Being the person your world needs you to be
Who will YOU become?
I apologised to my sister. In 2024 I said I was sorry, for being an often angry, sometimes condescending and on occasion not very nice older sister when we were younger.
We were (are) two years apart in age. Me, the oldest, hardworking, academic, compliant, and frightfully judgemental one. She, the rebel, the smoke-behind-the-bike-sheds-do-everything-DIFFERENT one.
We were always going to clash. But what I never saw was the way in which we were both pushed, moulded, shaped, by the people around us, the culture, society. How we both tried to survive and used our own coping mechanisms to do so.
That is - of course - until I spectacularly dropped out of the mould I was meant to fit into. And spent the next 20 years rebuilding myself.
Turning myself into a nicer version of myself. A HAPPIER version of myself. It’s a work in progress. It’ll never be finished. And that’s OK.
Anyway, last year I apologised. I was staying at my sister’s house. We had a good talk. We cried. I apologised. She forgave me.
And, most notably, I forgave myself. Using my relatively recently found self-love and theoretically present but underused empathy on myself.
The reason I’m writing about this profoundly personal experience is this.
It made me reflect on who I want to be. And - if I apply this to you too - about how WE all want to be. In a world that may not - currently - allow us to be that person.
So, to start 2025 off, I’d like to share my observation, no my WISH for this year, with you.
Intrinsic or extrinsic motivation
First of all this:
Our motivation is intrinsic or extrinsic. We are self-motivated or let our actions be motivated by rewards, praise or meeting an external goal.
The consequence of one or the other motivation is that we either believe that we have an ability to change things, make things happen in our lives, or choose to believe that we are ruled by ‘the powers that be’, people more senior or more powerful than us, society, the world.
The culture IS us
This plays out especially in workplaces, where there can be this overwhelming feeling that it’s ‘them’ and ‘us’. Senior managers against the workforce. The culture is the culture and there’s nothing we can do about it.
Except, what we forget is that the culture IS us. We ARE the culture, the organisation, the establishment.
And if you take that a bit bigger still: we ARE society, what makes up society.
Adult development
Then there is how we develop as adults.
In adult development theory* there are clear ‘transition’ points in adults. Where we move into a different stage of our adult lives.
Most adults are in a Socialised Mind stage, where external sources shape our understanding of the world and our sense of self. We take our cues on who we are and who we SHOULD be from the world around us.
In the next stage of development, the Self-Authoring Mind we can question values and expectations and define - for ourselves - who we are and want to be.
It’s no wonder that THIS is the space we can find ourselves in in midlife.**
It’s why THIS stage of your life gives such a wonderful opportunity to reinvent ourselves - and the world around us too.
Useless anger
In 2024 I noticed how ANGRY we all are (read Women are Angry, if you need more proof!). How EASY it is to get baited by and swept away by anger. (I even wrote a post about the phenomenon of ‘rage baiting’ on LinkedIn).
The thing is, ever since reading the book The Dance of Anger, back in my early twenties, I’ve known about how we can get caught up in useless - well - dances of anger. How we can express anger or turn anger inward, with no discernible results for the better.
Whilst anger is a force for GOOD, a force for CHANGE.
If, that is, we decide to harness our anger and use the power of it.
Us in the world
What I’m saying with all of the above is this:
What we all want is to be happy, right? We want to do the work that we’re BEST at and LOVE doing, to live our lives fully and reach our full potential.
For that we can’t get away from the fact that we live in this world, that we NEED others and that we need the world to ALLOW us to be those people.
But what we tend to forget is the role we play in that. Because - don’t forget - we ARE the world. We MAKE this world. The choices we make, the behaviour we display, the actions we take, are OURS.
Who we want to be is to be determined - by US. What we want the world around us to be like starts with us. By BEHAVING differently. By BEING different.
For us to change the world around us - just to spell it out - We. Need. To. Be. Different. First.
And yes, that means change.
It means changing the useless dance of anger, of railing against society, without taking responsibility for the role we play in it.
It means having the courage to look at ourselves, acknowledge the role we’ve played so far and apply real empathy to that person-who-was (and yes, apologise if you need to) and self-love for the person you are and are becoming.
It means determining how you want things to BE. How you want YOUR world to change.
And then determining how YOU need to BE - how you WANT to be or even HAVE to be - in THAT world, to bring about that world.
And be that person.
Which - yes - might mean taking difficult decisions, encountering resistance from people around you (who’ve only ever known you as that *other* person) and - yes - at times you might feel like giving up.
It may mean doing things differently, maybe even no longer doing things the ‘old’ you used to enjoy doing or took for granted.
The thing is: ultimately WE create our reality, our world.
We could - I would like us to - collectively be thinking about what we want our world to be like, (NOT sleepwalking-into-other-people’s-worlds-whilst-being-glued-to-our-phones, or angrily tap-tap-tapping out another angry social media post) and starting the creation of it by being the person THAT world needs us to be.
Yeah, if I could have a wish for 2025 (or even a Resolution, if I really have to 🙄) then THAT’s what it would be: for us to be the person we need to be for the world we want to create.
To be the change we want to see. To become the person we always were and want to be. Fully. Deeply. Irreversibly.
I wish you all a VERY Happy New Year. May 2025 be the year in which you become the person you always were, the one the world NEEDS. The full and amazing you.
Love and light.
Tineke X
P.S.1 If YOU want to start EXPLORING who you can become and what you can - and want to - DO in your career (and life), then book a call!
P.S.2 Have you wanted to start thinking about ‘what’s next’ but can’t seem to get started - or keep going? It might well be your Saboteurs holding you back!
What are YOUR Saboteurs? Is it the Avoider stopping you doing the things you want to do? Your Judge giving devastating feedback on your ability to make it happen? Let’s find out in my (FREE!) Saboteur Discovery Call! Book it by clicking the button below:
*Kegan’s theory of Adult Development. If you want to read more about this, read this EXCELLENT series of articles about it.
**I’m speaking about stages 3 and 4 in Kegan’s theory of Adult Development. There is a Stage 5: Self-Transforming Mind, which I haven’t spoken about here.
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2025 - on 52 post-it notes!
You know what has REALLY given me joy in 2024? Yes, writing - every Friday - what I achieved. On little colourful post-it notes. My Smashing It poster, I call it.
And - as it’s the first Friday of the year, I’m sharing the template with you! Your very OWN Smashing It! poster!
Every week, write a couple of bulletpoints down. Things you’ve achieved, things you’re proud of, things you’re happy about, things you’d like to remember this time next year.
(It’s also an EXCELLENT way of starting to make your To Do list for the following week, I found.)
Enjoy!
🔴🟡🟠
Hi, I’m Tineke! I work as a Career & Creativity Coach and support professional women in being happy at work and do the work you love.
Besides that I’m also a lifelong feminist, paint portraits for fun, practically eat books for breakfast (not really) and doodle obsessively.
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