Linda Binns

When you don't know who you really are, you have a tendency to:          

• take things personally
  
  
• have trouble setting boundaries and telling others “no”
  
  
•  feel guilty if you do something good for yourself
  
  
•  feel insecure, don’t think you’re very good at anything and won’t amount to anything
  
  
• allow invisible emotional energy and pain to hold you back
  
  

This also leads you to have no idea what it is that you really want, so you find yourself in jobs that are unfulfilling, or working so hard that you become exhausted and overwhelmed. You have no passion for what you do so you feel under-valued and unfulfilled.     

You have no sense of why you’re here and what your true gifts and passions are, often you even wonder if you have any, or if you just got the short end of the stick. So you feel lost and drift from one thing to another without any sense of where you’re going or why. You wake up one day wondering how you arrived here and may even feel there’s no hope.    

You find yourself fitting into other people’s agendas, so you’re always last on the list. Other people’s needs come before your own. You somehow feel responsible for others’ pain and insecurities. So you end up doing things that feel meaningless and unfulfilling to you, yet you don’t know how to stop the cycle.     

I used to feel so insecure that I never felt anything I did was good enough. Even though my bosses praised my work, I was scared that at any moment they would find out that I really wasn't good enough - because that's how I felt.     

You want to be happy, and you may have many things to be grateful for (a good job, a nice home, a family) but instead what you feel is exhausted,, undervalued and unfulfilled.    
     

What WON'T Help You "Fix"... You

When you feel that you're different from everyone else, and you've been criticized for those differences, you have a tendency to look for someone to provide you with the answers. You look for whatever it is you're missing that will 'fix' you, so you'll fit in and be accepted.

That's exactly what I did. I took courses, I worked with coaches, and energy healers. I enrolled in programs to help me figure out what was wrong with me and fix it so that I could finally feel happy, successful and fulfilled.     

I did a presentation recently where I listed many of the self-improvement things I had done and it shocked even me.     

Just to give you an idea, I have studied and taken over 30+ courses on topics like:     

• Emotional Freedom Technique
• The Enneagram
• The Human Design System
• Success principles
• Law of attraction
  
  

I have studied with and worked directly with over 20 great coaches; I essentially became a master of personal growth and self-help study.    

 I have also worked with several health and energy practitioners to help make me ‘better.’     

As you can see, I’ve invested a tremendous amount of time, energy and money over the years trying to fix that which I thought was clearly "broken".     

When I put this list together and showed it during my presentation, I was actually embarrassed at how much I had done in an attempt to "fix" myself.     

But an interesting thing happened. When the presentation was over, several people came up to me and said they completely identified with me and had a similar experience. They said things like:     

• “It’s like you were sharing my story…”
  
  
• “Everything you said resonated so strongly with me…”
  
  
• “You made me realize that what I’ve been doing all these years is trying to fix myself…”
  
  

When you grow up believing you are who others think you are, you feel lost, and spend your time searching for the one person, or the one thing that can help you, whether that’s reading every self-help book and taking every self-improvement program you can find (like me), or  looking for the healer, health practitioner, coach or treatment that has the answers. Or perhaps you turn to something to take the pain away, like medication, alcohol, food or some other addiction.     

You search for that elusive missing piece. You think if you just had that you would feel better. Yet you never seem to find it.      

What happens when you don't know who you (really) are? Here are some examples - you may be familiar with some of them.     

• You feel like you never fit in - at work or at home
  
  
• You sometimes feel you're not good enough
  
  
• Your perfectionist tendencies often get in the way
  
  
• You work really hard yet never seem to find the success and fulfillment you're looking for
  
  
• You tend to become anxious and get hurt really easily, which makes it difficult to develop meaningful relationships     
  
  
• You have issues balancing engagement with others and solitude for re-charging
  
  
• You tend to absorb negativity and/or other people's drama
  
  
• You find that pressure builds up until you feel completely overwhelmed, then feel embarrassed to share that with others     
  
  
• You often attract needy, co-dependent people
  
  
• You have a difficult time with feeling over-stimulated at work
  
  
• You want to find a job that you love and gives you purpose, but it seems difficult.
  
  

I could go on.          

You may be wondering what these things have to do with knowing, and being who you are. They may seem like random, external things to you, but they are not.