reclaim your nature

Sun Feb 15 2026

on doing, being and becoming + Mind Mine update!

Ariane by Sofia Bonati, 2021

I asked my parents what I was like when I was a child and they told me: I was driven, I naturally enjoyed structure, I was high energy, I never enjoyed lying around, I was always doing and I always wanted to do more.

All of this resonated. And yet, when I look back, I don’t remember feeling like I was doing much at all. I wasn’t tired, I wasn’t forcing myself to do anything—the constant doing was just my way of being. Who I was (am) is someone who likes action. I enjoy learning, growing, exploring. But hearing it reflected back to me by my family was the first time it ever occurred to me that this way of being looks like “work” to others, because it always felt so natural to me.

==routine and structure don’t have to hurt==

My family’s remarks on how disciplined I was landed like a joke with me, because discipline feels like my primary struggle these days. But I am coming to realize that ‘discipline’ is entirely subjective—that we perceive discipline as doing what is counter to our nature. And I now see that much of what comes naturally to me is counter to most people’s nature (just as what comes naturally to you is counter to most people’s nature, because each person’s nature is unique!). I am realizing that instead of forcing myself to change my nature or reject it, perhaps all I need to do is embrace who I am fully, without judging what is or is not present in my being. Perhaps my task is simply to accept, not force (or rather: expect) anything that isn’t there to be there, but to simply recognize where I require discipline and implement it. To acknowledge that doing what I feel naturally inclined towards still “counts” as work, even if it doesn’t feel like work. That prioritizing my nature is a structure—that being myself is a routine. That routine does not need to be painful, hard, or strenuous to be valid. That perhaps the ultimate path of self-actualization is finding what feels natural to us, what feels so easy that it feels like we are hardly doing anything at all, while the people closest to us peer in at our lives and say: how are you doing so much? Maybe the ultimate structure is allowing our nature to express itself without judgement. A structure we do not need to impose upon ourselves—but one that emerges when we simply allow ourselves exist.

==effortlessness as a sign of freedom==

The true sign of self-mastery (to me) is a life that feels effortless—a life where you feel free! Where you are getting a lot done, but it doesn’t feel like you are trying very hard. Ultimate self-mastery is syncing your current self up with your nature—aligning your mature self with what felt easy/natural/fun to you before you could point yourself towards what felt wrong to you but appeared right to others. Before you began to equate suffering with self-worth and importance. Because this is what the world communicates to us: that if you’re not trying so hard that it HURTS, you are not doing enough. But true liberation is learning that you can be doing a lot without feeling like you are doing much at all and that is where you can do the most, because you will always feel like you are just being. You will feel like life is an expression of yourself.