Finding myself as opposed to trying to become someone else

"Be creative", "Look at that guy - try to become like him", "Be bold, risk-taking", "Try to emulate great people", blah, blah, blah.
Teachers, parents, friends, colleagues, bosses, books and everyone else has been feeding me with such misguided advice for so many years now. Well-intentioned, but thoroughly useless, such advice has made me spend many years trying to become someone I am not and will never be (thankfully!). And in the process, I have lost sight of who I really am. The true essence of my being has been hidden (not lost) by layers of insecurity, fear, self-loathing and denial. I cannot blame anyone for this condition but myself. No one held a gun to my head - it was I who listened to all this 'advice' and followed it blindly.
I am coming out of this conditioning, slowly but surely. Introspection is yielding results. And other efforts towards discovering myself, such as studying what I like, working where I like, etc is accelerating the process of self-discovery. I have also discovered that "listening to instincts" is absolutely fabulous. Intuition/Instinct is such a potent weapon, and yet I have let it rust for so long. I am listening to it for simple tasks like holding back on an email and saving it in my "Drafts" folder because intuition says the time is not quite right to send it yet. Also my reading of people based on gut has turned out to be a far smarter thing to do than keeping everyone on an even keel as per the misguided notion of "treat everyone equal". Well, everyone is not equal when it comes to individual thoughts and actions. And the results of such basic actions have been saving myself from getting embarassed as well as saving myself loss of money. Intuition only gets stronger the more I use it - and I fully intend to do so from here on.

Becoming myself will define my next years on this planet. I am not planning to become anyone else than what I already am. And I will love myself for it.