Master of Self-Mastery
When I was 21 years old I embarked on the process of trying to master myself.
Above is the spreadsheet I filled in daily, for years, updating it with new habits that I wanted to make or break and adding variables that I might learn something from, such as how sleep or alcohol seemed to interact with my mood.
It got a little full on.
But it needed to be, because this self-development frenzy came out of a dark year in which I was deeply unhappy.
Things only began to change when, one day, I was walking through a park and came upon a clearing through the trees. I looked up at the open sky and burst out laughing. I don’t know why.
Nearby was a spiderweb and I was astonished at its intricate beauty. In those few moments I saw that how I felt about being alive could be completely different.
Walking home, I committed to myself that I would never take my life, no matter what.
With that door closed, and faced with living another 50 years with my still miserable mind, I had no choice but to transform.
It began slowly - getting fit, learning to meditate, reading each day. As I started to see real shifts, momentum built and soon I was gripped by an intoxicating drive to fulfil my potential.
I hungrily consumed anything related to self-development and applied what I learned, from forcing myself to smile the moment I woke up, to cutting out old friends and making new ones, to wearing a hair-tie on my wrist that I used to condition myself to stop being negative.
And it worked.
In less than one year I felt more driven and fulfilled than I could have believed.
However, as the path of self-mastery progressed, a question came to lurk in the back of my mind. It’s a question that threatened the entire project.
It went something like:
“If it’s my self that I’m working so hard to master, then who the hell am I?”
This wasn’t just a fleeting thought. This was an all-consuming, visceral doubt.
It helped that my sense of self had changed so quickly and drastically, because this made it obvious that as dramatically improved my new self was, this version of me was a fabrication. Happy me was no more me than hopeless me.
So the drive for self-mastery continued, but in the background. What became far more important, and still is today, is the mystery of being here in the first place.
What is this? - this whirl of colour and sound and hopes and fears and thought and feeling and sensation appearing right now?
Done half-heartedly, this inquiry is nothing but a mildly interesting musing.
But if explored sincerely, then nothing is more captivating.
Put another way, the question is:
Who are you?
