Do You Know Who You Truly Are?

“If you don't know who you truly are, you'll never know what you really want.” – Roy T. Bennet

Do not let the roles you play in life make you forget who you are. If you let others tell you who you are, you are living their reality — not yours. There is more to life than pleasing people. There is much more to life than following others' prescribed path. There is so much more to life than what you experience right now. You need to discover who you are for yourself to become a whole being. 

Abraham Maslow said, “What one can be, one must be.” So, the big question you need to ask yourself daily until you find the answer is, “Who and What must I be?” If you don’t address this question, you’ll live your life being a lesser version of yourself meaning that you will be unhappy for the rest of your life. 

To remember who you are, you need to forget who they told you to be. Stop confusing what you do with who you are. I’m forever asked how I stopped my illustrious career as an engineer or how I transitioned from engineering to speaking, writing and life-coaching as the two are far apart from each other. This to me is proof enough that so many people are blinded by their academic careers – meaning what they chose to study which more often than not is not what they were really meant to do. 

How do you know you are doing what you were meant to do? You become obsessed by it – you think about it all the time, you feel energized when you do it, you feel confident and become productive when you do it. It always puts a smile on your face and you lose sense of time whenever you do it.  It’s this obsession that sets you apart from the crowd. This is the intersection between your natural ability and passion. That’s exactly where I am, as Veli Ndaba, hence I can explain it in such a descriptive manner. People ask you, “Where do you get the time to do it.” You see, you don’t get the time do it, you MAKE THE TIME TO DO IT! That’s the difference. 

How do you know you are not doing what you are supposed to be doing? You are always anxious when you think about it or when you have to do it. You drag yourself to do it. You keep on checking the finishing time when you do it. You hate Sunday afternoons especially as they literally hand you over to a very long and painful week. You always look forward to Fridays. 

My word of advice to you is that you need to be honest with yourself and not allow your academic career to blind you from what you are meant to do. Let your career be your means to your end not your end to your means. Real education is meant to teach you how to think, not what to think.  You have greatness within you, unleash it!

Veli Ndaba is a leadership and Insightful Speaker, Life-Coach and Neuro- Linguistic Programming Practitioner, Author of three books (You Are Born to Win, Your Dream is Calling You and SWITCH ON!), Newspaper Columnist and Entrepreneur. To book him to help you and your team unleash your greatness, contact him on [email protected], www.velindaba.com and 083 304 9773