If you find the title triggering, yet intrigued to know more, congratulations for pushing against the tide of an initial unease this may have stirred up inside of you. Being authentic is an ongoing work of going against our fear of looking bad. Coming to believe we are bad, we risk to slide the (seemingly easier) habitual, slippery slope of telling lies to avoid feeling even worse, eventually losing our way entirely.
I am dedicating this article to my son, for him to be the lighthouse should he ever lose himself in the sea of nonsense. He wouldn't be the first and neither will he be the last...
Lies aren’t the only crime we commit against ourselves. Inauthenticity comes in many forms, like masking ugliness with jokes, getting defensive about our transgressions, or pleasing others to get on their side (wink wink). By not standing up for the truth, we turn away from ourselves only to further disconnect from reality.
Who are we beyond the thoughts we think about ourselves?
Our inner core, the centre of our Being, always desires to align with the truth. Whenever we align with it, we reside in our wholeness, in God. We are being authentic when what we say we deeply feel and identify it resonating with us. The more we are able to connect to ourselves internally to consult with our barometer of truth and align our being with our doing, the less conflicted we feel. The calmer we are, the calmer our external experiences become because we always filter our experiencing of the outer world through our inner world to make sense of it. When we filter chaos through calm, it becomes less chaotic. By filtering hardhip through ease, it becomes challenging rather than unbearable.
Everything starts in our inner world.
Our choices aren't a direct reflection of who we are but who we believe we are. When we haven't yet examined our self-concept we are confused about who we are and so are our choices, albeit we ‘choose’ without being aware of their repercussions. To get to know ourselves better, we are therefore required to befriend our inner world by practicing the art of noticing how are our choices impacting ourselves. By observing our thoughts and resulting actions to identify where we go against ourselves we can master becoming self-aware. It requires us being unafraid of what we find hard to look at: Anything which may even remotely confirm we aren’t who we strive to be. One cannot practice this alone without also practicing self-compassion - a loving understanding that, even though we try our best, we may fail miserably sometimes and that is OK. Deeply agreeing with this notion will keep our self-judgement at bay, able to accept mistakes as something we do rather than are.
‘Ouch! It hurts! I rather turn a blind eye…’ we cry in shock and horror in our knee-jerk reaction.
Unbeknownst to us, not facing the music little by little we become accustomed to believing we are bad. Bad for doing what we did, bad for not being brave enough to take accountability hence unable to make mends. ‘Bad, bad, bad’ is the overwhelming message from the outside.
Believing in your inherent goodness will prevent you from losing yourself. Though, if it was that simple there wouldn’t be so many deeply alone people desperately wanting to fit in. Wanting to be adored or popular, they too lost themselves in believing they can fill their happiness cup with filling their pockets.
So how do you lose yourself?
Every time you find it difficult to choose the truth, which happens rather unconsciously with the number of repetitions, bit by bit your mind and heart misalign. You start to fill with unease due to the tension of feeling torn. Telling a lie out of fear of looking bad here, resisting to fully acknowledge the impact of someone’s words on your confidence there, the struggle to be noticed and accepted is real.
Paradoxically, the harder we try to feel good about ourselves by escaping the truth in the moment, the harder it gets, because every time we say no to it we say ‘no’ to ourselves as we are...
Telling lies to others starts on the inside by telling ourselves (and believing it!) that how we are isn’t good enough, that to be accepted and loved by others we ought to be different. We ought to feel and think different, we owe it to others to change ourselves. Somehow we start to believe what we think and feel is no longer valid. Others told us so by mocking our inner experiences. They told us we are laughable, ridiculous ilk who deserve to be excluded and punished for living our truth.
By believing we are weird and undeserving, we started to reject our honesty. We've exiled our authentic experiences, and became open to more bullshit...
To our defence, it was the road of least resistance on two fronts. It was less painful for us to face the truth, plus less scary to side with the more powerful folk. We were promised to be included, part of normality and family, loved, if we do what they want. Out of fear we simply stopped following ourselves and started to follow others, which is how we got lost.
Interestingly, the people who coerced us into believing them, into thinking like them whilst silencing our authentic voice, weren’t that happy nor centred themselves. We learned many useful skills from them, like how to influence others while having no hold over our own lives. They taught us how to craft an image which reflects very little about how we feel. They helped us to practice telling lies by modelling hypocrisy and double standards. They truly supported us in pretending, being the masters themselves. One little lie after another, our lives started to turn and resemble theirs - the one truth they didn’t need to hide, because they were so proud of what they've achieved! Besides, their world suddenly felt a lot less lonely with more fearful people like them in it.
What if?
What if we recognised we have nothing to fear?
What if we could start saying ‘yes’ to ourselves and ‘no’ to others, unafraid to rock the boat?
What if rocking our boat helps to offload the heavy stuff we so desperately need to shed?
What if we could push through our fear of making waves and see what’s on its other side?
What if by being truthful we could find our way back to feeling truly well?
What if we started to paddle against the tide of our resistance to doing what we have always done?
Lies are like water. At first they seem life saving. But they are slippery and quick to fill your boat, particularly if you are comfortable being immersed in them. It is hard to know who you could be if you cannot be curious for fear of losing yourself. Holding negative and judgemental beliefs about yourself is yet another sign of you being on the wrong side.
What if you could stand in your fear of not being favoured by your friends?
What if you discovered that the side you want to be on aren’t your people after all?
What if your friends are equally lost, divorced from who they are?
What if how they are being (not so nice) represents how they truly feel but hide?
What if their laughs and jabs at you come from their desperation to belong?
What if them mocking you hides how ridiculously weird they feel about themselves?
What if they cannot apologise for hurting you because they are unable to acknowledge how they are hurting themselves?
What if being popular and known isn’t at all about fitting in with others but about knowing and trusting yourself enough to feel good in your own skin?
Thank you for reading. If my article contributed to understanding yourself, please be generous and share it with others.
Copyright © 2024 Michaela Patel
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