Showing Up Authentically
Authenticity is essential for human connection. I try to be a person who shows up in the world authentically. I’m working every single day on admitting my flaws and failures. I know I made at least 50 mistakes this week, and frankly, I’m cool with that. I’m human.
I feel like the last few years have been marked by messiness in my life: messiness at work, messiness in relationships and messiness in the world. There have been piles of mess all around me. It doesn’t matter whose fault it was, who did what wrong, etc. Really, none of those details matter. Life has been messy. Blaming and shaming really don’t get us anywhere.
I have been inspired by the work of Byron Katie over the last 5+ years. It has helped me grow as a person in significant ways. Byron Katie asks people to use four questions to help us come to terms with the reality of our life. This work has helped me get out of my own way so many times. It is so easy to get caught up in our stories about what is true, about who thinks what about us, about our worth, etc. Ever since I got exposed to Byron Katie, I’ve been able to really wrestle with reality in a new way and start to give my brain a break from getting fixated on things that are simply not true. There is freedom found when you are able to accept reality. Byron Katie says, “There aren’t any truths. There’s just the thing that is true for you in the moment, and if you investigated that, you would lose it too. But honoring the thing that’s true for you in the moment is simply a matter of keeping to your own integrity.”
The four essential questions are as follows:
Is it true?
Can you absolutely know that it’s true?
How do you react when you believe that thought?
Who would you be without the thought?
WOOF. These questions are simple, but also so hard. It is so difficult to detach from the stories we have told ourselves. All of this work along the way has helped me show up more authentically with people around me. Don’t get me wrong. It’s still hard. There is often an instinct to keep our lives neatly wrapped up in a box and tied up with a bow, attempting to prevent our friends from seeing our real mess. But what I’ve found over and over again is that real connection gets formed when we’re able to say to someone: I’ve messed up or I’m not perfect or I’m sorry I hurt you or I haven’t figured this thing out yet or I’m in this bad situation and I’m not ready to get myself out of it or I’m really struggling with this thing right now or my anger got the best of me today or I ate a gallon of ice cream to try to make myself feel better OR whatever your reality is right now. Guess what. I’m as guilty as the rest of ‘em. I gain nothing from putting on a show. The friends I have maintained over many years have seen it all from me: the good, the bad and the ugly. My best friend, em, in particular, has held my mess and embraced me over and over again. Even when I have messed up. Especially when I have messed up. There is literally nothing I wouldn’t tell them about my life. You know why? Because they have never run away from my humanity. They have never given up on me in spite of my flaws. Why can’t we be people who live like that? This world is too hard to be so tough on each other.
If you are trying to show up more authentically in your life, check out The Work by Byron Katie. It is truly life-changing. Showing up authentically starts with showing up authentically to yourself. We have to be honest with ourselves if we want to be better people and be better to the people around us. We have to admit when we’ve made a mistake, when we’ve caused harm, when we’ve let our emotions get the best of us, etc. It does us no good to pretend like we have it all together.
I’m going to stay committed to the hard work and the messy work. Beauty always gets found there.
