It is not always easy to feel comfortable with who we are, as it requires a great deal of self-awareness and self-acceptance. Very often, we either dwell on the past or look to the future, and confuse our own dreams with what other people want for us. At first, it often seems easier to follow the crowd or other people’s suggestions and advice, because it means that our path is straightforward and already mapped out, and all we have to do is take the first step. It absolves us of responsibility, but this feeling only lasts until our true nature reveals itself. When we realise that we are on the wrong path, we tend to feel confused, disoriented, and unhappy. Admitting we are wrong, however, can be difficult for many different reasons: perhaps we do not know where to start, or we feel anxious about the stigma that society attaches to failure.
Meera Lee Patel has created a journal to help people embark on their journey of self-discovery, because getting started is actually very often the first obstacle we will have to overcome. How many times have we put off making an important change because we did not feel ready, or because we felt we had to wait for just the right situation? Patel urges us to make this change, to stop looking for the perfect time, and to start from where we are now.
The author compares this inner journey to a Russian Matryoshka doll: as we travel along, we start to understand parts of ourselves that perhaps we never really considered before, because we never had the opportunity to look that deep. This path sometimes forces us to face painful or difficult challenges, but this is the only way to understand what we really love, what we are motivated by, what kind of people we would like to be, and much more.
