THE JOURNEY TOWARDS AUTHENTICITY

For most of my life I’ve daydreamed about being someone else. I’ve spent more hours than I could even count, fantasizing and idealizing the lives of people on TV, magazines, and more recently Instagram. Thinking if I could just be more like THEM, and less of myself then I’d find true happiness and belonging. Sure, I wanted to keep a bit of myself sprinkled in there, but the main ingredients, the ones found externally, surely had to be better than the ones found internally. Then one day, things changed for me. I realized that in trying to contort myself to fit some idealized version of myself—that I thought the world wanted to see,

I felt the real version of me getting closer and closer towards extinction.

I don’t remember what day it was; they all felt the same at some point. But I do remember that day (driving to my then job as a News Producer) felt different. I felt more drained than usual, but I figured once I got in, and had a cup of tea, I’d soldier on per usual. I got to my desk, logged into my computer, opened Outlook and suddenly felt the urge to just get up. With no intended place to go, I walked briskly into our makeup room, closed the door behind me and instantly started crying. Thank God no one was in there because when I say I CRIED, I mean that can’t-catch-your-breath, snot-flowing, Viola Davis in ‘Fences’ type of cry. My sobering performance in the makeup room didn’t lead to a Supporting Actress Oscar unfortunately, but it did cut my workday short. I called my best friend, explaining to her between obstructed breaths, that I just needed to get out of there. I felt as if the walls were closing in on me, and my office was the last place on earth I needed to be.

I later found out that I had a panic attack, and there was no one to blame but myself.  At the time I just thought I hated my job, and that was the source of all of my unhappiness. But happiness, by definition, is a state of well-being and contentment. This cannot be given to you in a job, relationship, or “insert whatever material item you’ve been longing for, here.”  Happiness can only come from within, and even then, it may not even be enough. As I was gearing up to write this article, I started to watch a Ted Talk (I love my Ted Talks) by Emily Esfahani Smith. Her talk wasn’t about the importance of authenticity per se, but it was about having meaning in life, and serving something that’s greater than yourself.

In it, she describes 4 pillars of meaning—belonging, purpose, transcendence, and storytelling.  

Belonging is the idea that you are valued as who you are by those around you. Not for what you have, or the façade you show to the world, but for the true essence of who you are.

Purpose as she describes it, is less about what you want, and more about what you can give to others. So, as you may already be realizing, purpose doesn’t always directly relate to what you do for a living. It’s the thing that drives you forward—your ‘why.’

Transcendence is that feeling of going outside of yourself, and getting connected to a higher reality. For some people this can be through music, for others some sort of physical exercise like yoga. For me it’s through storytelling.

Storytelling was Smith’s last pillar (and to not confuse it with my own personal mode of transcendence) this pillar is about the stories we tell ourselves, about ourselves. It’s the thoughts of, “I’m not strong enough to get through this time of adversity,” or “I’ll never get the life I want.” We become what we tell ourselves, and our lives are our own stories. We can edit or completely re-write them, swap out characters when we want, and it ain’t finished until we say it’s finished!

If you sit with each of those pillars above, you can see how each of them tap into the ability to be authentic. So I wasn’t only unhappy at that time, but I was being inauthentic because my meaning was off. It took learning mindfulness—which honestly should be one of the pillars above—in order for me to begin working towards living authentically. When you actually look inwards in order to assess, acknowledge, and in some cases criticize who you actually are then, you can reach authenticity. The ability to show up everyday, as your true self, experiencing your true feelings, and expressing your genuine self—that’s the good shit. Our world is hell-bent on trying to tell us who to be, what to do, and how to do it. So showing up as our truest selves, and operating from a genuine place, is revolutionary.  This thing we’re doing nowadays; where everyone essentially wants to be someone else, who is also just another carbon copy of another person, is quite honestly, wack as hell.

As one of my favorite literary characters Holden Caulfield would say, “we’re all a bunch of phonies.”

I truly believe that as a global community we are losing the art of authenticity, and that is devastating. Think of how more rich and exciting our world would be if we had all found our ‘whys,’ and were living accordingly. If we all took time to search within us to identify our specific gifts, instead of trying to imitate those of others. A world full of more authentic people, would be a happier world. A more accepting world, where we allowed each other to live fully as the humans we were meant to be, and no one dared recreate the storyline of another person—out of sincere fear of missing out on their own destined path. Sounds beautiful doesn’t it? Well, all is not completely lost.

If you’re still breathing, you have time to start living authentically.

My catalyst towards an authentic existence stems from the fact that I love telling stories. Though I did end up in the field that I love, I haven’t always been in the position to tell the stories that fueled me, that reflected my community, and gave me hope. It took walking away from a job, that wasn’t enough for me, to find my ‘why.’ But it doesn’t have to be that dramatic for you, so long as you find it. Do not deprive yourself of the gift that is being truly you, in favor of being anyone else on this earth.

Trust me when I say the benefits outweigh the risks, and that your life expands when you begin living truthfully. We come into this world being trained and molded until we reach adulthood. Our parents, teachers, friends, all teach us some form of a role or construct to play into, in order to fit in. So eventually, we get to the point where we aren’t even sure who we are anymore. Of course, the things we learn from our parents, teachers, and friends may not all be bad, or hinder our authenticity. However, because we spend much of our lives being trained, this makes mindfulness of our selves, and our lives, so important.

So, now that you know how important it is to be authentic, and to live into that every waking moment—here are a few simple ways to make it a lifestyle:

1.)   Tell the truth, always. It sounds simple, but it makes a huge difference in how you live your life. It’s so easy to tell lies (whether big or small), out of fear of hurting someone’s feelings, or even to ‘save face,’ but it disrupts your natural instincts, which therefore blocks your authentic self.

2.)   Learn to say no, and leave it at that. This is a hard one, especially for a lot of women—me included. As women we’re trained to be people-pleasers, and uncomplicated. So saying yes to things that are asked of you, even when you’d rather be doing anything else, is like a default for many of us. And in the scenarios where we do say no, we instantly offer up drawn out excuses as to why we’re saying no, as if the person listening deserves an explanation. Now, I’m not saying to be rude anytime you say no to something you don’t want to do, but I am saying that if you feel the need to explain yourself—ask yourself why, and act accordingly. Be truthful and sincere, and you should be good.

3.)   Sit with, digest, and trust your instincts. We make hella decisions everyday, big and small. Often times we’re working on auto-pilot though, and not really thinking intentionally about the things we’re doing or decisions we’re making. It’s also very easy to look outward when making decisions, and taking the advice of everyone else, before trusting your inner voice. This is gonna have to stop. You can keep asking advice from people you trust, but as a friend of mine says—‘you gotta eat the meat, and spit out the bones.’ So in other words, take what works for you, and ignore everything that doesn’t. Take time to be still with yourself, and really think into what you want, and follow that gut feeling.