About - Becoming Who You Are

About BWYA

Becoming Who You Are is your guide to authentic living.

A go-to resource for rational personal development, this site provides you with tools and information you can use to create the life you want from the inside out.

For most of us, there’s a tiny, tiny voice in our heads that knows we’re not really living in a way that is 100% true to ourselves. Maybe you’ve tried everything to shut this voice down, but it persists. It’s a reminder of the Sliding Doors-esque parallel universe: the life that could have been.

And somewhere, deep down, you know this voice is right.

That voice exists because we were once true to ourselves: from the day we were born we knew exactly what we wanted, and we were not afraid to communicate that. The memory of being authentic is within us all.

As we get older, however, the way we process the world and express ourselves is shaped by those around us. We are conditioned to take on certain beliefs about the world around us, we internalise false beliefs about ourselves, and about the meaning of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’. As a result, our lives start to go in a very different direction to the one we might have naturally taken.

This causes internal conflict. We know what we ought to be doing, but it’s not really what we want. We feel unhappy, restless, even depressed. We probably have a strong inner critic that berates us for this – and more. No matter what we do, where we go, or what we achieve, we still feel this nagging sense of weighted unease.

Because we’re not being true to ourselves.

But there’s that voice, the one that tells you that. It’s still there, which means you can still turn this ship around.

This is your chance to do just that.

On Becoming Who You Are, this is what authentic living means:

Living life on your own terms, true to yourself.
Knowing which needs and desires are truly yours, and which are a result of your conditioning.
Identifying your core values, and living your life in accordance with those.
Living with boundaried transparency: showing people your real self, not your old defences, and doing so in a way that feels right for you.
Living the way you want to live, rather than living the way you or others think you ‘should’ live.
Taking full responsibility for your life and embracing the reality that the only person responsible for the outcome is you.
Doing all this with a rational approach to personal development.

What to Expect from BWYA

On Becoming Who You Are, you’ll find an abundance of resources, tools, ideas and information that will get your party started.

It’s not your average personal development website. The most popular post I ever wrote, for instance (that still gets comments and feedback years later), is called “Why Forgiveness is Overrated“.

Not exactly Deepak Chopra.

The truth is, I think a lot of self-help “wisdom” is not very wise, and also a lot of it is about ways to try and feel good whilst still living a lot of lies. It teaches us not to make waves, not to piss people off and to do our best to fit in. It focuses more on ‘letting go’ of anger, hurt and sadness (whatever that means), rather than using those feelings to take responsibility for ourselves and act in our best interests. It keeps us in a place where certain feelings aren’t allowed (see the last sentence), because they’re not feelings that good little personal development students should feel.

And a lot of personal development-related talk suggests that control is in the external hands of universal energy, crystals, tarots, gods, angels, and other things that simply don’t exist.

This site isn’t like that.

Becoming Who You Are is for you if…

You read the Mini-festo and think ‘Hell yes!’
You’re ready to take responsibility for your life and its trajectory
You want rational tools and resources that you can actually use (no miracles needed)
The conventional framing of ‘personal development’ doesn’t work for you: you know some of the ideas could be useful, but you’re not on board with the woo-woo factor
You want to start living on your terms, and you’re willing to do what you need to do to make that happen

I’m in, what next?

Yeah! If you want to dive straight in, take a look at the list of posts below (they’ll give you a flavour of the kind of things we talk about):

You can also check out the “Toolbox”, where you’ll find courses, books and information about coaching, as well as “Resources”, which is home to an ever-expanding list of books, websites and people that promote authentic living.

To find out more about me, Hannah, click here. Keep in touch with what’s happening through Facebook, Twitter, or sign up below for email updates.