Yesterday I read a facebook post written by a Japanese so-called naturalist. I don’t think that is the right word to describe her, but anyway, she is an active lady strongly connected to the nature. She and I went to the same university. When we were at school, we didn’t have much in common. Years later, through our common friend, I was reintroduced her on the facebook. She is now a young, active, passionate entrepreneur. It surprised me because my image of her at school was quiet and passive. She was not the leader type. I admired her change and started learning her activities/life.
She said she was a little bit ‘weird’ child. Quite intelligent but didn’t fit in. She was lonely. She made a lot of effort to keep up with her peers learning the popular topics among them. Thanks to the hard work, eventually she was accepted in the circle of peers. But she found out it didn’t make her fully happy.
As she got older, she started expressing her honest feelings and opinions bit by bit. Then she realized if she tried to be herself, naturally she found the friends who liked her as is.
In a recent event, the chief priest of a Japanese Shinto shrine said “When you force to be someone’s friend, the conflict rises. You can’t force people to be friends, people to be friends are naturally attracted each other.” It explained her feelings with old peers in her teenage and true friends she got in her later life. What she needs to be is just to be herself.
The quiet girl in my memory with uncertain smile was her who didn’t believe she could have been herself. The powerful lady I now see through the internet is the same girl after she realized what she really is. Before and After!
Her episode connected the pieces I have been observing in the last few weeks.
In Japan, women are quite awaken and active now. The energy is coming from the understanding that she is perfectly allowed to be herself.
Knowing yourself means to know what you like, want and enjoy. If you know what you really want to be, you live to be as you want. Then the energy emerges. Energy flows.
The opposite is to try to be what you have to be. This ‘have to’ comes from outside – parents, teachers, peers, scientists, specialists, books, media, etc. It commonly brings you up to a degree, but eventually you face to a problem. You don’t have any source of energy inside of you to keep going higher and forever. You run out of energy.
That’s why it is crucial to find out the source of energy inside of you before you get really worn out. Find what you really like, want and enjoy. To find it out, you need to shift your attention from ‘have to’ to ‘want to’.
I don’t support organic food and local business because I have to. I do so because I want to. I don’t criticize people who don’t support such things because I consider it’s because they don’t want to. If they don’t want to, they won’t make it anyway because they don’t have the energy to do so. Only when they become wanting to do so, it will happen.
Have to or want to – although you end up taking the same action, your realization of the reason will affect your energy level considerably.