Self
Your ‘self’ is largely a bunch of stories you've accepted as true.
But it's ultimately a huge hangup that prevents you from reaching your full potential.
Yeah maybe this sounds Buddhist or eastern but I'm talking about something phenomenological. You can grasp it quite easily if you are honest with yourself and start accepting the reasons you have been dishonest with yourself.
I'm not going to sell you some infinite Self beyond time and space
It's enough to say, what happened to the self you wanted to be when you were 4 years old?
Remember caring about things with great enthusiasm?
Creating without caring what anyone would think?
Speaking to people without pretense? Without even measuring and thinking about what you were going to say?
Acting without wondering if it was a waste of time or if it was going to make you money or how many of your friends really like you?
That's not how we live as adults. We pile abstractions and reasons on top of everything we do. Nothing has value until we take the innocence out of it.
Even spirituality has turned into something in which one tries to ‘achieve’ truth, and it ends up no different than your job, the divine or God is just your boss. Clean your room, become responsible, be your own dictator so that no one else can be. That's modern ethics in a nutshell. Be your own boss so you don't answer to anyone but your self (who is worse than anyone else because that's who projects all the authority onto everyone else).
People sell financial freedom, personal freedom, political freedom, and all of them want you to sell your soul. Everyone has a course or a plan or a business model. None of it's real.
You are always in an active moment. You can waste a bunch of time forming an identity if you want, trying to get people to believe something about you.
Or you can just become who you want to be by doing it and worrying about identity afterward.