To really thrive after the Mothership, you need to connect to your essential core. The unchanging, unquestionable, unshakeable truths that make you the person you are.

This is important because you are no longer driven by other people’s agendas, demands and preferences. You are steering the ship these days you need to make sure the captain is the right person, the real you. That’s the only person who can steer a sure course and navigate through the storms ahead.

This can be rather more of a challenge than first appears, however.

First of all, you might never have looked for it before. Many of us have gone through life responding and adapting to events. We’ve found a way through and created an identity without any real intention or reflection about what we are doing. We’ve been far too busy with life to think about this stuff and we’ve never been shown how to do it anyway.

And secondly, the real you is probably buried away and hasn’t seen the light of day for a long time.

You’ve spent several years wearing a mask, or possibly many different masks, conforming and fitting in and playing the game. You’ve adopted other people’s values, the culture of the organisations you’ve worked in have pervaded your beliefs and your judgement. You have layers of other people’s expectations upon you.

And then there’s the armour. You’ve probably been subjected to shaming, bullying, rule by fear and even abuse. Naturally, you’ve developed defences against these. You’ve disengaged emotionally. You’ve fought back, fighting fire with fire. There’s a reason that we say people get ‘hardened’ by experience. It’s all that armour that they’ve developed and put on themselves.

So, somewhere underneath all that lot, is the real you. It’s not going to be a quick or easy task to strip away all that accumulated junk. It’s going to be hard, uncomfortable work but it will be worth it. Once you find the real you, you will be amazed at how easier life is without all that stuff on top of you. In fact, you’ll wonder why you wore it in first place.

Imagine what you can achieve with the strength and energy that you’ve released. Imagine how nimble and fast you can be, the lightness you will feel and the spring you will have in your step.

The real you is worth finding because it’s your very own source of power, it’s the treasure that only you can uncover.