And it’s gonna be you.
That’s the truth of it. And yet we fight ourselves all the time. We force ourselves to be in relationships and work roles that constrain our Essential Selves, we make ourselves do stuff we loathe doing because a part of ourselves is concerned with what everyone else thinks about us, we deny ourselves pleasure and punish ourselves with guilt, and we berate ourselves with our unkind self-talk. All of this makes for internal conflict, a war inside, and the longer the war goes on, the more confused we feel about who we really are and what we really want in life.

Your divided Self
Martha Beck has written about a really useful model of the self as two parts – an Essential Self and a Social Self. Your Essential Self is the part of you that’s spontaneous and creative and playful, the part that knows what’s most important to you. Your Social Self is the part of you that developed since the day you were born, taking in the rules of the tribe and working hard to make sure that you’re safe by making your follow the rules of the tribe and avoid any threats. Your Social Self wants you to be safe, and your Essential Self wants you to be happy. When you feel conflicted, it’s because your Social Self is pulling you away from the direction your Essential Self is wanting you to take, and there’s a little war going on between the part that wants you to be happy and the part that wants you to be safe.