Hello, and welcome back to practicing human, the podcast where every day we're getting a little better at life.

I'm your host, Corey Muscara, and in today's episode, we're going to talk about acceptance and growth.

More to come on that in a moment. First, let's settle in together with the sound of the bells.

So, I'd like to start by sharing something I wrote recently. It's very short. It says,

you can't exchange your ball of clay, but you can mold the heck out of the one you've been given.

You can't exchange your ball of clay, but you can mold the heck out of the one you've been given.

So, I think we hear that in having an intuitive sense of what it's pointing to, but in case that's not clear,

this is referring to the fundamental parts of you, parts that make up who you are that are uniquely yours,

and have been given to you at birth.

Some of these things are positive, and make our life easier, and some of these things are what we might perceive as negative,

and they make our lives more difficult. They become our big work in the world.

And I think for many of us, as we come into a self-consciousness at an early age,

and we're able to assess ourselves in relationship to other people, we get to see the other balls of clay that are out there,

and it can be very compelling to want to exchange your ball of clay for another one.

It might seem like that ball of clay over there has life easier. It doesn't have the same struggles that you have,

and it may very well be true, but this big work that we have to do in this human lifetime is learning to meet and accept certain aspects of who we are.

And I say certain aspects, because there's truth that there is a lot that is malleable, a lot that we can change and grow and improve.

But there are also just a lot of parts of us that are going to be firmly who we are and a part of our life throughout our lives.

And in my experience, an excessive amount of energy can be spent not wanting to be ourselves.

But the reality is that we don't have a snowballs chance in hell of becoming anyone other than who we are.

And so eventually we have to come to that recognition and meet ourselves in the mirror and use that energy to better understand who we are.

And who are you? What do you need? What are your strengths? What are your weaknesses? What are you working on?

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