Showing up as our real and authentic selves can feel scary. You might not know this but inside you is a huge desire to belong, to feel connected and related to other people, to have a sense of meaning and purpose to your life. It’s this compulsion that’s creating much of the tension you feel inside when it comes to showing up as you. I want to explore this with you, share some thoughts, and ideas and give you a nudge to lean into that feeling and show it who’s boss.
Does this resonate with your inner truth?
You have a desire to express yourself freely that’s not yet been fully realised. You have a vision for a better future and a deep need to create it. You have well-formed ideas, yet don’t feel able to adequately articulate them.
You set a high standard for yourself and don’t want to be associated with mediocrity. You’re somewhat of the perfectionist and you worry you’ll not achieve what you set out to create.
You sense that you have the qualities to be successful, at least when you put your mind to it, but you tend to lack motivation, giving up on ideas and dreams a little easily when your mind flits elsewhere.
Although you work at it, you’re naturally a little disorganized, with half-started projects everywhere, broken stuff not thrown out, and notes to yourself which are out of date with incomplete actions and commitments.
When it comes to people, you like to show up calm, confident, self-assured and in control, yet you notice yourself playing back conversations, wondering what was meant while sensing that other people would not give it a second thought. You can find yourself engaging socially while simultaneously detaching yourself to the point where you watch yourself and are unable to really engage, yet you hide it well.
It’s about control and being safe, and you might have noticed your controlling behaviour keeps people at arm’s length; only when you’ve decided people are worthy do you allow them fully into the fold. When in the fold, you can concern yourself with thoughts of emotional dependency, feeling betrayed, hurt and rejected if the significance of being in the fold isn’t appreciated and respected.
Whether it’s people or the creation of something, deep down you don’t want to handle judgement and rejection, so you procrastinate, hold back, being someone you’re not.
You have bouts of self-examination, so you know this already. You’ve even developed the ability to self-examine your self-reflection.
You present a stylised version of yourself to the world, and you’re deeply aware of the façade, the inconsistency and the incongruence. There are times when you wonder who you really are and if you’ve lost the real you.
I suspect you recognise yourself in this story, but it’s not your story per se, it’s the story of being a human. So here is the first teaching – it’s not just you that feels like this, almost everyone does at some point.
When we look around LinkedIn, it’s full of people telling us we need to be unique, stand out, and be different. Leadership posts tell us the importance of authenticity, yet, we hold back, censoring ourselves. It’s all because we want to belong and to share something of ourselves, who we are, and what we think, might result in rejection.
Let me tell you another truth. Not everyone will like what you post, not everyone will share your perspectives, and there might even be people who’ll critique you, but that’s a small price for bringing your complete self to the world.
This is what I want you to know, even when that happens, you’ll be ok. In fact, I’ll go as far as saying you’ll be more than ok because you’ll create possibilities for other people to belong, and by proxy you too. It’s like Art, it’s not universally liked but it’s made for someone, and that person loves it.
When you have a quiet mind, you realise that who you are is not defined by other people’s perceptions, it is defined by who you are and what you stand for. You feel good about yourself when you really own yourself.
Until you see and accept this, you’ll hold yourself back and play a smaller game than you’re capable of playing.
Having the courage to show up, and share your art, what you believe, and what you have to offer, creates positive ripples in your and other people’s lives. It changes your default future and creates the possibility for other people to belong. It’s a stepping stone for everyone’s success.
When it comes to business, the best advice I’ve heard is that we should polarise the marketplace. You want to create something wonderful for someone, not something average for no one. It’s scary at times, but it will make you remarkable, the opposite is to be unknown and/or ignored.
Now here’s a really wonderful thing, we’re all sitting on the single most powerful energy-generating differentiator there is, what makes us all different.
If you want to find your voice, create an impact, win some business then you need to be more you than you’ve ever been before.
If you resonate with this, I have pulled together the principles that unlock potential and increase impact to help you be more you. I’d love for you to take a look.
Mindset Leadership Legacy – Level Seven Coaching
Owning myself:
It occurs to me that I should end with an authentic and vulnerable expression of myself, to walk my talk. So here goes.
I’m an introvert. I’m slightly dyslexic. I’ve struggled with my own mental health and masculinity and paid for help. I’m not naturally funny, flamboyant, or creative. It’s taken me time to find my message and voice.
I’m not interested in being cool or famous or other forms of social stratification; I’m interested in making an impact. It’s the thing I’m most afraid of, being irrelevant.
I used to hold back because I couldn’t write posts that made people laugh, now I don’t even try. I create content that makes people better, happier, and more fulfilled because that’s what I’m good at.
I’m not an expert at marketing, I’m an authority on being real, an expert at showing you how to manage your emotions, turning your complexity into simplicity and creating grounded leaders who make a difference.
I’m not interested in creating a surplus of anything to feel good about myself or helping other people with that futile goal either. I’m interested in showing people how to unlock their passion, and potential and transcend their ego because that’s what makes people fly.
I want to work with people who are the best at what they do or want to be. I want to work with people who want to make the world a better place where self-worth is not based on comparison but on contribution beyond oneself.
To be more you, follow the principles I mentioned above. Here it is again
Mindset Leadership Legacy – Level Seven Coaching
