E. Lexi Abbott

Something I have been struggling with lately is the truth of living in authenticity.

I say lately to mean that I have only just recently realized that it has been a struggle to achieve it, when in reality I have struggled with this my whole life. I am who I am, I shine too brightly as a human to not be – but there’s always been certain layers I have added on in order to be more appealing to others.

“If you keep hiding your true self, your life becomes like slow death. Once you become free from the lies and the hiding of yourself, then life becomes vibrant again.” – Ziggy Marley

These layers are more than the normal dressing appropriately for the occasion and not cussing in front of your grandma or children. Instead, it’s going out of my own way to cater to an audience that has not even voiced an opinion and it is taking that silent, unspoken opinion and letting it dictate everything about me. It is pre-tailoring what I say and how I say it, or what I do and how I do it, in such a way that I might avoid criticism.

A simple example would be how I recently worried about my headphones leaking the tiniest bit of sound when I was listening to music at work because I didn’t want to bother my coworker with hearing a whisper of my music while she was trying to focus on her own work…as if she didn’t have her own headphones or couldn’t tell me if it was too loud for her to focus from all the way across the room where she probably couldn’t even hear the music at all.

Another would be not wanting to linger for a normal amount of time to eat, heaven forbid long enough to enjoy my food, at a restaurant because I am overly aware that the waitress needs to turn the table over…kind of defeats the point of eating out.

I am a people pleaser through-and -through.

“You strive to please others, to fit in, and feel accepted. In spite of that, you still don’t feel accepted, and not because others don’t accept you, but because you haven’t accepted yourself as you are.” – Dragos Bratasanu

Because of the level of people pleasing tendencies I have allowed in myself…I have noticed that I even think in voices that are not mine. Instead of first thinking about what I feel or what my opinion is on a situation or thing, I’ll think, “What would my dad think of this?” or “Would my friend like that?” These other voices are so loud in my head that I don’t usually even begin to hear my own until later and even then it is when I am talking to someone and verbally processing with them…which, as it was pointed out to me by a dear friend fairly recently, is STILL filtering my thoughts and opinions through whoever I am verbally processing with.

“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.” – Oscar Wilde

I truly believe this is due to a lack of confidence in myself to discern reality on my own. I rely on, and have always relied on, the confirmation from others that the way I am thinking and feeling is justified. That the way I am perceiving something is not just a shadow of my own mind casting itself on the world around me. At some point I learned that whatever my reaction was, or whatever I felt or thought, was too much and not correct. I formed these opinions and have simply never challenged them again and instead sought out people who were strongly in their own beliefs to use to correct my own. If they felt confident enough to be as intense in their beliefs as they were, they must be correct, right? But really, it’s the fact they had confidence in themselves and had learned this lesson already that I was drawn to.

“Confidence is faith in oneself. It can’t easily be given by another.” — Deanna Troi

All of this was very sneaky, and very hard for me to realize and decipher was happening. As a result, I have recently withdrawn from everything and everyone around me in order to try to learn to think on my own and for myself. It is the age old question of: who am I? Which is funny because that’s never something I believed I of all people would have struggled with.

“If we’re going to be damned, let’s be damned for what we really are.” — Captain Picard

So what does “living authentically” even mean? The common definition is something along the lines of, “living your life according to your own values and goals, rather than those of other people,” but I feel that this can be taken in many different directions. Everyone should be able to live in their own bubbles, as long as you are not popping someone else’s bubble, stepping on their toes, going over their line in the sand, or any other metaphor I can use…you are not harming others by being yourself. I will not harm someone else by holding the opinion that blue is a better color than yellow.

“I am pleased to see that we have differences. May we together become greater than the sum of both of us.” – Surak.

To me, this definition of living authentically is the very thing I’m attempting to do on purpose now that I have identified I am not doing it automatically. I am attempting to live life in the way I experience it rather than viewing everything through the lens of others. I share the same opinions and beliefs as others I have been surrounded by…that being: do no harm, don’t be a racist POS, don’t be a bigot, etc. but other than that I just usually go with the vibes of what and who is around me, and while that has it’s time and place – my personal every day life and internal world is not it. I am doing the best I can in a way that is working for me at this time to achieve this goal.

This process is uncomfortable and all consuming, but I know that I will come out the other side much more grounded and sure of myself and, therefore, my future.

“You know the greatest danger facing us is ourselves, and irrational fear of the unknown. There is no such thing as the unknown. Only things temporarily hidden, temporarily not understood.” — Captain Kirk

What does “living authentically” mean to you? Are you going through this also? Comment below and share a piece of your journey to show me I’m not alone in this!