Odd isn’t it that once you start to think about something it seems to pop up everywhere?
You know the sort of thing, you decide to buy a particular car and then see them everywhere. Well, my latest one is everybody seems to be talking about being authentic.
Here at The Way Towers, we have been banging on for quite a while about it. We work hard to get our clients to embrace authenticity and back that up with some support when needed. Why would you need support to be authentic? Well, the more I hear the idea discussed the more I consider that an essential part of being authentic is being missed.
What if you have lost touch with your authentic self? Perhaps old messages to you were strong either from family or society about who you should be can make it is all too easy to lose a clear view of self.
Or what if you actually were not too keen on what you considered your authentic self, and so had absolutely no desire to show that aspect of yourself to the world?
It seems to me that to start to try on the totally authentic style of living, you need to get your confidence in the right place, or at least be willing to push it up and take a chance.
What are the benefits of being authentic?
Is it worth taking a chance that, deep horror, your authentic-self turns out to be fairly unappealing to the mass population?
Well, of course, I would say it but it is absolutely completely and undoubtedly worth it; you can tell I feel strongly here. When you are just being yourself people feel more relaxed in your presence, never doubt for a moment that most people have a strong sense, conscious or otherwise when somebody is not being straight with them; it makes people step back and become self-protective. Barriers small and large start to be erected with you on the other side.
Now the fact that you may not be being authentic because you are feeling self-conscious or generally less wonderful than you should is not the issue, your unauthentic behaviour may be read that you have something to hide.
Each and every one of us has failings and talents, each of us has vulnerabilities. So never look at others and imagine they have it all under total control, they don’t. Confidence to be oneself is merely a sliding scale. You can improve where you are on that scale with logical and clear observations of your talents and as you become more relaxed that you are ‘good enough’ you will move up that confidence scale.
Amazingly, once you start to accept that you really are, well something special and truly individual, you will find yourself in increasingly more situations where your talent is called upon and like a rolling stone you will gather the moss of confidence.
The tricky bit is the initial stepping in to try just being yourself, accepting that you are good enough. Then you can just watch the difference it makes. And as you become more of your authentic self, know that you will face setbacks; big ones like not getting the job you wanted, and small ones like feeling that when you were being yourself someone was not so keen on you.
That is okay, we all get tired and then we revert to our more fragile self; just don’t hang about there too long.
And one of the greatest aspects of being authentic is that you will free up all that energy that you spent trying to be what you thought people wanted. If you tell the truth about yourself, which is I suppose what we are doing by being authentic, you can never be caught out.
And if anyone is not so keen on your new authentic self? Well, it was not the real ‘you’ they liked in the first place. Why not find the sort of people who like you just exactly as you are. You will love it I promise.
Angela
