How Many Masks Do You Wear?

You may be surprised when you answer the question, how many masks do you wear? The answer is likely more than you consciously realize.

Living an ageless lifestyle after 50 can entail shedding some of the masks you’ve worn in the past to protect yourself. Your ageless mind wants to free itself from the past and all the game playing and pretending to be what you thought people needed you to be.

Most people have several masks they wear. There’s the mask of who you are in your love relationship, the mask of who you are with your kids, other family members, your friends, your boss, your co-workers, and your public mask that strangers see. In fact most of us wear so many masks we aren’t even sure who the real self is.

It takes a lot of introspection to recognize the masks and then a concentrated effort to take them off.

Why do you have masks in the first place?

They offer you protection from rejection by putting on the face you think the people in each of those situations want to see.

Have people ever made any of these comments to you:

“You seem so different outside of work.”

“You’re a completely different person when you are away from your —–.”

“You act totally different when you get around —– .”

You hear these comments because your masks change around different people and situations. Or if you are lucky, you’re to the point of trust in the relationship where you are actually reducing or taking off the mask with that person.

It’s a lot of work to keep up the masks you wear. It takes a lot of energy. I want to run a few thoughts by you that may have pushed you into keeping your masks on. I’ll tell you that I’ve had all these thoughts at different times in my life.

· Have you ever felt that people won’t like you when they find out who you really are?

· Have you ever been afraid that your success or the promotion you got won’t last once people find out you really aren’t talented enough?

· Have you ever thought your happiness was just too good to be true and you better watch out or it would all go away because you didn’t deserve it?

· Have you ever sabotaged yourself with these self-defeating beliefs or others like these?

As you grow and learn to love yourself, these masks will start to shrink and then go away completely. Different ones will leave as your confidence in those areas increases. That doesn’t mean a negative thought won’t pop into your head from time to time, but you won’t buy into it anymore. Instead, you’ll say to yourself, “Where is that coming from? I sure don’t feel that way anymore.”

This is one reason why it’s so important to do a personal inventory of your life. The first step is to take some time and look at what is in your life right now. Take inventory of yourself.

Personal Inventory:

· Why are you in the relationships you are?

· Why are you doing the work you are doing?

· Why are you working at the particular place you are?

· Why do you spend your free time the way you do?

· Why do you live where you live?

Your first thought may be, “I don’t know. It just happened.” But that’s not true. Every step of the way that leads you to where you are right now was a matter of choice. A choice to say yes or no to each situation as it came up.

Once you recognize this and take responsibility for where you are in your life you can look at each aspect of your life and see what is serving you and what isn’t. That’s step two.

Step three is to make a conscious decision what you want to change on what you want your new result to be.

If you don’t know your desired result today, click here to be put on the wait list to be notified of the next start date of my 6 week class, “How to Create a Vision for Your Life”.

For now, it’s enough to declare that you want something better. In the class we will go through this personal inventory in detail and I will help you get clear on exactly what you want your life to look like.

Look at what’s going on in your life and if the way you are living and the things you have attracted into your life are still working for you.

If you are growing, you’re constantly changing and you need to stay on top of your progress by having a step-by-step process for tracking where you are in your life and where you are going. Once you know where you want to go, the people and resources you needed will appear according to the level of commitment you have to make it manifest.

Until next time, I’d love to hear your thoughts. Just comment below.

If you would like personal mentoring, click on the contact tab at the top of the page to send me an email detailing what you would like help with. As your mentor I hold a bigger vision for you than you hold for yourself. When you have faith and a team that believes in you, it gives you courage. When you don’t have to do it all yourself, all things are possible for you. Commit today to go for your dream 100%.