. I think practically all the time, whenever I'm thinking about lots of different things that have connections with each other, I end up into this chaos where I'm thinking so much that I have to pull out when it's too much, because then my thought process is very confusing and then I have to put in time to actually understand how I'm thinking instead of understanding what it is I'm trying to understand. So of course, there's flaws to that, but I still think this ability of me to think deeply, go beyond the surface, has benefited me way more than pulled me down.
The next quality is my love for nature. Again, it's very evident in my podcast, that is like the core of my podcast, also, the core value for myself. This love for nature already induced the desire in me to pursue environmentalism as a career, especially environmental justice. And when I started seeing that my love for nature can be put into practice, it can be pursued as a career, I began to expand to the intersections of environmental problems with social problems, because as much as I love nature, I've always been advocating, in my own space, about the protection of human rights. Especially those [people] that are constantly suppressed, you tend to find those people in developing regions or in poor areas in wealthy nations, poverty is a main thing and main aspect of vulnerability. And now I can see that my passion to understand the environment and social problems can be integrated and frankly, that was one of the best realisations in my life. It's really my love for nature, being in it, understanding it scientifically and also just being overwhelmed by its beauty that has really helped me in understand my values for sure. But, also what I really want to be doing with my time and energy, professionally but going beyond profession as well. I think the reason why I love nature, and this is perhaps going to be sounding a bit confusing, as I was writing this down, I was getting a bit confused as well so I hope you do understand it. I feel like nature is the only thing that really humbles me, in terms of the power imbalance that exists between humanity and nature. So, for me at this current point of time, there is nothing that feels greater to me than nature. The fact that nature is so dynamic, so unpredictable, you can have models, warning systems in place, but you never know exactly what nature will do next, and this power of the unknown is what really, really draws me to nature. That feeling of being overpowered by something that you don't fully understand, is a weird feeling, but that is another massive thing why I really enjoy being in nature. Perhaps standing on a mountain, looking down the valley, feeling scared, but also feeling like wow there is something out there that’s so much more powerful than me and humanity collectively and that feeling of being overpowered, overwhelmed, in a sense is empowering (laughs). Like it doesn't exactly make sense, but if you were to stand on a mountain looking down feeling like OK if something happened now, I could literally just fall to my death. That's scary and that is overwhelming. But it's is this power of nature that makes you feel empowered and at the same time feel so insignificant. I don't know, I like the complexity of that feeling! (laughs) I don't know how to better describe it, but that is a massive thing about nature, which I love.
Coming back to the dynamic nature of the environment, nature doesn't see social class wealth, race, gender, belief. It’s essentially neutral, unbiased, and when there are disasters caused by natural hazards, you see that essentially everyone is affected regardless of social class, race, gender, etc. However, I am really not forgetting the fact that it's always the underprivileged, the oppressed, marginalized communities that are impacting the most. And that is because we have deliberately forced them into disaster prone regions. That is inequality that we have created, but in terms of the impacts of natural hazards, it's not like nature is picking out the poorest of a country to impact. I hope you do understand what I'm trying to say. The reason why less-wealthy people are always impacted first in terms of the impacts of climate change, extreme weather events, is because we have created that inequality where those with less power, less fame, wealth, are deliberately driven into these areas where disasters occur regularly. That is an inequality we've created. That is not the inequality that nature has created, and that is why, again, my love for nature is strengthened.
The next quality, the next major part of me that I'm going to be talking about is essentially including the first three qualities I've talked about and that is spirituality. So, the power imbalance with nature and humanity, the deep thinking habit, viewing everything with the intention to go deeper really explains why I am a very spiritual person. I am literally, literally in love with spirituality. It’s why I love poetry, why I love dance, especially contemporary dance, why I really love soulful music. So, for me, I definitely am more spiritual than religious. I think I definitely want to make a separate episode on this talking about spirituality, philosophy, things along those lines that have really helped me understand myself, understand the world a bit better, how it's helped me to conserve my energy, channelise it in the correct way, how it's helped me to be a bit more positive as a person, go beyond my comfort zone etc.
I feel like spirituality is definitely a foundation for who I am. That has definitely been influenced by my religion, which is Hinduism as I've mentioned before, but I feel like spirituality goes way beyond religion and again that is something that I really, really like. So, I do believe that we are all souls, or we are all bundles of energy, but I don't necessarily believe it in the way that religion teaches about it. My belief in spirituality, again like I said, has been influenced by my religious beliefs, especially in the past, but the way in which I view spirituality has now extended beyond religion. So essentially, it's me viewing us more than just flesh bodies and that includes non-humans as well.
I feel like we're too emotionally complex to just be bodies, flesh bodies. So, when I talk about reconnecting to myself, I really mean my spiritual self. Easiest way to put it is my soul and everything I feel is through a spiritual lens. The ability to feel emotions, I just think that's spiritual. Although I am an advocate for understanding science and spreading scientific knowledge, I do feel that the certain things that science can't explain kind of dips into the spiritual realm. And again, for me, not knowing certain things is very empowering. I'm not sure why. But just knowing that you don't have to understand everything, you don't have to know everything is powerful in itself.
So essentially, I really do see things through a spiritual lens when it comes to reconnecting to myself. Understanding myself, the emotions I feel. For example, if I'm immersing in nature, it’s because I feel that spiritual connection between me and a tree, a park, a meadow. Natural spaces, water bodies. And what this really tells me is that spirituality has essentially taught me the mechanism to connecting to yourself. I guess it's easier to say that spirituality is kind of like that mechanism where people are able to understand themselves better. It's a thought process, it’s a healing process. It's more than just a process, but if we were to confine it to a definition, I guess it is, it is a medium in which you are able to understand yourself more than just a body of flesh.
The reason why I keep emphasising on the need to go beyond seeing yourself as a body made of flesh is because the spiritual self that I'm talking about is essentially not influenced by other forces. It's again, like I said about nature, neutral, unbiased, and the way in which I came to this conclusion is that certain things I really, really love, that I love doing or feeling, love being around, it’s really unexplained. One of the guests that I had on my podcast, she asked me “why do you advocate for nature”? What makes you focus on this specific part of the world? I've had quite a few guests asked me that actually. It just really really confused me because I don't really know how to answer that. My love for nature hasn't really been influenced by a particular thing in my life. I personally don't know when it started. I've always enjoyed being in parks and being around nature, but I can't explain why I decided to pursue it as a career.
I now see that the rate in which the climate is changing is because of environmental degradation. I now see that connect, and I guess that really pushed my desire forward to help protect our environment and also the most vulnerable but where it started, I have no idea and again that is powerful that is so meaningful. Just knowing that my love for nature is not influenced by, for example, a family's love for nature, or my friends love for nature, it’s just always being there. And the fact that I can't explain why it's been there, for me is definitely part of my spiritual self itself, that doesn't need to be explained. It just exists. And I guess seeing myself as a bundle of energy, an orb of energy, I guess my energies interacting more with nature than someone else that isn't connected to nature as much. Maybe it's just that my energy that has been attracted more to the energy that nature radiates.
Stepping a bit away from the really, really big things in life, unconventionality and uniqueness is another massive thing about myself. So, I personally never like settling for less. I have tried to convince myself to do that a lot, especially when, you know, I've just been around the wrong people. People that don't meet my standards. I've told myself “you have to settle for less”. That's the only way. Now I’ve realised no, you don't need to settle for the bare minimum, the norm, the conventional. Personally for me, I've never really been comfortable around traditionalists, so the ones that stick to gender norms, are unwilling to step outside their comfort zone or constantly worried about sticking out. That doesn't mean I’ve always been like this. I have also been that person where I felt afraid of sticking out, afraid of being seen as weird, feeling alienated, even though whilst I was feeling all those things I had was being alienated (laughs). We just need to understand that everybody has their own time to publicise their true self. You need to be in the correct state of mind and you need to be in the correct surroundings to do that. If you are around people that have no desire to understand you, to celebrate your differences, you will never be happy with how different you are to other people. You will never understand the value of your uniqueness. You would always want to follow the path that most people are following.
I personally still fall into this quite a bit, but when it does get too much and I feel like I have mingled with the norm a bit too much, you know this isn't me, I just return back to my zone that I'm comfortable with. And at first it can seem a bit weird, it can feel like I'm being a bit too much, I'm asking for too much, but then when I realized that no, I'm feeling comfortable with this, then I forget about what other people are thinking. This is really taught me how, essentially how open minded I am, how open I am to positive change, even though I can be reluctant to change a lot of the time, and is also taught me how eager I am to learn new things, to be in new surroundings. Think in a different way.
I really, really love engaging and stimulating topics because it makes me think outside of the box. It makes me challenge my strongest beliefs. It makes me feel uncomfortable, but then it makes me question my perspective in life. Change is something I dread. I don't know, lots of people dread change yet change is something that I desire all the time. Again, it's like the overpowered, empowered description I was giving before. Things that make you feel uncomfortable can also be very comforting, because when you're in a position where you are confused if your personal beliefs are right or not, you get the opportunity to challenge your perspectives. Perhaps change them, or perhaps just consolidate them. And knowing how you feel was right, or perhaps knowing how you feel was wrong and you change that is comforting.
Coming back to change, although I do dread change, I do need to be having constant changes in my life.
And I think it's because I haven't reached a point in life where I'm totally comfortable with the people around me, my surroundings, where I am as a person (professionally, spiritually, etc). I haven't reached that point where I'm satisfied yet and that is why I do desire change even though it makes me really sick, nostalgic, worried constantly, but also really excited about what the change will bring in my life once of course everything is settled.
And now the final thing, I promise it’s a final thing I realise is going a bit too long! (laughs) But this is a topic that I just love so much, I think I could spend an entire day talking about it! It's just, it's just so stimulating, exciting, to understand yourself and I really do hope that every single person feels as excited as me to understand themselves more because it's a massive, massive achievement that is really looked down on, not given enough time energy too. But when you do it, you feel as if you're in a different place entirely. I haven't fully understood myself, but this journey itself is really exciting. Anyway, so the last quality, massive quality about myself that really makes me, me is prioritising myself and I think that is like a very important foundation in understanding yourself better. It's the biggest part of self-love, self-discovery, and is something that we all need to do.
So, the first quality that I talked about was emotional capacity and how I have prioritised others over myself way too long for me to continue on doing that. This includes loved ones and those that don't deserve my time. I have finally seen the pointlessness of putting others constantly before myself and putting myself second. Once I did put myself first, did I finally realise myself worth and my standards.
Talking about my standards again, I talked about this in Expectations vs Necessities episode, it is a while back now since I made that, but if you do want to listen to it, I do recommend you do. I have been constantly, directly and indirectly, told that my standards are ludicrously high, especially for men. So, I'm a heterosexual and I've been pretty much surrounded by heterosexuals who had a strong belief that standards for men should always be low. Regardless of what position you are in life. And at one point I did fall for that, I felt like my standards are too high. I'll never meet someone with my standards, so why don't you just keep them low? Then as I spent a bit more time with myself, started distancing from people like that, I realised that my standards are just a reflection of the quality of my being, my character and if I have made myself to this standard, why the hell am I going to be trying to go with someone that is less than that? Why should I be settling for less than what I deserve?
But to come to that realisation, I really needed to set boundaries, especially of what I'm comfortable with. Unfortunately, there have been too many times that I would do things that I wasn't comfortable when, but I would still do it to not hurt the other person. That person wouldn’t do the same for me, but I would always do it for them. Never did I think about the fact that, yeah sure I wasn't hurting the other person, but I was hurting. The only person has always been here for me is myself.
I am in a much better place now, I'm very grateful for that, where I can now safely put my standards and my wellbeing before others, especially those that don't respect my perspective in life. But I do sometimes fall into the habit of prioritising others from time to time, especially family. I think it pretty much is restricted to family now, my loved ones, instead of dedicating time to myself. But like I said, I haven't reached that point where I'm like “yes, I love myself”, you know, “I don't need to learn anymore” or “I don't need to improve myself anymore”. I am not at that point yet. I'm still learning and I'm fine with that. So long as I know that I have boundaries, and even though I do go beyond them, I now realise when I have done that and I come back quickly, set up some time to heal, to understand myself, to get myself back on track. And unfortunately, there will be a back and forth from staying in your boundary to going out, but again, that is part of the learning process.
At one point you will reach a point in life where you've done a bit too much of that back and forth and you stay within your boundaries. And when you do that, you attract the right energy, you really do, you have a better relationship with yourself and that is pretty much all you need, all you need for a healthy and happy life, mentally at least. Because it's then when you stop helping other people before you've healed. You stop projecting your insecurities and pain onto those that you really want to help and instead you work on healing yourself. And then you are able to help others heal in a much more effective way.
So, what do all these things say about my purpose? The reasoning behind my existence? This was the second big question I asked, when I was trying to understand my thought process a bit more again. I think this question is very hard to answer. So, looking at myself, there is so much about me that you can't fit into a box that is labeled as “purpose”. But if I was to paint an overall picture of what it is I'm supposed to be doing on Earth, I think it would be a picture of stewardship.
Stewardship for me pretty much embodies all of my qualities very well, qualities that connect to make myself. It's the unconditional love for the planet and society that defines stewardship as a belief. And I think that just goes really well with what makes me myself. In my episode, for example, The True Stewards, I talked about environmental stewardship, but stewardship goes beyond the environment. It extends to the entire world, the environment and the different components that make up the world. But for me, what is really, really really special is indigenous stewardship. Again, I talked about this in the True Stewards episode, for me, indigenous stewardship really incorporates the spiritual and physical world together. Indigenous communities really see nature as a force to be protected, not meddled with.
They see living beings as servants of nature and not rulers. They go way, way, way beyond the surface level and into the depths of culture, understanding the unknown, acceptance of the unknown, and for me that is just so beautiful. It's a whole level of beautiful that I just can't describe. So, for me, stewardship is so important, but indigenous stewardship goes a whole different level beyond that.
A lot of the time we do disconnect from our purpose and feel pretty much worthless. Our contributions to the world start to feel negligible. It's like we don't matter, we are worth nothing. I am extremely familiar with this feeling of feeling like nothing. It's, I think, even worse when you're suffering from a mental health problem, especially, but you haven't been diagnosed, but you can feel that there's something wrong, because at that point you feel like nothing is making sense anymore. It's genuinely a horrible feeling of emptiness and you don't realise the empty feeling until you've left that phase and you look back and you feel sorry for yourself, you feel the pain. You feel it in the form of PTSD. But the fact that you've left that stage and you can look back shows how much you've healed as a person. When you've left your painful past and come to a safe space, you also get that time to remind yourself of what really is your purpose.
I think a lot of people just feel overwhelmed by the word “purpose” because of how we have defined it. We have defined purpose as something so big, so vague and so broad, and because of that, lots of people feel pressured to find their purpose, especially when they're not ready. They want their purpose to be massive, to be on a big scale, they want to be making great change, massive change. When your purpose doesn't need to be in that form.
As I have grown up, as a 21 year old, as much as I have learned in these 21 years, you really don't find your purpose your purpose, your purpose finds you. The only finding you really need to do is finding yourself. Reconnecting to yourself. And when you do that, when you're in the process, you will automatically understand what your purpose is, in the process. When you start to understand what the little things are that make up you and you start to see the overlaps of the main personality traits, qualities, and then your wider goals, ambitions, hopes and dreams, then you realise what your purpose is. So essentially, it's a 2 in 1 achievement. You discover yourself for sure, but you also discover what it is that you want to fulfill in this life.
And that's exactly why I wanted to create this episode. I wanted you to understand that when you reconnect with yourself, you reconnect with everything in your life. You start to discover things that you wouldn't have understood if you didn't take all that time to understand yourself. And in this episode, it might feel as if reconnecting to yourself, understanding yourself, discovering yourself is a quick process, it can happen in an hour, seriously, it isn't. I have been able to make this episode because I've spent so many years, so many moments, so much time, understanding myself that I could create this episode, so I only needed a little bit of time to write down these notes, to answer these questions as best as I could and reconnect back to myself.
It's not an easy process, it's not a quick process, but that's not so I can put you off reconnecting with yourself. The fact that it is a long process is special in its own way, because you know that you've put in that energy, you've put in that energy and time to understand the person that will always be with you, and that's special.
I have also realised that I have made finding your purpose, reconnecting to yourself, really big. First of all, this is your life and you define what your purpose is. You define how big you want it to be. You define what big is. Every single person's purpose should be big to them, should be significant to them, and it shouldn't be determined by what other people see as successful or significant, big. For example, if you want to catalyse change on a local scale, that itself is a massive achievement. If you want to start your own organisation to implement systemic change in whatever aspect of society you want to implement that change, that is a massive achievement as well.
No one should be telling you how significant your achievements are except yourself. As an Indian daughter, the eldest daughter of the house, I know exactly what it's like to have other people's dreams and expectations put upon me. I know how it's like to feel restricted because you feel as if you failed to be the person that others want you to be. But now as a 21 year old, I've kind of reached that stage where I am comfortable to define my own success, my own purpose, my own life, to what I'm happy and comfortable with. And ever since I've taken that control over my life, I realised that those that genuinely do support me and love me have only supported my decisions. They have taken time to understand why I have done certain things and they are still in that process, but they have only supported me and that is all I need.
Coming back to the big, big question that I asked you at the beginning. Who are you? After going through the different stages of self-discovery, can I answer that question now? To your disappointment, no. At least not yet.
I've definitely found out a lot about myself, but I still have a lot to learn. If I really wanted to, I could answer that question by saying I'm a steward of my surroundings. Or I could say I'm a soul interacting with the different energies in the world, in the universe, but for me these answers still don't seem enough. These aren't holistic definitions of who I am, who I really am. But really, that is perfectly fine and there is a beauty and not knowing. as I've mentioned, as I've emphasised in the episode, there is a beauty about not knowing yet, because the unknown really urges us to continue finding out more about things we are passionate about, in this instance finding out more about yourself.
Sometimes there are things in life that you won't ever really know about, but so long as you find out as much as you can to sustain a healthy and happy life, you are on the right track.
OUTRO: It has been a very unusual year, full of different emotions, but also full of so many different achievements that we perhaps wouldn't have called big back in 2019, but now seen as massive. Just to reiterate, please don't feel like you need to seek out what you've actually achieved in this year, because having good health and a stable mindset is practically the only thing that we really needed to achieve for getting through this year, so please be proud of yourself! Just to let you know, I won't be taking a break over the holidays; whenever I try to take a break, I always end up missing podcasting too much so new content will definitely be coming to you as normal! For that though, you do need to subscribe to Mind Full of Everything on your podcast app of choice and follow me on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest. Please do write reviews for the shows, I do read them out on air, and support the podcast by buying my 100% recycled acrylic pin badges. Here's wishing you all a very Merry Christmas, if you do celebrate, and a happy but most importantly healthy and safe new year.