How to Change: Taking Baby Steps Out of the Social Self

As Dorothy, the Scarecrow, the Tin Man and the Lion discovered, change usually involves a journey that leads you back to who you’ve always been.

I thought that journey would be simple, but it wasn’t. Why? Because I have layers and layers and layers of social and personal mortar that I’ve piled onto my true story. I bet you do, too.

Here’s the secrets I’ve finally learned about digging through all of that mortar to find myself again.

What I Love

I started with the basics by making a list of what I loved as an eight-year-old.

• I love to laugh
• I love to read stories about people
• I love to write poems and novels
• I love to play games
• I love to dance
• I love my family
• I love myself

At eight years-old, I knew what I loved. Then life happened. I started searching for myself  in others’ faces, their favorable reflection becoming my new desire. By journeying outside of those who loved me I entered a playground filled with insecurity and bullies. Being liked by others became a point of self-survival.

I learned  to build on my simple preferences to acclimate to my surroundings:

• I love to laugh but not too loud and not at inappropriate times and never at myself.
• I love to read stories about people but only in books that impress my friends and parents and professors.
• I love to write but only in a way that my teachers like and my parents like and the publisher likes.
• I love to play games but life is not about playing and work is serious and that’s how you get paid and I need to like work a lot more.
• I love to dance until somebody makes fun of me and then I learn to dance the right way and then I’m not good enough and then nobody dances and then I stop dancing.
• I love my family but they’re not perfect and sometimes they let me down and they are to blame for a lot of my issues.
• I love myself if I weighed less or succeeded more or dressed better or lived in the right house.

Here’s what I’ve learned along my own journey — it takes baby steps to make it out of your adult self. I call them baby steps, because they represent the you that existed before the world made you think that being you wasn’t good enough.

Take a minute and imagine yourself at an age where you loved life and felt good about you.

What really brought you joy?

Write those things down, even if you can only remember a few. That’s your first step.

My next blog will discuss how those factors can lead you to self-discovery. . . one baby step at a time.