Five Steps to Your Authentic Self

By Kristin Kaufman

Let’s face it; we live in a world of Botox, hair color, self-enhancing drugs, and all sorts of ways to augment our appearance and performance in the world. Many people have lost who they really are – all in the name of who they think they should be, as defined by someone else.

From my experiences, the most disengaged, unhappy, empty, and dissatisfied individuals are those who truly don’t know who they are. This can be true for CEOs, business executives, ministers, physicians and teachers. The reality doesn’t pardon any individual caught in the web of masks and images.

Carl Jung believes the first step to becoming fully individuated (his descriptive word for owning your true self) in his book, The Undiscovered Self, is to embrace the whole you, including your shadow, the things that are the ‘dark side’ of you. That means we have to look at the things that don’t always fit nicely into the image we’ve created for ourselves. We accept our contradictions, our faults and our failures. When this is accomplished, it’s a liberating experience on many levels. It is as if we are giving ourselves permission to just be who we are. When we reframe our perceived failures or wrong turns into learning experiences, we embrace all things as part of the overall experience. This can be the first step towards really becoming comfortable in our own skin.

There is no magic pill. However, there are baby steps we can take to help gain clarity on who we are and what we really want in our lives and careers. A few to consider:

1. Observe when we are really ‘in the zone.’ When we are fulfilled, happy, and energized, when our heart is singing, we are in the zone and ‘in the flow,’ – pay attention to these moments. They are whispers revealing the ‘real you.’

2. Be alone. There is nothing like quiet time and solitude to shut out the noise of our daily lives. Often, when we’re searching for ‘something to fill a void,’ we surround ourselves with people, things, and activities. We over-schedule and over-program our lives. This ‘busyness’ clutters the airwaves. Stop. Be at home. Feed the birds. Read a novel. Watch a movie. The more time we spend with ourselves, the better we will get to know ourselves.

3. Stay connected. This may appear contradictory to being alone, but it’s not. We are all connected. We are all part of the same energy of this world. To really define ourselves and get to know ourselves, we do this in relation to others. As the cliché says: “if you really want to know yourself and all your idiosyncrasies, be in a relationship!” So, yes, we need both solitude and community to truly enlarge and embrace our sense of self.

4. Trust your gut and have courage to follow it. Choices are the right and left turns on our lives’ highway. If we truly listen to our gut and intuition, they seldom lead us astray. Our challenge is to have the courage to listen. We often rationalize, justify, and ‘sell’ ourselves on what we think we need to do. Every single time I have not listened to my inner voice – my intuition – the decision has been far less than optimal for supporting my authentic self.

5. Be willing to play hard and fall hard. Whether this is engaging in a yoga class, a lacrosse match or taking a monthly art class, we need to ‘do stuff’ we really love. This is our essence. We need to go for it with all the gusto we can muster. If we stumble or fall – that’s OK. We are living life without fear of failure. If only we could truly embrace the cliché: ‘what would you do if you knew you could not fail’ in every moment of every day.

Once we reveal and embrace our fullest potential with simply ‘the real me,’ therein lies the power of the authentic self.

Kristin Kaufman is an author and the founder of Alignment, Inc.™ which serves individuals, corporations and non-profits looking for alignment within themselves and their organizations.

Cheryl