03 Jul Scrambled, poached or fried?
One of my favorite Julia Roberts movies is Runaway Bride. Maggie embarks on a journey of self discovery after realizing she’s been reinventing herself over and over, to please others. Her first step is discovering how she like her eggs done.
I’ve recently been asked what my personal values are. I was absolutely shocked to realize that I couldn’t really give a clear answer. There are obviously moral codes that I follow, live by and instill in my children but I couldn’t actually set out my personal values. A set of values define an organization, a community or an individual. Without these, what do we live to, believe in and measure ourselves against? Without these, who am I, really? I immediately set out to define my personal values.
The process that followed became far broader than I thought it would be and I’m pretty sure it will take a while still to complete. You see, what I realized when I sat down with a pen and my journal, is that not only could I not define my values but I didn’t really even know how to define or describe myself. I’ve moved from school girl to student to trainee accountant to qualified CA(SA) to wife to mother of one to mother of two, in a relatively short space of time and seem to have let the roles and circumstances define me in each phase. It’s been an outward in process of adaptation. Somehow along the way, I forgot to clearly define who I am, what I like, what I believe in and stand for.
What I’m figuring out, a bit like Maggie had to too, is that we each have to define who we are and let that be our core. If we’re not clear on what forms that core, we start letting our circumstances define us and eventually become a jumbled mess of an identity crisis, with nothing to ground us. It has to be an inward out approach so that through whatever comes our way, we can keep coming back to the center, the core.
My goodness, it is a process, but it absolutely has to be done. Start small – how do you like your eggs done? I’ll take mine scrambled.
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