The answers are on the inside

Want to know why somewhere around nine out of ten people contemplating the adventure into becoming their best self never move past just thinking about it - why their adventure never get even as far as a first step being taken?

Well, I’ve heard a myriad excuses, but there is one that I have heard many, many more times than any other, and it’s this: “I can’t take that adventure right now, because I have no idea who my best self actually is - so how can I ever become that person?”

It’s like some cruel twist of irony: to know your best self is not a prerequisite of the adventure, it is a *product *of it. And you only get your hands on that product by taking the adventure.

There literally is no other way to figure out who the best version of you actually is. Every answer you want - every detail, every nuance, every discovery - lies in the adventure. Not in the destination, in the adventure.

Sure, you can try and avoid the adventure. You can stay in the comfort of your living room, TV remote in one hand and a bowl of chips in the other, absorbing the messages the world wants to give you about who you are, and who you should be. But the person the world wants you to be is not the person you truly are.

The world wants to shape you into something new, but here’s the thing: you don’t need to become something new to be your best self, you simply need to become all of who you already are. You see, the real you has been present within you since before you were born. It never left you. It never abandoned you. It simply slipped from view as the volume of the world’s messages became louder and louder.

So, the only way you can ever discover your best self is to look deep inside. To explore the places long forgotten, and the places yet to be discovered. To search tirelessly for the treasure that has long since been misplaced, but yet still cries out to be found, never giving up hope that, one day, it will once more be brought out into the light.

And that is the adventure.

It’s an adventure that takes you to places that you’d rather not go. An adventure that reveals parts of you you’d rather not see. An adventure that flies in the face of most likely pretty much everything anyone has ever told you was good for you. It’s an adventure that is the difference between life and existence.

In the movie Peaceful Warrior, a line from Socrates really hammers it home: “People are afraid of what’s inside and that’s the only place they’re ever gonna find what they need”.

But you have to face that fear. Your life literally depends on it. There really is no ducking away from it. No hiding behind lame excuses about how you need to figure stuff out before you can take the adventure that you need to take in order to figure stuff out. All the answers you need don’t lie outside of you, they are already there, deep inside you. All you have to do is commit to the adventure to discover them, and take that first step.

You see, rather than being a brake on your progress, not knowing what your best self looks like is what MAKES the adventure into your best self possible. So, embrace the not knowing, step into the adventure, and dismantle the dilemma that uncertainty creates.

Easier said than done, I get that. But it* can be done. *And I want to help you get started, so here are three simple things you can put in motion this week, that will help you begin to uncover the person you really are:

First, there’s a Daily Gratitude Journal, which you can download here.

Then, there’s a tool that we like to call “A Quality Journey”, which, as you might expect, focuses on your qualities (of which there are many). You can download that here.

Finally, there’s a Daily Strengths Awareness template, that you can download here.

All of these tools are contained inside the Live a Big Life Academy, but we wanted to make it super-easy for you to access them, with no decision to be made about membership, no email addresses required - just 100%, no strings attached free resources. And I picked these three tools to help you get on your way because they cover some of the central elements of what makes up your best self: your values, your attributes and your strengths.

Your values sit at the core of your best self, and highlight what truly matters to you in life. Through the way you express gratitude, you can begin to unpick what those things that matter most to you are. And your attributes are the things that are a part of what makes you, you. By going on our ‘Quality Journey’, you will discover which of those attributes - or qualities - you see as most important. And your strengths are a natural expression of the best version of you - they flow naturally from your very core. The Daily Strengths Awareness template helps you identify some of your key strengths, and how you use them.

So, have fun with these tools and, if you want to go even deeper, check out the Academy (it’s totally free), where you will find over 50 resources all designed to help kickstart and power your adventure. You can find out more here.

Finally, I really would love to know how these tools work for you, and what you discover, so please do stop by here again and let me know by leaving a comment.