Our job is to find out who we already are and become it

Steven Pressfield:

Our job in this lifetime is not to shape ourselves into some ideal we imagine we ought to be, but to find out who we already are and become it.

It’s so easy to get consumed by heroes and advice and things you read in books or on the internet, and to get caught up in the game that is self-improvement, working harder, learning more, trying to become more like some of your heroes. But the real job is in figuring out who you are. It’s a process discovery. It’s something you cannot change. It’s part something you’re born with, part something that’s drilled so hard and so deeply into your unconscious as to be unchangeable. You’ve gotta find out what that is, and then become that person that you are somewhere inside, somewhere beneath all the things you’ve been taught to be. It’s something I’ve always found incredibly challenging myself. I’ve always been pretty good at a great many things. Programming. Cooking. Playing the piano. Drums. Photography. Writing. Telling stories. Seeing people’s essence. But which of those things are really mine, and which are “just” some I’ve learned? In truth, they’re all a part of me, and I’ll probably find that most of them end up being in play, in one form or another, in the word that I do or the life that I live. If you’re not familiar with Steven Pressfield, you should be. He’s the guy who wrote “The Legend of Bagger Vance”, but his most important work, in my book, is “The War of Art”. A few more choice quotes from the blog post above:

Why is the practice of art or entrepreneurship a vehicle for self-discovery? Because these enterprises are ours alone. They spring from the unfeigned gifts, joys and enthusiasms of our hearts. They are us “at play”– and thus at our most authentic.

I have a theory that charisma arises from authenticity. When a writer has found his voice, when a singer has discovered her style, they have power. We feel it. It draws us to them. Why? Because we want it too. We want to be ourselves they way they are themselves.

This speaks to the essence of Fearless Entrepreneurship.