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How to Accept Yourself and Become Who You Want to Be
A unique perspective on self-discovery and personal growth.
When I first met my wife in graduate school, she asked me what I wanted to be when I was growing up. The absolute — highly delusional! — truth was that my dream was to play basketball in the NBA. I didn’t just occasionally dream this. I thought of it — All. The. Time. At first, my dream was to play Division 1 college basketball.
Neither one of those dreams came true. Yet my dream of playing college basketball did, at the Division 3 level. It was there that reality finally hit me — I wasn’t quick enough, fast enough or nearly a good enough defender. Not exactly the qualifications for matching up against LeBron James and Steph Curry.
When I started doing some real soul-searching 10 years ago, I came to accept the fact that life doesn’t always work out how we think it will when we’re younger. For so long, I was a dreamer that didn’t adjust or adapt when the idealist things that I wanted didn’t pan out. I actually went through a period of shame and disappointment that led to avoidance.
This avoidance led to laziness and not applying myself the way that I should. The things that I did end up doing to make money weren’t satisfying. I didn’t give things my all. Maybe, no matter where you…
