"There are so many layers to you and you are worth getting to know."

It’s time to get to know your unrehearsed self.

Who are you when no one else is around?
Who are you when you’re not having to worry about impressing or competing or performing?

It’s time to get to know who you are in this space. It’s time to get to know who you are beneath the layers. 

To get to know anyone, you need time. And this matters even when it comes to getting to know yourself. But if you don’t have the time you wish you had, anytime at all is a great start. Spend time just being. Turn off the music. Turn off the television. Notice how your heart beats when it’s just you. Pay attention to the spaces where you feel just a little more relaxed than you did earlier in the day. You may not be able to spend indefinite time here, but the time you spend away from everything else is a way of getting to know yourself.

And here’s why it’s important to get to know yourself: getting to know yourself is not an isolated, selfish act. By getting to know what energizes you and what drains you will be able to make clearer decisions about what you can and cannot say “yes” to. By identifying how much quiet time and rest you need, you’ll be able to be honest in your communication with others about what you’re willing to commit to. By learning to acknowledge and process your own emotions, you will be able to have greater empathy for others as they’re working through theirs’.

Another reason why it’s important to get to know yourself is because all day long you have to perform. You have to perform tasks and meet expectations. You create routines and rhythms to do everything from answering emails to traveling from one place to the next. These are all useful activities and the skill you’ve acquired along the way is beneficial and worth noting. As Shakespeare famously said, “all the world’s a stage,” and there is certainly a time to enter stage left and read our lines on stage for the crowd of the day. However, the more we do this, the more we have to spend time getting to know our unrehearsed self. Who are we when there’s no program? No routine to follow? No one watching? This is a person worth getting to know.

There are so many layers to you and you are worth getting to know.
How can you give time to getting to know yourself in the same way you give time to everything and everyone else?

More tomorrow…
Sincerely,
Morgan Harper Nichols
@thestorytellerco
@morganharpernichols