Who On Earth Do You Think You Are? | Janet Mohapi-Banks

The latest from our monthly mindset columist Janet Mohapi-Banks asks who is it that you really want to be.

We are all born with innate worthiness to live with incredible abundance and that abundance, in all its forms, is trying to get to us.  The only reason that it doesn’t is because we subconsciously put up barriers that prevent it from doing so.

As babies, we expected to be fed, we expected to be loved and we expected to have all of our needs met, and we didn’t stop demanding that we receive those things until we got them.  We knew that we were totally deserving of everything we wanted and needed and we didn’t care who we upset or offended to get what we knew was ours.

Obviously, we grow up and we learn that crying and throwing tantrums isn’t how we behave in society, but we also knew that as a very young child, we were not in a position to fend for ourselves so we learned other strategies to get what we want and need.

Maybe you discovered that if you did certain tasks for certain people, they would give you more love or attention, so in your brain, you programmed the belief that you only get the things you want when you please other people.

Or maybe when you were young you noticed that when you were ill or feeling unwell, you got more attention than your siblings so the subconscious belief that “being weak or playing the role of the victim, means that people will look after you better” was created.

Or maybe you found that you received a lot more love and attention when you won the race or aced the test so the belief that unless you were constantly achieving you didn’t deserve the love you wanted.

What all of these examples led to is you putting your feelings of worth in the hands of another person.

“If I do this, then they will love me.”

But when we do this, we’re constantly trying to project an image of ourselves based on what we think other people want. But, since we really don’t know what anybody else wants or thinks, what we’re doing is creating a story about what we think they want and then trying to project that image so they give us the external validation to be able to feel good about ourselves.

The problem is that if you base your self-worth or self-concept on what other people think of you, you will always be vulnerable to them.

If the other people, whose opinions of you you’re basing your worth and value on, are having a bad day and react harshly to you, instead of seeing them as just having a bad day, you will internalise their mood and wonder what you did wrong.

Often, unless people are continually validating and praising our work or our place in the world, we feel insecure about whether we’ve done a good enough job or are behaving in the correct way to keep everybody happy and therefore pleased with us.

But as we’re not living in alignment with who our highest self knows that we really are, this leads to high stress levels and a loss of our own identity because when you place your self-worth on the opinions of others, your self-image has no solid foundation.

So, it’s up to you to decide how you want to be perceived in the world and create that image of you internally first, so you can project it externally, regardless of how other people receive it.

So who is it that you choose to be?

What are the characteristics, values and beliefs of that person?

How is that person viewed and treated by the world?

If you were to step into this person’s shoes what would change about the way you are currently showing up in the world?

I encourage you to BE that person now.

If anybody says or does anything that goes against this new and solid self-image that you’ve created, you get to choose whether or not you’re prepared to accept their view of you or whether to discard it?

After all, if somebody walked up to you and told you that your skin had turned blue when you could clearly see that it hadn’t, how would you react to them?

Would you accept that your skin was indeed blue, or would you think, “That’s interesting. I wonder what’s going on with them that they should think that of me?”

Ultimately the world learns how to treat us by the way that we treat ourselves and by the behaviour we are willing to tolerate.

Adopting the “new you” can sometimes cause ruffles from those who would keep you exactly where you are, but as a powerful creator you get to decide who you are.

And you get to to BE that person bravely and unapologetically.

As soon as you discard the masks and the people pleasing tendencies to truly own and love every aspect of the REAL YOU, that’s when the magic of the Universe opens up to bring you everything you could want.