When You’re Not Acting Like the Person You Want to Be

I have a list in my head of all the ways I’m supposed to be. And every time I think about it, I hear my mother’s voice telling me to be kinder, more caring, more loving, more selfless… and it just keeps going.

How about you? What’s on your list, and whose voice do you hear?

My list is full of the ways I want to be, the ways I think I should be - and somehow, I still keep falling short. I think most of us do.

We get irritated. We criticize. We pull away. We say things we don’t mean.

We look down on others or silently judge them for the choices they’ve made.

It’s not who we want to be, and it doesn’t feel good to be in that place either.

We feel tense, agitated, overwhelmed, off-balance.

So what’s getting in the way?

It’s the same thing for all of us: our negativity, what I sometimes call our darkness.

The uncomfortable emotions we don’t want to feel. The parts of us we try to hide or push away.

That darkness shows up in so many forms:

Fear, anger, grief. Blaming, judging, withdrawing, snapping.

And yes - even in those moments when we feel a little superior, a little “better than.” That, too, is an expression of fear.

Because all of this negativity - all of this darkness - is rooted in fear.

We’re afraid of being judged or rejected.

Afraid of not getting what we think we need.

Afraid of losing something important to us.

And often, we don’t even realize we’re afraid.

We just feel the weight of it. The tightness. The urgency.

And so we react - by turning the fear outward, or inward, or both.

But here’s the most important part:

When you find yourself thinking or behaving in ways that don’t line up with the person you want to be

When you catch yourself judging someone else, or beating yourself up -

Try this:

Pause.

Take a breath.

And gently remind yourself:

“I’m not a bad person. I’m just afraid right now.”

That shift - from blame to understanding, from shame to compassion- is what makes real change possible.

Not overnight. Not all at once. But slowly, steadily, with kindness, we all have ways that we'd like to be.