A guide to becoming fully yourself

the agony of never being who you could (and should) be.

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Do you know who you are?

Do you feel like you are fully you?

Most people don’t, and never will.

To know who they are; the idea of becoming fully yourself.

There are symptoms that worsen when you keep ignoring the signals.

You don’t have “your thing.”

No obsessive interests.

No passion to keep them awake at night.

No irresistible mission to get them up at 7am.

No purpose, because you haven’t built one that aligns with who you are.

The default life is not for everyone. And this newsletter is for the select few who want something more than mere average life.

A profound life that interests them.

I have a framework for helping you hear what your soul has been telling you all along.

It’s a fun one too, I thoroughly enjoyed writing out this perspective.

Let’s get straight into it folks!

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Follow the noise and you will live by the noise

The world will ask you who you are, and if you don’t know, the world will tell you.

Carl G. Jung

Most people are doomed to live a life they’re not interested in living. A life that feels like you’re trying to force a square block into a circular hole.

But how does this happen?

They ignore signals being sent to them from their soul. Signals about things that truly interest them.

Ignoring these signals, living a lifestyle that actively violates them, is what causes internal friction. Unnecessary suffering which could be avoided if you took action on what your soul is telling you.

The disconnection usually starts in childhood.

Remember those seemingly trivial interests that made hours feel like minutes? But you weren’t allowed to throw yourself at them like you wanted. You had to study, do homework, and listen to adults tell you “well there’s no real money in doing that.”

Then, you drift through school having no motivation to learn anything. Boredom is killing you, because you have no interest in what you’re learning. You rather be learning about philosophy, literature, the classics. But you don’t hear this as a sign. You ignore what your soul says, and get back to memorising v-shaped valleys and complex numbers. Topics that might interest others, but no you. You don’t seem to have a choice because you weren’t told any different.

Then you get to adult life. I’ve just begun it myself! Liking it so far, but this is where I currently stand as a result of the past two examples:

You’re walking to work in the pouring rain, thinking about how much you’d rather be at your desk. Reading, writing, and being creative. Solving abstract problems you can’t stop thinking about. You wouldn’t mind the rain if you were walking to your dream job, to solve creative and philosophical problems that interest you, but your current work doesn’t do that for you.

Maybe for somebody else, but not for you.

What if it’s this very disconnect from yourself that prevents you from ever becoming fully yourself.

And we’re never told to listen to what interests have chosen us.

These signals might actually be trying to tell you something very important about who you’re meant to become.

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Your soul sends signal

You don’t choose your interests.

Your interests choose you.

I usually see the lads every Friday night. I call them “gatherings.”

There’s five of us, and I’ve always liked the fact that we’re all quite different.

We have different interests.

Some of us love lifting.

Others like WWE and Mario Kart.

Some have such a deep purpose from their 9-5, and others love spending lots of money on clothes and aftershaves.

I’ve always wondered why this is the case.

How come I don’t give a fuck about wearing anything other than a plain black top and grey tracksuit bottoms?

I’m somewhat proud to say terrible fashion sense because you could not pay me to care.

How come I don’t like the idea of having a stable 9-5 job, and want to spend my days reading and writing?

I’d love nothing more to work for 4 hours every day thinking about profound ideas.

How come some of the lads have no interest in (profound) philosophical ideas, while some of us do?

Ranging from “nah that’s fucking goofy,” all the way to driving around the Irish coastline at night talking for hours (and I mean hours) about becoming the best version of oneself?

Because you don’t just sit down one day and just decide these things.

“Ah ye gewan I think I like profound ideas now.”

That’s not how it works.

It works by living through experiences that made hours feel like minutes. We all know what this felt like as kids. And there’s something deeper beyond this.

Swiss psychologist Carl Jung called this process individuation. The goal of your life being to become fully yourself. And it’s these moments that act as the brightest stars in the night sky, guiding you towards where you should be going.

Here’s the profound idea:

Your interests choose you because they’re signals about who you’re meant to become.

That friction you feel when you’re forced to study geography but crave reading Plato? When you’re walking to work and all you can think about is going to jiu-jitsu at 7pm? This friction exists because you have a soul. And your soul knows what problems it wants to spend a lifetime solving.

Almost all bodies can solve most problems. But not all souls want to solve the same problems. Your interests are not random. They are your soul’s way of pointing you toward the work that will make you feel most alive.

If you always go on ignoring these signals you’ll never become who you could and should be.

So how do you follow signals you didn’t even know you were receiving?

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Guide: to become fully yourself

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1) Notice Your Natural Signals

Most people can’t answer “what interests you” because they just don’t fucking know.

Genuinely. They just haven’t asked themselves the question before.

I like this as a thought exercise for starting out. Think back to when you were a child. Ask yourself what activities made hours feel like minutes.

When I was younger I used to daydream all day in school, watching these elaborate stories play out in my mind. I loved watching bodybuilding videos. I loved WWE. Reading. Filmmaking (my favourite part was the writing). Now my biggest interests are lifting weights, jiu-jitsu, reading, and writing this newsletter. I don’t think the patterns here were a coincidence. This is one symptom of a signal.

Another one is friction.

Anytime you need to complete a task and feel a deep desire to do something opposite.

You’re walking to work but all you want to do is heavy squats.

You’re talking to your girlfriend at breakfast about your day, but you don’t want to waffle the ears off of her about the newsletter you’re currently writing (but you want to so bad).

Don’t worry, I feel your pain with the writing example.

This is what signals look like. And these signals usually persist across time.

Just because you liked learning about algebra for one hour doesn’t mean it’s a signal when you’ve lost your taste for it within a day. That’s a weak signal at best. You want strong signals that are persistently trying to reach you.

View all of this as your soul pointing you toward who you’re meant to become.

But merely noticing the signals isn’t enough.

Now that you’ve identified your signals, you need to test which ones are actually calling to your soul. It’s time for analysis.

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2) Test Through Small Experiments

“But I don’t have the time for all this shit.”

Give yourself one hour a week. Just an hour. That’s it. Take that time away from scrolling mindlessly. And don’t say you can’t do that either. If not, do 30 minutes. Or 10. You have your whole life to build on this from week to week.

If you’ve noticed strong signals coming from the philosophy side of YouTube, you might try watching a mix of lectures covering different philosophical topics. Absurdism. Existentialism. The Big 3 (Socrates, Plato, Aristotle). I started with Socrates myself, then moved to Bertrand Russell who led me back to Plato. Then Aristotle.

If it’s a practical skill calling you, get your hands dirty. Immediately. Find a 10-minute YouTube tutorial and learn something. Anything. Aim for curiosity over mastery. If you wanted to keep watching more, that’s signal. If not, likely noise.

See if your curiosity wants to keep diving deeper. If it doesn’t, maybe you know not to continue (for now at least; you can always return to it).

A strong signal, not just a short-term buzz, has always felt like it’s grabbed me by the waist. It’s a feeling of obsession within your soul. I usually don’t sleep when I’m like this; my mind goes haywire with ideas.

Obsession is usually a clear sign of a strong signal.

Here’s how you could evaluate your small experiments:

• Keep - You can’t stop thinking about it; you want to improve at it as much as possible ASAP

• Bin it - It felt fun but you lack curiosity

• Mmm? - You’re interested in exploring it but not obsessively (revisit in 4-6 months)

If you would gladly spend the only free hour of your day on a particular interest, it’s probably a genuine interest worth building for becoming fully you.

I think the best way to fully test an interest is to start a project. By project, I mean set yourself an outcome (learn to write a newsletter) and work towards it within a deadline (1-3 months). This gives you enough freedom to mess around, explore, and study the principles. There is nothing that represents who you are more than having created something your soul can identify with.

You need to keep messing around. There is no strict linear path you can follow. It took me years of messing around to finally get a cemented sense of what I genuinely wanted to devote my life to doing (writing, training, learning).

It’s all trial and error.

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3) Follow the Strongest Signals

You need to commit to this process for 1-2 years.

You don’t just know thyself within a few minutes. Not by looking in a mirror, but by using your actions to see your own internal reflection.

What are your strongest signals? What concepts or topics seem to stick?

For me it was optimising my physical health. Talking about interesting ideas. These domains have always been screaming at me.

Sitting in history class learning of the Second World War with my incredible history teacher. An incredibly charismatic soul from County Galway. I could have listened to him tell the story of the world for hours.

And I always got a strong signal from history; but the signal I got from the idea of lifting weights at 7pm that night was a just bit stronger.

You have to pay attention.

If writing calls, wake up 30 minutes earlier to write on your phone in bed.

If physical optimisation calls, walk or cycle to work instead of stealing your Dad’s car when he’s off (love you Dad).

If learning calls, turn off Peaky Blinders and pick up your Kindle. You can have your tea and chocolate without watching a TV screen.

Watch yourself.

Literally.

Take a step back from your own mind, like you’re standing behind yourself right now, looking at the back of your head as you read this piece.

What are you thinking?

What are you feeling?

What are you wanting to do with your time and energy?

This is a long process of discovery. But it’s worth it.

Because if you don’t follow your signals you end up living someone else’s life. Going through motions that feel hollow while the friction keeps feeling worse.

Following your signals turns friction into flow.

And we love flow :)

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4) Refine Through Iteration

If you think who you are is fixed, you will never become fully you and you will burn slowly.

Allow your interests to move around. To evolve. See where your inspiration takes you. Your sudden bursts of motivation at 11pm to experiment with that YouTube tutorial you watched.

Don’t be afraid to adjust your course.

Follow the signals. Keep listening and take note.

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There’s a lot more to you than you think.

If you’d like to learn how to manage multiple interests stemming from multiple strong signals, you can read that post here:

A lot of you profound thinkers seemed to like it.

I like the idea of carrying a small notebook with you. Even a notes document on your phone. Take note of anything that made you lose track of time today. A craving. A topic that sparked your interest. Just a short bullet point list does wonders. One worded concepts, topics, subjects, or any questions that spark curiosity for an unknown reason.

Try it everyday for a week and look for patterns.

I watched Oppenheimer with my girlfriend last week and (we) didn’t have a fucking clue what was going on. The Trinity Test scene looked cool, and I have a weird urge to study quantum physics now…

Might have to listen to that signal. Or it could just be some noise.

Anyways.

Thanks for reading.

You’re an absolute legend.

- Craig :)

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