What Does Living Authentically Mean?

Authenticity

Perhaps you haven’t given authenticity much thought. Another possibility is that you have mulled it over and maybe it’s not that important. After all, we are who we are and the Idea that we could be anything but who we are is sort of preposterous, or is it?

I’ve observed boys and girls trying to emulate their fathers and mothers, students speaking the words of their teachers, teens mimicking the latest trend in social media. We as humans learn by observing others.

However, when it comes to our thoughts, our self talk can get tricky. We may start to compare ourselves to others. If we don’t do or act the same as someone who might seem well liked, we may think badly of ourselves and then our self-image starts to get blurry. We want to be recognized, our desire is to be Loved, first by our parents, and then our peers.

Somewhere along the way it’s easy to lose one’s identity. It may start with getting a job that isn’t a perfect fit, but it’s a job, so you do it to the best of your ability and it becomes part of your identity. Perhaps you get into a relationship and you start meeting the needs and desires of that person, and your own needs and desires become secondary, until they’re no longer of any importance at all. At this moment, it starts becoming difficult to define who you really are. What is your purpose?

Know Yourself

To live an authentic life, you really have to get to know yourself. This goes deeper than knowing your habits, what you like to eat, your astrological sign and your favorite color. Understanding the motive behind the choices you make is a good beginning. If you know your motive, then you can start to see what is most important to you. When you then look at what motivates your choices, understanding the purpose of those choices, you get a clearer picture of who you are. Now, that you see yourself clearly, motives, and choices, do you like who you see? If Yes, seeing yourself naked in spirit, emotion and motive, and you truly love who you are or more importantly you are in love with who you are, you are living authentically. Conversely, if no is the answer, you aren’t happy with your motives ans choices and you don’t love who your are, somewhere along the line your neurons got reprogrammed and you are not living your authentic life nor walking your authentic path.

How To Find My Authentic Path

What do you Love doing. When no one is around, you have some time to yourself, what are you doing when time just evaporates? You look forward to those times. Your reprogrammed brain may tell you that what your’re doing during those moments is a just waste of time and you should be doing something more productive. That’s an untruth. Whatever that activity is holds the key to your life purpose. Try not thinking about what you’re supposed to do, but what you love to do.

Of course, the caveat to that is that if you “Love” something that’s destructive, or addictive, like alcohol, drugs, gambling or porn, that’s not what I’m talking about. Those aren’t Loves, those are escapes. They’re you subconscious choice to get away from the pain in your life that’s trapped you. All they do is shove you further down the hole away from your true self.

Perhaps you doodle, garden, listen to music, hike, exercise, whatever it is, it’s what you look forward to experiencing when you finally have a little time. This is what you want to explore. Go deeper, dive into it. Become an expert.

Then What?

Once you dive deep, and become an expert, put yourself out there. Write about it, do a blog. Talk about it, do a podcast. Make a YouTube video. It doesn’t matter if no one sees it, just keep putting yourself out there. You enjoy it, right? Now if you don’t enjoy it, you’ll tire of it. and you’ll have to look again. Don’t give up. After some time passes, you all of a sudden notice that your have a library full of content you created about this little thing that you love to do, in which you’ve become an expert!

Let’s say what you love is drawing doodles. You may say: “Al, I can’t make a living drawing doodles!” What I say is, maybe not, but if you love doing it, you could make a living talking, writing, making videos, blogs, podcasts, stories, and of course, make the doodles! You can talk about how you feel when you doodle. You can talk about all the insights you have when you doodle. Because whatever it is, if you love it, doing it will make you a happy, healthy, vibrant and successful person.

You just have to find your niche. Once again, what’s your niche? What do you love?

Conclusion

I’ve talked a lot about doing what you love. That’s a big part of Authenticity, but not all of it. It’s also being true to yourself, and to everyone that crosses your path. It’s not just getting out of the “dead end job” that you hate, so you can spend your time doodling. Who do you become, when you’re doing what you love? There is no need to hide anymore. There is no need to put up a facade to show family and peers that everything is good, when it’s maybe just OK. When it’s a bad day, that’s an important time. You’re being given a message to stop and look deep into what’s going on. Don’t act like everything is OK, be true to yourself and those that cross you path. Be real! Say, today isn’t great so I need some space, or say whatever you need!

Today is the first day of the rest of your life. Let’s do it right. Let’s be our best version of ourselves and be real.

You’ve got this!

What do you love?