Five Mins on REAL

I only have five minutes before the Solar Eclipse so I am really going to need to meet the deadline for this.  I have been considering the topic for about two hours and found this quite hard.  In the UK the Five Min word is issued at 2am and I knew I couldn't wait up until then so any thoughts this morning have been through a fuzzy, "first thing in the morning blur" but her goes.

I realise that I lack the confidence to be real.  This isn't a new experience.  As far as I can remember I have always tried to be someone to please others and often miserably failed.   John Powell's quote "I am afraid to tell you who I am because, if I tell you who I am, you may not like who I am, and it’s all that I have." has always been hanging over my head.  Insecurities and feeling that I am close to letting others down have meant that for most of my life I have remained in the shadows except in one aspects of my life.  When I am teaching I feel most relaxed and at home,  here I feel accepted.  Recently in a mentoring session a student told me that "You're ok, coz you're real, you say things as they are and you accept us as we are."  Best compliment ever paid.


The last few years have taught me so much.  I have mixed with people who have "status" and greater "intellectual ability" and at first I was so over awed, wanting to participate but so frightened that I would say the wrong thing, and often I did, that I froze and sat as far away as I could and still remain within the group.  I've realised that I do have something to offer even if my only claim to fame is that a student thought that I was OK.  I'm learning to be more emotionally open, and understand how people adopt roles and play psychological games to protect their inner selves.  I'm not the only one and whatever status we might have we all need the courage to be our real selves, to develop and begin to grow.