Developing Authenticity
A human being’s innate desire is to become bigger than the smallness of their perceived limitations. Humans universally desire to come home to themselves and lead authentic lives.
A person’s longing to become authentic is not only an innate, often spiritual, desire but also a proven guide to building a successful life.
There is a longing for connection, joy, ease, and purpose that is universal. However, for many individuals, there is no clear path to achieving this in life. Unfortunately, there are no classes on how to be a human, and that is why so many of us struggle to lead lives filled with ease, joy, connection, and purpose.
When developing authenticity, we can engage in four activities to assist us with this goal.
This pursuit of living authentically is a journey, not a destination.
Doing these four things will not allow us to “arrive” at our authentic selves, but rather, doing these things will continue to reveal our authentic selves. We might move from part one to part two, only to return to part one and then to part four. The human experience is learning and growing, and we all struggle with this process.
We all desire to live in harmony with ourselves, and we all desire to be seen, appreciated, and celebrated for our individuality.
The first step towards developing authenticity is identifying what the inner voice our authenticity sounds like. We all have ingrained programming from the moment we are born. Programming comes from our parents, family, friends, church, school, cultures, and society at large. Programming is anything that tells us who we are, what we should be doing, and how we should behave. It is up to us to discern which of these messages we want to keep, and which we need to discard.
It is our thoughts, feelings, reactions, and fears that guide us to our true selves.
Investigating these things helps us figure out which inner thoughts originate from our programming, and which originate from our authentic self. Then, we have the opportunity to remove everything that does not truly represent us.
Part two of this journey is healing everything that is preventing our authentic self from showing up every day, every moment of our life. We all have trauma from our pasts. There is no one who is getting through this life unscathed. It is in our nature as humans to always be engaged in healing work, which will never be fully completed. Humans are soft creatures, and healing what hurts us is our ongoing responsibility.
If we don’t heal, our authentic selves remain hidden.
By inviting old ideas, concepts, betrayals, and beliefs into our power of presence, we allow them to be healed, shifted, and transformed.
Next, developing habits and routines are critical to supporting our true selves. There is a specious concept that dominates our culture, and it is that we don’t have to invest in caring for ourselves to be our best self. Our culture would have us believe that we can do it all (the continuous hustle) without focusing on ourselves and meeting our own personal needs, but this is completely incorrect. Successful people make sure they invest in themselves, allowing them to live meaningful and successful lives. Knowing what we need to allow our authentic self to easily and naturally emerge in every situation is what investing in ourselves is all about. Our individual recipes for fulfillment are unique, and consistently investing in this recipe allows our authentic selves to lead our lives. Recipes for fulfillment include things like; what we eat, how often we exercise, how much time we need alone, how much time we need to rest, what our hobbies are, and so forth.
The fourth part of developing authenticity is going out into the world, and choosing to live courageously from our authentic self, so that the clarity about who we are, and our alignment with our authentic self, continue to deepen. This is the phase where we take our soft, vulnerable, authentic self out into the world and in the world, and we allow ourselves to experience disappointment, failure, surprise, regret, and discovery. Then, we use these experiences to deepen our relationship with ourselves. Courage is simply a choice. It is something we choose to do, regardless of how we feel, and it is a way of being that is available to each of us in every moment.
When we realize that experiences like failure and disappointment are a valuable part of having a successful, meaningful life, we understand that we no longer have to avoid or resist these experiences.
We can embrace them, and use them to allow ourselves to live more in alignment with our authentic self.
Being a human isn’t easy, but the more we do hard things, the easier life becomes. Living authentically is one of the most rewarding adventures that we can pursue in our one and only precious life.
Check out this YouTube video on Signs That You’re Disconnected From Your Authentic Self: https://youtu.be/WnDa7Hel1LQ
