You are what you create

This is my self-improvement thesis: You cannot truly create without knowing your self and you cannot know your self unless you truly create. My goal here is to help you become your inner creator. Creation is simply the embodiment of your self. So if you don’t embrace it, you will lose your self and not know where the hell to find it. Constantly living partially phased. Death by consumption.

I’m not just talking about the obviously creative acts either. More, creating each moment of your life experience and doing it effortlessly. This is possible to do by anyone, regardless of personality type or life experiences. We are all creators! It’s baked into our capacity for language as a species and it produces whatever you might call your soul. Creation and creation alone… is you.

Self-help is a contradiction

First, stop consuming self-help Youtube videos, immediately. Look, I don’t know you, but especially if you’re a man, you’re probably watching way too many of them. I know it feels good and it makes you feel like you’re learning and getting better, but the industry is destructive and its gurus are false prophets due to the mere fact that real self-help only works if you’re the one creating it.

I’m sure the gurus are well intentioned, but blindly following self-help advise will never help your real self… It only helps a character your self is trying to play. A persona. Granted, some people can play that character very well for a while, but the self always bubbles up to the top. Whether it’s through genes, germs, or God, this is a truth you cannot escape. The question is: do you want to be the one whose constantly fighting and avoiding it or whose found a way to leverage your natural form?

“Well maybe I can just use their advice as a warm start to helping myself!” Nah. The core mantra of you having to “become the person you want to be” denies reality and sets up a life of continuous self-denial. Listen for entertainment, fine, but you must look inward to find the self-help you actually need. This can only happen through the act of creation. You create the moves. You create the style. You create the direction. You constantly fail during the process, but you do it your way. It’s not as hard as it sounds.

Pain leads the path

To reveal your inner creator, you must also know your Self and how it grows. Ironically, this comes less from personal reflection of your self and more from listening to emotional lessons learned running into life’s shifting walls. Big changes in self often accompany the hardest moments. They act like guardrails of life steering you towards the right direction. These precious moments should never be avoided or escaped from, but they should be delicately savored; to be examined while in them; to be used. Struggles can be your greatest gift or your total undoing. I’ve gone through some doozies myself and let me save you the suspense: there will be unavoidable moments that change you forever. You won’t go back, whether you try to resist it or not. They become genetically encoded. These changes can be the keystones for your aqueducts or your Sisyphean boulders.

Themes

Real self change is confusing, often comes at the worst time, and if not embraced will derail your soul from the path it was supposed to take. To help guide this endeavor, I’ve created a list of themes. You’ve probably seen some form of these in other places and that’s because they’re unequivocally true:

1. Create, don't consume

2. Know your steelo

3. Own the moment

4. Protect your Self

5. Feeling is everything

6. Embrace your changing Self

7. All hardship is growth

8. All relations are expectations

9. Constantly seek real connection

10. Actions beat thoughts

Life is yours, but only if you create it. Hopefully, that path starts now. See you later, creator.

- Bird