Open Heart Adventure

The question we usually get is – what do you want to be?  All our lives we’re supposed to know this or be moving towards it.  As though we are defined by what we do.  As though our profession or income-generating-job is who we are.  How many people do you know who love their jobs?  I know a few thankfully, but they are not the norm in my experience.  So… I suggest that the better question (at least for me) is – who do you want to be?

And this all comes down to authenticity.  An over-used term that is perhaps infrequently observed.  I’m sounding negative.. maybe so, but it’s not as much of a criticism as an observation.  And a personal experience.  What I’m getting at is that for a large chunk of my life I haven’t been “authentic”.  Not because I didn’t want to be, but because I didn’t know how to be.  Or more specifically, I didn’t know that I wasn’t being authentic.  Follow?

Back to that non-violent communication thing (last post).  I lot of what we happen to learn in American culture is to be “good”, behave well, do the right thing, etc… There’s all this praise and punishment that flies about and the good students, the diligent do-gooders, often suffer disproportionately. This isn’t me blaming culture, parents, teachers, whomever, but an observation of cause and effect.  I was keen to have the approval of adults and equally scared of the consequences of their scorn.  Which led to an intense study of people so that I could guess what they would or would not want to hear, see, feel.  And then I delivered.  Not who I was, but who I thought they wanted me to be.

And while I’m on this topic, who is this “they”?  Good question.  When we break it down, when we start to consider who it is we’re talking about, in my experience it’s usually comprised of about three people.  Three very powerful people in our worlds.  Martha Beck calls this group your “Everybody”.  Everybody thinks I should take that consulting job where I make 6 figures and work 80 hours a week.  “They” think it would be great for my career.  Or… “Everybody” thinks I’m nuts for selling all my possessions and traveling the world.

Our everybodies can go a long way in preventing us from being who we want to be.  Which is to say that our thoughts about what “everybody” thinks go a long way in preventing us from being ourselves.  Sorry, it’s always you and your stuff. 

So I ask the question - who do you want to be?  And importantly, how would it feel to be who you want to be?  What would you do (or what would you stop doing) if you could be exactly, perfectly you?

This is something I’m only recently exploring.  I want to be “authentic” like all the self-help books tell me I should be, but sometimes being authentic for me is maybe being a little inauthentic.  And that’s okay.  It can be scary to go from people pleasing person (however subtly) to do-whatever-the-hell-you-want person.  Usually that kind of shift backfires.

So I think my life’s purpose is to grow into myself.  To let whatever gifts, talents, opinions I have to fully express themselves.  Eventually.  And maybe it’s your’s too, I don’t know.  But life for me seems to be about learning to trust myself, learning that it’s okay to speak my mind and my heart even if it’s not what the other person wants to hear.  Anyway, how would I know what they want to hear?

Point is, not being completely authentic all of the time is not a reason to beat ourselves up.  I mean maybe Jesus or Buddha were authentic all the time, but those are tough acts to follow.  Maybe being authentic involves giving ourselves the space and the compassion to not feel completely safe enough to be ourselves.

It takes time to figure out who you are, and even more time to find the courage to share that person with others.  And then, once you think you’ve figured out who you are, you change your mind:).  Nothing’s permanent, certainly not our personalities.  But what’s important to me at this point in my life is giving myself permission to be me – whatever that looks like.

Imperfections and all.