Learning How to Stop Revising My Life and Embody Myself

The hardest part about being a writer is the constant need to revise, to look for what you did wrong. Unfortunately, this tends to seep into my own life. I start being hyper-critical of myself. Every mistake is magnified and circled with red ink in my brain. I have this need to be perfect and make sure I am meeting what I think people expect from me.

Recently, I started re-editing one of my scripts to put back into competition. This was a difficult decision for me since the last time I competed with the script, I was disappointed with the outcome. Because of this and the stress of work, I’ve fallen down the rabbit hole of old insecurities. I’ve been very hard on everything in my life and my mental health went downhill. 

I think this is why artists like me often have such a hard time with mental health. We are constantly revising our work. We put ourselves into a career where we are constantly criticized for something we’ve put our heart into. Then, when we are alone with ourselves or don’t have steady work, everything comes crashing down inside because we can’t help but take the criticism personally. 

As of right now, I’m getting better. After having the realization of what I was going through, I started reflecting on what I could do to stop criticizing myself so much. I’m also trying to figure out what I want out of my life. 

Part of my answer came in the form of an online webinar that I got to watch with my former life coach, Rachel Francis. (I’ll probably talk more about having a life coach in a different post.” It was a course on learning to embody your true self hosted by an app called “The Bien Etre Circle.” In the course, Rachel talked about learning to embody your true self and some of the steps you need to take to get there. 

This is not completely new to me. When I was in high school, I realized that I had become someone that didn’t feel like me. I had fallen into depression and felt very lost. Since then, I have worked to find myself, but it made me really dislike who I become, the person who didn’t feel like me. I turned myself into the “perfect” version I thought everyone would want me to be. Someone know one had to worry about.

Since then, I’ve been trying to become a truer version of myself, but found that I was constantly fighting against the old version of myself.

One of the things Rachel mentioned in her talk stuck with me because now I see it relates to what I had been struggling with for so long. She explained that one fo the first things to do before learning to embody your true self was to ask “what did you learn from being the person you were.”

So, over the past few days, I have been working to not only explore who I want to embody, but also to recognize who I was embodying and thanking what it’s done for me. I’ve been trying to be gentle with myself and not to edit myself too harshly. I have taken some of the things that Rachel taught about finding who you want to embody and turned it into a page in my bullet journal. I’m sure there will be more to come. 

The important thing though that I need to remember is that I’m trying. After all, it is human to try, to make mistakes and learn how to grow from them. Even my writing can’t be perfect so why does my real story have to be? Sometimes, I just need the reminder that it is okay to be human. 

That is at the top of my list for who I want to embody: someone who is more gentle toward themselves, someone who remembers they’re human. I want to be someone that can enjoy the present, imperfect moment and let go of the idea that it has to be perfect. I want to not feel like the world is not one my shoulders, that if something falls apart it’s not because of me. 

I’m excited about this new chapter in my life, less anxious and stressed about the future. Hopefully, there will be a lot more exciting growth to come soon.