Be, In Every Moment

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“Be, in every moment, that special someone you are truly meant to be.” – Ralph Marston

Ralph Marston is an American motivational author known for his website “The Daily Motivator”. Since 1996 he has been writing motivational articles everyday for his website. He has also written three books entitled “The Power of Ten Billion Dreams”, “Living the Wonder of It All”, and “The Daily Motivator to Go”.

Self-determination or acting on accordance of one’s real identity is a psychological need crucial to mental health. There have been millions of quotes about being true to oneself, but today’s advanced technology has made it much harder to be authentic, some psychologists claim. Cosmetic surgeries, stimulants, online dating, to name a few, encourage people to fabricate a more ideal and socially accepted identity to gain acceptance. “The result is a sense of near desperation,” says Stephen Cope, author of “Yoga and the Quest for the True Self”.

The quest of the true self has riddled philosophers since time immemorial, bringing opposing beliefs on the origin of the self. Earlier philosophers believed it to be constant while existentialists see it as an invention. Today’s social psychologists, on the other hand, insist on the complexity of the human personality. Self-authenticity is still considered an underexplored notion that needs to be further examined.

Despite the debate on the real nature of the self, it is still without no doubt that it is better than trying to be someone else. To quote Lao Tzu: “When you are content to be simply yourself and don’t compare or compete, everyone will respect you.”