imagining a different YOU

Because, don’t we all sometimes wish we could be different?

And by that we mean better in some way.

But let’s keep it neutral and start with different.

Like what if - common example - as you’re in conversation, maybe with a new acquaintance, maybe with an old childhood friend ... what if you didn’t have to spend so much energy compensating for feeling so sharply ashamed of all the ways you believe you are lacking?

Just imagine for a second.

Not just as a thinking exercise but as a full-body experience.

And I say imagine because if it were so easy to just be different we’d all be doing it already. Most of the time we know what we should or at least want to be like but it’s hard to get ourselves there.

In her latest book Imagination - A Manifesto Dr. Ruha Benjamin writes, “… the most effective ideologies are those that need no police to enforce them, because we internalize and perpetuate them ourselves”.

And I’m curious about your ‘ideologies’ about yourself. The way you’ve internalized I’m not good enough or people don’t like me. The way you keep perpetuating I don’t belong - or some other kind of It’s just the way I am - as if they were the truth.

I’m curious about your way of being. And your ability to reimagine it.

I remember years ago asking a friend what she’d love to do with her life if she had no obligations (real or self-imposed) and I was stunned when she said she had no idea. She simply didn’t know how to access that place. She was incapable of even imagining who she was outside of duty.

I’ve since found she’s far from the only one.

Because the habituated patterns in our brains are what create the “steel curtains … [and] … dangerous boogeymen distorting how we see others and warping how we understand ourselves” - Dr. Benjamin’s metaphors for the mental cages we keep ourselves in.

Those steel curtains and boogeymen limit what we can think possible for ourselves. It means there’s just a lot less you allow yourself to do. Yet - those steel curtains are all the body knows.

It’s what each of my clients comes to me with - a limited view of some sort - I’m stuck. I’m fearful. I’m perpetually angry. I feel like I don’t deserve. I’m endlessly sad. I feel like an imposter. I’m burnt out. And the steel curtains don’t allow them to see past it. Even if they want to be different.

Because our nervous system doesn’t look for what’s “healthy”, or “awakened”, or “your best self”; it’s always on the lookout for what is familiar. That is energetically the least costly option for the brain.

But a different YOU? One that understands its brilliance, knows it is valuable, trusts it is loved, is rooted in its presence? That you is unknown. To even think of it seems ridiculous because it feels like a lie.

But we can start by imagining.

Because, “The imagination of the body isn’t some poetic flourish tacked onto identity like an epigraph, it is how identity inhabits the flesh” - Tamara is a friggin’ master of words.

Who we imagine ourselves to be largely defines who we become.

Who we are, what we end up creating in our lives and how we end up moulding the narrative, the trajectory - ours and that of others - is only as good as our input. And the input is our imagination.

It’s either we widen our imagination or we let our imagination be constrained by other’s imagination.

I mean who wouldn’t want to work off of ‘clean’ inputs instead of the boogeymen? So you can launch that creative experiment or that community project you’ve always felt a strong tug towards rather than hiding in the shadows of who would want to hear from me? Finally let people know you’re open for the business you never stopped flirting with instead of cowering in the pits of succeeding isn’t for someone like me? Or simply be a more present, more giving partner, parent, friend?

We’d still fail, of course, still learn from mistakes. But at least we’d be working as far beyond our previously accepted imaginary limits as we care to.

And maybe feel a little more alive.

Now, imagine that.

Xx