I Can Be Me. They Can Be Them.
A seven-year-old’s poem captured what many of us take years to learn.
Read on kevferrell.com
Welcome to REWIRE | REBOOT, a weekly newsletter where I share reflections from my ongoing personal growth journey and provide tested ideas, frameworks, tools and practices to help you create the life you want.
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In this issue:
- Rewire - Just Be Kevin
- Reboot - Getting Back to You
- One Action - Leave One Thing Unedited
- Recommended - The Book That Gave Me Permission
Rewire - Idea I'm Exploring
Just Be Kevin
Recently, my seven-year-old niece, Juliette, wrote a poem that stopped us all in our tracks.
Transcribed as written:
Poem
here is a poem
it will brighten
your day you can
be you I can be
me if people be
mean just come
rite to me just
think I can be
me they can be
them don't let
them ruin all
your fun if
someone pushes
you just think
I can be me
they can be them
if some one buds
you in line think
I can be me
they can be them
It was the refrain that stayed with me:
I can be me. They can be them.
In the previous issue, This Will Never Change, I wrote about accepting that difficult people will always exist and deciding who we become in response.
Juliette’s poem reaches a similar idea from a different direction. It’s not only about letting other people be who they are. It’s also about giving ourselves the same permission.
“Just be yourself” sounds like the simplest advice in the world. Yet many of us spend years trying to become the person we think other people would prefer.
We soften our opinions, hide our interests or adjust our personalities to make ourselves easier to like. We try to stay within the boundaries of what is considered normal, acceptable, or expected.
Sometimes that’s good judgment. Being considerate is not the same as pretending. Choosing the right time and place can also change how something is received.
But there is a point at which adapting becomes performing.
About ten years ago, I read Gretchen Rubin’s book The Happiness Project. Her first personal commandment was only two words:
Be Gretchen.
The idea was to recognize what genuinely suited her temperament, interests, and values instead of trying to enjoy or become the things she thought she ought to.
I have never forgotten it.
I began reminding myself:
Just be Kevin.
For much of my earlier life, I treated some of the ways I was different as problems to correct. I felt pressure to live within conventional expectations even when they didn’t fit. But whenever I tried to conform, it felt forced.
Over time, people whose opinions I cared about began admiring some of the very qualities I had once tried to conceal. They weren’t responding to the ways I fit in. They were responding to the places where I was recognizably me.
That changed the way I saw being different. It became a strength. Not because being unconventional is automatically better, but because I became more comfortable thinking independently, questioning accepted ways of doing things, and following a path that suited me.
Trying to become what you think other people want is an unwinnable game. You may earn approval, but only for a version of yourself you now have to keep performing.
When I stopped doing that, it was freeing. I didn’t become free from judgment. I became freer from giving every judgment the same weight.
“Just be you” is not a defense against feedback, and it doesn’t mean we should stop growing.
It means growth begins with an honest understanding of who we are, not with an audition for someone else’s approval.
I’ve learned to accept that not everyone will like me. Whether they do is not mine to control.
My choice is whether the person they meet is actually me.
Juliette had it right:
You can be you. I can be me. They can be them.
Reboot - Health & Longevity
Getting Back to You
We all have bad days or days when we don’t feel quite like ourselves. The best cure for me: exercise.
I may be stressed, overwhelmed, angry, flat, or simply low on energy. One of the most reliable ways I have found to overcome that state is to move.
Exercise doesn’t erase whatever caused the feeling. But it almost always changes my state enough to help me deal with it better.
After so many years of consistent training, I’m able to push myself to start through sheer will and discipline alone. But that doesn’t mean I always want to.
For those of you who have a difficult time starting, having someone who’s in the game with you helps. Ask a friend or partner to join you in some activity you both enjoy.
There have been plenty of days when either Lisa or I did not feel like exercising for one reason or another. One of us encouraged the other, or we rallied ourselves and got to it.
Neither of us can remember a single time we finished and said, “I wish we hadn’t done that.”
We’re consistently glad we pushed through because we always feel better afterwards.
The evidence extends well beyond our personal experience. A 2026 umbrella review combined 81 meta-analyses covering more than 1,000 studies involving nearly 80,000 participants and found that exercise reduced symptoms of depression and anxiety across clinical and subclinical populations.
That doesn’t mean one workout will correct a diagnosed disorder or that exercise works identically for everyone. But it’s increasingly recognized that exercise is a valuable tool and importnat part of treatment.
For the ordinary “bad” days when you simply feel off, the threshold doesn’t need to be high.
Go for a walk. Stretch for a few minutes. Do some light mobility work. Take the stairs.
Anything is infinitely better than nothing.
You won’t always feel motivated to move. Sometimes the movement comes first and the better feeling follows.
Getting back to yourself often begins by getting your body moving.
One Action
Leave One Thing Unedited
Identify a part of yourself that you routinely soften or hide to avoid judgment.
This week, leave it unedited once.
Just be you.
Then notice what changes in both your interactions and in how you feel.
Let me know how it goes. Just reply to this email.
Recommended Reading
The Book That Gave Me Permission
In The Happiness Project, Gretchen Rubin spends a year testing research, philosophy, and practical resolutions to understand how everyday choices influence happiness.
The book changed how I think about several aspects of happiness. Its most lasting effect, however, came from Rubin’s simple commandment to “Be Gretchen.” It gave me permission to create one of my own:
Just be Kevin.
Inspirational Quote
“No need to hurry. No need to sparkle. No need to be anybody but oneself.”
—Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own
Readers Corner
Ask Me Anything
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Until next week,
Kevin
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