How Well do You Know and Believe in your Authentic Self

So … welcome to ‘today’. You have arrived here through living a host of stories, some your own and many impressed on you by well-meaning others.

 No matter

When you look in the mirror who do you see … the person you currently present to the world, or someone else, just waiting for the chance to be seen, heard and enjoyed? Someone you could actually love no matter what?

 You see, ‘self-love’ is not about fooling yourself with kind words. It is about being in touch with , and believing in, your authentic self, the good and bad of the person you are, or at least choose to be at this moment.

 We cannot expect to have an sort of ‘loving relationship’ with another person until we have a loving relationship with ourselves.

 And, a healthy relationship with ourselves begins with identifying, accepting, and utilising our natural talents … our skills and strengths …  our behaviours ... even our challenges and weaknesses.

• To recognise our natural talent, in whatever form it takes, is to appreciate we have ‘real’ value. This is the starting point. When we accept our value … and begin to live in it … we will attract others who respect and cherish the value we bring with us.
• When we have both talent and value, we have leverage … how well and how effectively we can support ourselves and others across scenarios.
• With leverage comes the potential for positive engagement within our own world, both in our personal lives and at work. A win-win for all!

 But wait … you are thinking that there must be more to it than simply appreciating your natural talents. And you are right. We are products of so many things. So, identifying natural talent, by itself, will bring only limited gain.

 Real success, or at least the potential to experience real success, exists when we understand and accept that we are indeed a ‘mixed bag’.

 We are made up of natural and learned behaviours, of inherited characteristics, beliefs, attitudes and values, not to mention the passions that drive us in life.

 But it’s a start. To move forward from this point, though, means commitment … to learning, to growing and to changing where change is necessary.

 Remember though, we are all connected as human beings, and we do not grow and age in a vacuum. To be the person who you see as the best version of self as possible is to accept this, and to work towards achieving a mix of characteristics that serve you well across situations.

 It will also allow you to become a ‘real’ and authentic person … and authentic people have value.

Authentic people not only live satisfying lives … they attract those who want to share in the value they see, and to give value in return for receiving it.

 And, this can only come from being honest with oneself, accepting ‘what is’ and being prepared to grow ‘what is desired’.

 To grow ‘what is desired’ is to first accept that we are all ‘changelings’. Yes, we can grow ourselves towards and into the person we choose.

 But … we are also susceptible to living life day by day. And so, each of us have the capacity to evolve (or devolve) as individuals daily, dependent upon what, and who, we experience each day … our daily engagement with life.

 This evolution is not always going to be positive …  about things, about people and about what we want. Scenarios that envelop us have the potential to change our existing viewpoint.

 So, a positive person will see the best in what they encounter. They will take on board what they experience and move forward – because they have a strong belief in themselves.

 But for others what they encounter day by day can really push them away from any chance of expecting success … because they are thrown back into a poor sense of self-belief, with an obvious outpouring of low confidence, poor self-image, negative attitudes and self-defeating expectations.

 And … this is a repeating process, meaning a person already susceptible to poor self-respect and belief is likely to remain caught up in their world – again and again … their self-fulfilling prophecy.

 So, before any successful growth of authentic personal value can begin, there is a date you need to go on … a date with yourself.

 A date where you learn all about you, about what you believe yourself to be, about what you want others to see in you, about what you are looking for in others.

 Now is probably a good time to mention that every one of us has lived in that place of self-doubt at some point, many returning to it time and again. Perhaps that is why reality shows are so popular – we can hide behind the fantasy being presented to us as ‘real’.

 Even if you are presently a success story, things can change … sometimes overnight.

 We can address such well-known concerns such as belief, motivation, focus and so on as being the key to success, but in reality, it all basically comes down to first having a positive mindset.

 Why? Because when we are being positive we automatically improve our self-belief, we naturally are more confident in ourselves, we have greater focus through the motivation that comes from experiencing, and believing in, good things.

The beautiful benefit about being positive is that it has the effect of changing everything you see and do, not just your ability and resources to attract success in whatever form that may take for you.

 But a word of caution … wanting to have a positive mindset and actually developing one are two different things.

 It takes effort, even courage, and especially practice, though perhaps any practicing should be first employed around those you know well (in a safe environment) rather than when trying to impress a potential date.

 Consider the following strategies you may choose to concentrate on towards increasing your level of positivity and hence your belief in who you are, a person of value:

1. Enhance the pleasure you experience daily

• Share how you feel with others you are close to and trust.
• Create a memory that you can re-live whenever you choose.
• Build a picture of what you experienced, allowing it to over-ride any negativity that might creep in around that picture.
• Immerse yourself in the memory by imagining what it would be like if you could have that feeling of positivity whenever you wanted.
• Congratulate yourself … reward yourself with a well-earned sense of pride.

2. Be aware of the present

• Living on ‘automatic pilot’ can lead to a sense of detachment and a risk of losing connection to events throughout the day as you experience different activities and interactions with others.

3.  Avoid focusing on only one pleasurable experience

• We all have our ‘favourite memory’, and it feels good to re-visit that memory, though whilst this is pleasurable, our minds work best when confronted with a variety of experiences.

4.   Put your personal strengths to work

• What if you knew exactly what your strengths, gifts and even challenges were – would you be able (and/or willing) to utilise them towards connecting with your inner self towards being someone others will respect.

5.   Engage with others

• Investing time and energy in fostering and maintaining a positive working relationship with significant others in your world will lead to greater personal satisfaction when it comes time to date effectively with someone you would like to spend time and energy with.

6.    Enjoy the experience

• To achieve optimal positivity there are some key elements that must present themselves.
• They include ... the sense of complete involvement (willing rather than forced) ... a feeling of control over the execution of the task ... a sensation of being lost in the moment, as if time was standing still and this moment would last forever.

 Funnily enough, when an individual presents a positive outlook, others see a confident person in front of them. They see, and experience, a person they would like to get to know better and be around, someone who has value, and someone who is ‘real’, some who is and has value … someone who is authentic.

 So, in this article we have …

1.  examined the life and world of someone struggling with their self-belief, their personal confidence and positivity, about themselves, despite the outward portrayal of success … probably the majority of people at one point in time or another.
2.  briefly addressed the underlying elements that can lead a person to false belief – that the world is full of amazingly attractive people all looking for each other … or that they themselves are not good enough to join that world. Either belief is a dangerous one to live with.

 But more so, our aim has been to open up that not often talked about part in everyone’s minds, that regardless of how much or how often, there will always be times when …

• we don’t like what we ‘see’ looking inside
• the feeling of not being good enough, compared to others we know
• our confidence takes a hammering when confronted with daily life experiences
• negative self-belief (developed over time) is in charge of our thoughts and actions
• we feel we are not worthy of someone like the person we just met.

 These are just a few examples of thoughts and reactions all of us encounter over time. But when they take over our thinking, and begin to dominate our actions, it is time to take a stand, to seek change.

 And it starts with yourself.

 Would you go out with you?

 If you hesitate for even a second you have your answer. And, you know it’s time for change; time to be an authentic person of value that others want to meet and want to share time and energy with.

 Want to learn more about how you can grow your authentic self?

 Contact us on admin@9pillarlifestyle.com.au or Click Here to organize a 30-minute discovery chat.