In Episode 4 of The One Problem, my guest, Sharon Horne Ellstrom talks about the importance of showing up as your authentic self. Stop trying to be a carbon copy of others.
The following quote, often attributed to Oscar Wilde, says a lot.
“Be yourself. Everyone else is already taken.”Digest 30 Books in 30 Days
My name is Avil Beckford, and I started a new initiative not very long ago. It's called One Problem and it's near and dear to my heart. So, I've been interviewing people. They talk about something they're passionate about, a problem, or a challenge. Then they spend five to 10 minutes talking about their solution. So that all of us can learn from them.
Today I'm interviewing Sharon Horne Ellstrom. I met her about a year and a half ago on LinkedIn and I've learned so much from her.
She does the Get Up and Go Challenge, which I've participated in a few times. And she's awesome. She's wise and she knows so much. I'll turn it over to you, Sharon.
Interview With Sharon Horne-Ellstrom
Have you read or watched?
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The One Problem: Avil Beckford, Author of Digest 30 Books in 30 Days
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Sharon Horne-Ellstrom:
Thank you so much. I'm actually holding my week-old grand-baby, I'm baby sitting. So she has to join us for a little bit of wisdom, I guess, today. I wondered what I wanted to talk about when you asked me about the one problem. I deal a lot with challenges.
And I thought, I don't want to talk about challenges today. I talk about them 365 days of the year. So let's look at something different that's near and dear to my heart. And that's how to be you yourself, unique and authentic. Who you really are in a world that's always trying to mold us into being like everybody else. Or to be something different than we feel in our heart, in our mind, our guts and in our minds that we want to be. And showing up in the world as we really are.
So I've had a lot of opportunities to explore that over the decades that I've been around. And now as a grandma, I think it's even more important to teach our children. And our grandchildren to know that it's perfectly all right to be exactly what they are. Why do we want to be our unique self? And why do we want to show up in the world just as we are number one out of seven billion plus people?
We're the only one that has the unique set of characteristics and skills and abilities and experiences out of that seven billion people.
And when we do that, we show up as who we are. There's no competition. Nobody can compete with you for the work that you [Avil Beckford] do and how you teach us the love of reading. And how we can incorporate that into reading whatever it is we want in our lives. Like I said, I've done several of her challenges. And for somebody that's legally blind to do reading challenges, if it weren't for Avil, I positively could not do them.
So part of showing up who you uniquely are, is knowing what we want and how we want to be in the world. We want to show up, ask them why we want to do that. We also want to be, as we explore that, understanding that everybody isn't going to like or accept who we are. And who we want to be. And that's perfectly OK, because we probably don't like everything about them either. There are several ways that we can make sure that we're being our authentic self and being true to who we really are.
That's by knowing what's important to us, knowing our core values, knowing what we stand for and being consistent with that. Making decisions and choices that feel good to us based on what is right for us. What's right for me might not be right for you. But if it feels good to me and it's right for me, then it's in alignment with the things I am.
We want to make sure that we are always learning and growing. And that's one of the things that I've gained most from you is the ability to learn and continue to grow and continuously improve through reading and through books.
And I've been a reader my whole life, and one of my biggest challenges with my vision has been having to let go of my traditional way of reading and gaining knowledge and wisdom so I can continually improve and grow. So whatever modality works for people, that's what we want to use in terms of learning and developing and progressing and moving forward in our lives. We want to again align ourselves with our core values, our desires. We're going to do a little thing.
I preach on this a lot about doing just one small thing every day that moves us in the direction that we want in the different areas, aspects of our life, whether it's physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, financial, relationships, or contribution. What we're here to share in the world, if we just do a little tiny bit every day, we make huge progress. And it doesn't even feel like we're working or trying really hard at it, which means it is in alignment with who we are and we are being our authentic self.
We all seek to expand and grow. It's just the nature of our humanity. It's like as soon as you achieve something that you want, of course you want something more. And finally, I think the most important reason to be who you are besides feeling awesome, is because you set an example for the rest of the people in the world. And you let them know that it's OK for them to be unique and special and different.
So I guess that's what I'm thinking about. The one problem I see in the world is I look around is most people, like I was for a lot of years, are going through life acting as if they're living, but they're not really living. We're pretending we should be the perfect professional, we're pretending we should be the perfect wife, the perfect mother, the perfect grandmother. And sometimes that's in alignment, but sometimes it's just a little bit of who we are.
And I think we're creating the world by not sharing pretty much all together, if that makes sense.
Avil Beckford:
Yes, that makes so much sense. And I'm glad I started this thing, The One Problem, because you never know what the next person will say, and that's good. We're learning from them. And this is something that everyone should think about being your authentic self.
So thank you so much.
Sharon Horne-Ellstrom:
Thank you. You have a great day. Thanks for having me.
