Authenticity: The Great Liberator!
What does it mean to embrace one’s authentic self? It simply means being true to who you really are on a cellular level and answering present in your own life in spite of people seeing you as weird, phony or crazy. Authenticity means having the courage to love yourself while standing firmly in the vulnerabilities of all of those blemishes, ruffles and wrinkles which are often times part of the human reality and experience. Authenticity is a fierce and unapologetic loyalty to oneself!
Why is authenticity so important for our lives?
Because Authenticity means freedom and liberation! It means joy! It means living our lives as us, rather than as others. Being authentic means that we are living our truth especially given that only truth can effectively set one free. Freedom means true courage to soar in most aspects of one’s life. Living our truth almost always propels us in the right direction; ultimately steering us to our right calling, path, or destinations. When we are living our truth, we are approaching life from a path of conviction and courage and in that process, fear is conquered. When fear is conquered, almost every obstacle and challenge becomes exactly what it should be for people who get it; a positive teaching experience. When fear is conquered the sky becomes one’s limit. Throughout history, it has been men and women who are not afraid of being their authentic selves; sometimes being that lone messenger with the courage to voice their truth who continue to leave their imprints on the sands of time.
A lot of us go through life pretending to be who we are not for fear of getting disapproving glances from others or being unpopular. The effect of this of course, is a situation where we become stuck in the rot of a job we do not like, or the company of those that we cannot stand, or remain silent in the face of a glaringly wrong act perpetrated against another in our presence because we feel that if we voice out our opposition, we lose our friends. (Now, seriously! Do these people even meet the definition of a “friend” for starters, they probably do not!)
When we live our lives different from whom we really are at the core of our beings, life becomes unhappy and overly complicated. Our relationships suffer because our partners cannot even decipher who we are and often wonder why we changed when the reality was that we had faked it all the way! Even our professional lives suffer because we never conducted the business from a place of conviction and truth; we tend to be always edgy and angry, ending up infecting and contaminating people who cross paths with us with the same negative emotion we harbor and ultimately, we fail to excel at what we do and even take ignorant hostages along on our failing spree!
Ever noticed what happens to us when we lie? Ever notice our tone of voice sort of falters. We normally do not have the same courage and convictions that we usually exhibit when we are in the right or when we are telling the truth.
Without question, no two human beings are exactly alike. As children, we usually have different personalities and ideas and are usually unafraid to say exactly how we feel. In that state of absolute truth and innocence, life is less complex and more fun! As children, everything is out in the open and generally we are mostly happy. We are unafraid of anything, (ok, may be . ., except for the boogieman and ghosts or dead people) until that drastic tsunami halts our nirvana. As adults, we try to conform to a set of unwritten norms and become boring and in the process lose our individualities. We begin to exercise tact in the most rigid and ridiculous manner and in the process become bland! Every adult acts just like the next adult and sounds just like someone they are not. Of course we mostly fail abysmally at what we do because we are fake! Many success stories today are about people who are different from the rest of the bunch and most of us fail to notice this or are too envious to acknowledge them.
Understand that I am in no way advocating the reality that an authentic lifestyle means that one becomes an insensitive potty mouth to others out of a need to always voice out one’s opinion, or that you must constantly be in the opposition simply for the heck of it. Not at all! I am merely advocating that a life lived from an authentic place usually is a happier one for the person living it and for others whom he encounters. His endeavors and goals are usually easier to accomplish because of the strength and conviction that backs the endeavor. His relationships are usually happier because it is less complex and not ridden with a lot of unnecessary baggage; business would translate to more clients and customers because nothing sells better than “truth”, plain ole simple truth! Devotion and conviction are by products of an authentic life-style.
Most importantly, the Universe would stand behind the truth, joy, conviction and courage that accompany an authentic lifestyle and knock “it” out of the park for you! Ready to kick start this new reality for your life in 2016! Let’s do this!
Happy Holidays family!!!