How to Change Yourself: A Focus on Viewpoints Through a Persona's Eye

Even though I don't really believe we can truly change ourselves at the deepest level of our beings I do believe most of us have, since a young age, disguised ourselves and hidden ourselves so well that when our true selves do come out from time to time even we are surprised. Once in a while, for example, I'll have this incredibly happy, dramatic and sparkly little personality just burst out of me which is always a surprise after more than a decade and a half of corporate life, depression, physical sickness, etc.

It would seem that those who have learned to change in the most dramatic ways and in the least amount of time are aware of a few little "secrets."

Here's a few of these secrets:

1) The kind of change you want the most doesn't happen because other people change you.
2) The kind of change you want the most doesn't happen because you change other people.
3) The kind of change you want the most doesn't happen (at least not completely) because you start to change your habits.
4) The kind of change you want the most does't happen (at least not completely) because you change your environment.
5) The kind of change you want the most happens when you decide who you want to let into your life based on your own boundaries, when you change your habits, when you change your environment AND when you change your viewpoint of everything around you (including yourself, your environment and other people around you).

As I have mentioned earlier in this entry I have struggled with depression. I've not always known how to "deal" with depression. I've seen counselors, I've done meditations, I've seen depression as a symbolic representation of the need to try something new and I've done breathing exercises. All of these things were helpful to some degree (except for breathing which is helpful to a HUGE degree! Hah!)

Anyway, besides the things I've already mentioned something else that can be valuable is to visualize a persona. This can be a persona outside of you but I like even more to picture a persona with me that is the "Happy Marci Persona." This "Happy Persona" definitely isn't leading my life when my "Depressed Persona" is but I like to remember what my Happy Persona looks like, what she likes to do and that she CAN be a lead in my life......that it's a possibility. I may not always know how to get her in the lead but I know it's possible. I know it's possible because I can imagine her in the lead of the very circumstances I'm currently living and how things could be different.

Imagining a different persona in the lead of your life doesn't mean you are devaluing your "Depressed Persona." Negative Personas can teach us many wonderful lessons but let's face it.....many of us do want to move toward the positive and if that is your goal try creating an imagination (which is just a different kind of virtual reality) of the possibility of how your life could be different and then if you like what you see then continue to see your counselors, do your meditations, change your environment and do whatever else you like!

Think of change as something that is already there (like the wind) and all that you can do is 1) change your viewpoint of the wind from enemy to catalyst and use the right tools to 2) protect yourself from it by imprisoning yourself or by building windmills or flying machines.

You are free to be you!