Feeling like yourself: Mostly at home in yourself — what it can look like

You seem able to tell what's true for you, let it show where it counts, and still take other people's views in.

This is one of the patterns a 4-minute self-reflection on feeling like yourself can land on. Feeling more or less like yourself is part of ordinary life, not a condition. If you've felt cut off from yourself for a long time, a counsellor can help you explore it.

If your answers landed here

Your answers didn't show much distance from yourself on any of the three threads. They sat nearer to your reactions being clear to you as they happen, to letting them show with the people closest to you, unflattering ones included, and to taking advice seriously while still making the call yourself.

If being more formal at work and sillier with friends both feel like you, we'd put weight on that: being real, for you, may not mean being the same everywhere.

What we'd honour is an ease with yourself that lets you adapt without losing track of who's doing the adapting.

That ease can have edges. Is there someone, or some setting, where you find yourself tidying more than usual?

If one comes to mind, it might be worth getting curious about rather than fixing. Below is a small practice for noticing, across an ordinary week, when you feel most like yourself.

What it can look like

• Saying 'actually, I see it differently' without it turning into a big moment.
• Being playful with friends and focused at work and feeling like the same person underneath.
• Letting someone close see you annoyed, not only gracious.
• Asking three people for advice and then choosing something none of them suggested.

What is genuinely useful in it

• We'd count your ease in your own skin as something people around you can feel; it gives them room to be real too.
• You seem able to take influence without being swept along by it, which is a quieter skill than it sounds.

Where it can cost you

• When being yourself comes easily, it can be hard to understand why it costs others so much.
• Ease in most places can make the one place it's harder easy to overlook.

One small practice: Notice when you feel most like you

1. For one week, at the end of each day, jot down the moment you felt most like yourself.
2. Note who was there, what you were doing and what made it feel that way.
3. At the end of the week, look for anything those moments share, and one way to have a little more of it.

Questions to sit with

• Where do I feel most like myself, and when did I last spend time there?
• Is there one relationship where I edit myself more, and what's different about it?
• Who in my life might feel freer to be themselves if I asked them a real question?