Saturday Thought: Authenticity

Who am I? Who are you? These are perhaps the biggest small questions we will ever encounter in life. These questions lead us to examine our authenticity as human beings. Who am I REALLY? What is my authentic self?

These questions become even more important to us during transitional periods in our lives: during mid-life, during a divorce, when we face a major career change, when we or our family members face major health issues, when we confront a major ethical dilemma, etc.

These times are "wake-up calls" for all of us. Our first tendency is often to whisk through them (avoidance) or pretend they didn't occur (denial). If we approach them with patience and a desire to truly understand them, we can grow toward our authentic self from the experience.

I ran across this quote, which speaks to me on the issue of authenticity:

"We need to find the courage to say NO to the things and people that are not serving us if we want to rediscover ourselves and live our lives with authenticity." Source: Barbara De Angelis

Too often we surround ourselves with people and things that fit our "ego self" and not our "authentic self." We need to be aware of this tendency, and learn how to attract people and things into our lives that fit our authentic self. Actually, I believe the shift occurs automatically. That is, when we shift to being our authentic self, we attract the right people and things into our lives, and old things and people attached to our ego self tend to simply fall away.