you have to let yourself go

I think that the main thing that stops us from sort of building an identity that we actually resonate with is how much we get attached and stuck on our unchanging self. And what I mean by that is not, you know, just like not liking yourself when you're changing, or not liking what you're changing into, or not liking yourself at the moment, but not being able to let yourself go, let yourself change, you know, embracing your own change.

And I've been wanting to make a video on this for a minute because I feel like it's something that's super prevalent, especially in this current generation, not being able to allow yourself to change. And I feel like I was like this for so long. I've been like this, I feel like, like up until recently, which I hate to say because I like to think that I've been pretty self-conscious of myself for a while, but up until recently, I didn't really allow myself, at least in mind, to change. And I didn't understand why.

And it's a lot of mental conditioning. I was reading a book called "Becoming Supernatural," it kind of highlights a lot of the points of that. It's essentially, um, saying that we kind of get addicted to who we are. We get addicted to the chemicals of our experiences of the past. We get addicted to who we were, um, and we just loop those over and over again.

And I don't know if many of you believe in like manifestation or anything like that, but even on a fundamental level, you know, if you're constantly playing the same thoughts and same actions and reliving those experiences, your body is going to keep thinking you're going through that. It's it's almost inescapable. And it's almost like, you know, how can you change when you know the situations occurring at the moment? How can you change when you're reliving the exact experience that got you to the point you're in right now?

And I'm not saying just forget. You know, that's hard to forget. Even in my experience, like there's still stuff that I hold on to that I'm constantly trying to work on. Things in the past that I didn't necessarily like how it went, or feel like I could have handled better, or feel like I just needed a little more insight and maturity to get through. But in saying that, I realized that, you know, no change is going to occur unless I let myself go, unless we let ourselves develop, unless we make a change.

And I'm not saying like intentionally change yourself. I'm not saying forget who you are and and not neglect, not or neglect who you were, because I feel like once we do that, I feel like, you know, on a fundamental level, it might be easy to forget yourself or to act different. I can go out and act like a completely different person. But I feel like it's those those cycles. I think my another YouTuber named Ryan, he he talks about cycles all the time. It's like the ups and downs. But once we start feeling some way, once we start vibing a certain way, we start looping those same thoughts over and over again, and then getting stuck in those same thoughts, we relive those same experiences, and we fail to grow as people.

I think the first step in letting yourself go, the first thing that I did was stop being ashamed of my own change and wanting to get better. You know, stopped being ashamed of, uh, trying new things for myself. Like I I've talked about it in videos, like how I do affirmations. At first, I was like, why would I do that? Like, why would I talk to myself? Why would I say anything to myself like that? I feel like that's kind of desperate. But like, one thing I realized, like you can't be ashamed of loving yourself. That's one thing. You can't be ashamed of yourself. You know, like you can be ashamed of your actions, this is that and the other, but your betterment, I feel like that's something you have to sort of hold on to and appreciate regardless.

And that's, I think that's how I got to the point I'm at right now. I feel greater than I ever did. I read out my list of affirmations. I say stuff every morning, every night. I used to do three times a day, but, you know, time just not really on my side. I get I leave the house, my dorm, at like 8:00 AM and I come back at like 10:00 PM. So it gets kind of hard some days. But on those days where I can, you know, it's important to reinforce those things in your head because as I said before, like those negative loops, those negative cycles of thought, you know, you're constantly thinking these negative things over and over again, um, they have to be combed by something or replaced by something. You know, you can't replace a bad habit with absence. You have to fill it in with something good.

I feel like, like you're not going to stop, you know, smoking or something and just instead just sit still. You know, you're going to find something else to to fill that vacancy. And I feel like a lot of people, we have vacancies inside ourselves, and we like to fill it up with our previous experiences and, uh, our own inaction. I think people get stuck and stagnant. And I always use the quote like, he who thinks the journey is over is truly lost. And that's what I mean. You're not, we're not letting ourselves continue our journey. We accept the connotation, we get comfortable with a connotation. And it's not really comfort within who we are, comfort with an idea, comfort with a a definition. Like, I I used to think myself that it was more comfortable to have definition, to have that, not to say that I don't have a definition for myself at all, but but to say that being comfortable with myself while I'm changing.

And I think see a couple people like that, that little, um, that bit in my last video where I talked about how you have to be comfortable with yourself, yourself while you're changing, not just at the beginning or end. You can't be too comfortable at those sides either. And when I say comfort, I don't mean like, don't be comfortable in a sense like, don't be happy. I mean, don't be comfortable in a sense that you think that's the end. You know, don't be stagnant. I think there's so much more to life and so much more that we can experience as people that we fail to truly appreciate just out of, you know, our inability to realize our own change and realize our own potential to change.

I think that a lot of people can do a lot of great things. I see great things all the time. And, you know, I'm s I'm starting to think I was right about that a little bit. Not necessarily because of my own growth. Mind y'all, I thank y'all so much. I couldn't express in words how how grateful I am to have y'all aboard and or with me. Like I don't really know. It's a crazy experience. But like I've been telling my friends who are kind of creative or do anything like, just put your stuff out there. Just do it. I've been putting stuff out for two years and like, it's been great every every second. I just love doing it. But it's about putting yourself out there and allowing, you know, yourself to change with it, yourself to change with the circumstance.

I feel like it's too easy to not do anything. Too easy to run, go through your life and, you know, realize that you could have done something else, or that maybe your passion was attainable. It's about letting yourself go to explore, but also being conscious and mindful of the implications of your actions. You know, it's it's real easy for me to say, you know, let go, acting like people don't have, you know, their day-to-day stuff. I have my day-to-day stuff. I can't, you can't let go of your full identity. What I mean is, let go of the parts of yourself that seek out change. You know, you can't run from it. I think a lot of times we run from our problems without realizing that we're running from ourselves. You know, like we're running from the parts of ourselves that need to heal from certain things.

Like I myself, I don't want to get into too much detail. I feel like I'm already pretty vulnerable. But, you know, there's there's things in my life that I think I have yet to overcome that I still need to. And I'm not really ashamed of it. You know, like I'm still working towards it, and I'm finding new ways to work towards it. You know, it's about confronting your problems in a way that makes you feel comfortable, but also like create enough change. Because it's one thing to just acknowledge the issue. Like acknowledging an issue in mind, knowing that something's wrong is the first step. It's a beautiful step. I think that a lot of people don't even get to that step. So if you get, like, if you get there, you're halfway to the battle, man. But, you know, that other half, that figuring out the application and figuring out yourself enough to change and grow from it, is entirely different.

Which is why I stress the importance of sort of knowing yourself and being present enough with yourself to know how you feel about certain things. I think a lot of our traumas and stresses can be mitigated with how we feel about them, how we feel about how we connote it in our minds. Like I used to have a big fear of public speaking. I used to have a big fear, not necessarily a fear of just expressing myself in public the way I am. And I think a lot of my friends and a lot of people I see on a daily basis can attest that, you know, as the years have progressed, as I've been developing, like my personality, I feel like shines through regardless of the situation. Of course, I'm mindful, but, you know, like and not being ashamed of being yourself, like a lot of the stress of like social interaction kind of falls out the window.

Not saying that I'm not mindful of like who I'm talking to, how I'm talking to them, but in finding yourself, and which I don't think I've done, you know, I think it's it's a continuous thing. But in finding out the pieces and parts of yourself, self, I think it opens doors to more pieces and parts. Just like how gratitude breeds more gratitude, you know, finding stuff to be grateful for, finding things to appreciate, it puts you on that that sort of vibration of gratefulness and gratitude and love. And if you express that to yourself, that's literally all you can exude. I think I said a quote in another video like, loving yourself so much, everything you see, everything you interact with is an exemplar of that love.

You got to put yourself out there for yourself. You have to put yourself out there to yourself. Show yourself what you're capable of in a way. And show yourself that, you know, is is maybe it's not maybe let me prove myself wrong at this point. Like a couple of days ago, I'm constantly doing stuff. I've been trying to do stuff just to get myself in my comfort zone and express myself in ways that I'm I'm probably haven't done before. Like I went to a, uh, poetry workshop where initially I was just like, I just like poetry. I'm going to go and, um, just sit and listen to other people say. But once I got there, I just started writing, or wrote something, and, you know, I performed it. I was nervous the whole time, but I did it. Like I was happy that I did it at the end of the day. Even if I stuttered once, stuttered twice, you know, I got my message out there. I got what I wanted to get out of it. And I showed myself, you know, regardless of my anxiety and how I feel about the situation, I can still move forward.

It's not about how you feel. It's about how you react to your feelings. How react you react to the parts of yourself that are kind of scared of the situation. And I say all this in moderation. You know, I'm not saying go into some super scary situation and just be a a real tough guy, oh my God, you can do anything. Of course, be mindful, be smart. But also be courageous. You know, know what serves you and know what doesn't. But also know what has potential to serve you. I mean, I feel like the biggest thing we can do is serve ourselves. And all starts with, uh, letting yourself go, being there for yourself, treating yourself like a friend, enough to the point where, you know, you allow the parts of yourself to change. You know, it's okay to grow. It's okay to not have definition.

And I think once I kind of got to that point in my own development, that I was like, okay with seeing parts of myself change. Because even now, I still hold on to stuff, you know, what I'm saying? This stuff, but like, you know, truth be told, of course, I'm still working on it. That's kind of how I'm able to articulate it to the to an extent. It's kind of my way of piecing it together. You know, of course, there's still parts of myself that I hold on to that that seek out change. But I'm becoming more conscious of it. I'm becoming more present with how I feel. Because even if it's a part of myself that I know seeks out change, you know, I still love it enough to let it go. I still appreciate what it does for me. I appreciate, you know, feelings happy and sad. Life's only a reference to light is only in reference to dark.

You know, you have to be mindful of how you are connotating certain things in your head. You know, things are bad. You know, some things are bad, some things are good. But if it's constantly looping in your head, I feel like sometimes you have to use Pascal's wager. You know, sometimes you have to be a little delusional. I don't know if this is 100% great advice. You know, but you have to let yourself flourish, let yourself develop. You know, I'm not saying cut everybody off and start a whole new life. I'm saying, you know, cut your old version of yourself off to the point where there's new life inside of you.

And if, uh, if you made it this far in the video, I know how, thank you so much, honestly. Um, um, and just the way my channel has grown in the past couple of days is kind of crazy to me still. Um, but I'm going continue just putting out the same, same kind of stuff. But thank you. Like, I'm so grateful for all y'all. You know, much more than appreciative of all the comments y'all leave. I read like every single one. I literally try not to let a comment go unread. But, you know, if I miss one, I'm sorry. Just thanks again. Uh, I hope you all are doing great. Just make sure y'all are letting yourself develop, letting yourself go, letting yourselves flourish, letting yourselves be you.