A topic that's been coming up in my life a lot lately is, how to show up most authentically in our relationships, work, places of study, and all the other roles we fluctuate between in our lives. I define being authentic as presenting one's full self to the situation, being present in the moment, and expressing the truth of your reality. In definition, authenticity is simple and straightforward. Yet, there are layers of self-doubt, judgement, expectations, social norms, identities and appearances that obstruct us from presenting our most authentic self, not only to the world, but in our most intimate relationships.
"When we spend a lifetime trying to distance ourselves from the parts of our lives that don't fit with who we think we're supposed to be, we stand outside of our story and hustle for our worthiness by constantly performing, perfecting, pleasing, and proving." - Brene Brown, Ph.D, L.M.S.W. The Gifts of Imperfection
Compartmentalizing our lives is exhausting! My early twenties were spent in a constant body disposition of Flexibility - contorting from one role into another, careful to hide the intellectual, introspective side of myself in my social life, while shoving the bubbly, energetic, passionate side of myself away when I walked in to Cognitive Psychology class. To sum it up, one of my professors called me a "closet intellectual." This Flexibility left me devoid of Stability, I had no foundation to ground my roots down into. In my social life, I was left with a lot of shallow friendships with people who who didn't really know my full capacity as a person. In school, I'd been showing up with only 50% of myself, and that didn't go unnoticed - in fact, it was misconstrued for apathy. This left me feeling invisible, fake, and completely out of touch with my true self.
The challenge of showing up authentically is that we have to believe that we truly belong, just as we are. Brene Brown distinguishes between fitting in and belonging. Fitting in is something we're all very adept at, she describes it as our "hustle," we know how to please people, what to wear, what's cool, what's taboo. Belonging involves an intrinsic knowing that you are worthy of acceptance and love. This is challenging in our Western society because we are bombarded by messages from the majority culture that tell us we won't be happy until we're rich, that we'll never know how to have real intimacy with our partner until we read Cosmopolitan cover to cover, and that we have to be famous in order to be valued and important. We all have a list of qualifiers that we've set for ourselves to be considered "good enough." However that facade will be a barrier to true connection until we can learn to accept, and even value, both the shadow and the light within each other.
After talking about this subject with my fellow graduates, professors, therapists, and yoginis, I've come to the conclusion that we can't actually deepen connection without getting into the nitty gritty. My mentor, passionate yogini Gina Caputo, likes to use the analogy of a garden, "What is fertilizer? It's literally shit. So every beautiful flower has to sit in the shit for a while, that's where it gets the nutrients from which it blossoms." The toughest times in my life have been the times I've grown the most, and I'm sure most of you can say the same. It's not from perfection that we find deep connection, it's through our shared humanity, our shared experience of the shit we had to sit in before we blossomed. The people I admire the most have the courage to be raw and vulnerable. They show up every day with what's most present for them in their lives, and it's not always a Lucky Charms rainbow. Witnessing them bring their most authentic selves into the rigid world of academia, or the impersonal workplace, or the blissful yoga studio, exemplified their strong sense of belonging - as if they knew that whatever emotional storm was brewing that day, was just weather, it didn't define them. So I invite you to challenge your sense of belonging, and BRING IT! Be messy, emotional, raw, blunt, honest, pissed off, sad, tired - whatever - just be REAL.
The challenge of showing up authentically is that we have to believe that we truly belong, just as we are. Brene Brown distinguishes between fitting in and belonging. Fitting in is something we're all very adept at, she describes it as our "hustle," we know how to please people, what to wear, what's cool, what's taboo. Belonging involves an intrinsic knowing that you are worthy of acceptance and love. This is challenging in our Western society because we are bombarded by messages from the majority culture that tell us we won't be happy until we're rich, that we'll never know how to have real intimacy with our partner until we read Cosmopolitan cover to cover, and that we have to be famous in order to be valued and important. We all have a list of qualifiers that we've set for ourselves to be considered "good enough." However that facade will be a barrier to true connection until we can learn to accept, and even value, both the shadow and the light within each other.
After talking about this subject with my fellow graduates, professors, therapists, and yoginis, I've come to the conclusion that we can't actually deepen connection without getting into the nitty gritty. My mentor, passionate yogini Gina Caputo, likes to use the analogy of a garden, "What is fertilizer? It's literally shit. So every beautiful flower has to sit in the shit for a while, that's where it gets the nutrients from which it blossoms." The toughest times in my life have been the times I've grown the most, and I'm sure most of you can say the same. It's not from perfection that we find deep connection, it's through our shared humanity, our shared experience of the shit we had to sit in before we blossomed. The people I admire the most have the courage to be raw and vulnerable. They show up every day with what's most present for them in their lives, and it's not always a Lucky Charms rainbow. Witnessing them bring their most authentic selves into the rigid world of academia, or the impersonal workplace, or the blissful yoga studio, exemplified their strong sense of belonging - as if they knew that whatever emotional storm was brewing that day, was just weather, it didn't define them. So I invite you to challenge your sense of belonging, and BRING IT! Be messy, emotional, raw, blunt, honest, pissed off, sad, tired - whatever - just be REAL.
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