How To Become (And Love) Your Authentic Self

Too much emphasis is often being placed on the concept of “loving yourself”. Aplenty of self-proclaimed gurus attack me with advertisements every day that’ll promise me to live more self-fulfilled authentic lifestyle. If I only did … . You let me know what’s on the three dots … for you.

Let’s cut the not-so-proverbial BullShit. You can’t love yourself if you’re trying to get rid of half yourself. You’re “both-sided”. You’re both good-and-bad, right-and-wrong, sinner-and-saint, or whatever other dualistic comparison your mind can come up with. You’re all-of-the-above. And that’s cool.

Stop Fighting Yourself

Trying to fight your holistic being, the more polarized your view becomes, the higher your stress becomes. Feedback mechanisms exist to help to get us to live authentically. Emotions are feedback mechanism to let you know you’re not being objective. The higher your emotions, the further off-track you are from living your life and being your authentic self.

Aside from criminal court, there’s no right-or-wrong, good-or-bad, you’re just yourself. The self-judgement that happens in-lieu of an all-encompassing judgment day is always worse than most sentencing a criminal judge would ever place upon us, if ever brought to trial for our self-proclaimed sins. We’re our worst supporter, in that sense.

Leveling The Playing Field

You can only see in someone else what you equally own in your own being, to the same degree. You can’t admire or resent something that you don’t own yourself. Nothing in your soul is missing; even though it may appear that way. You’re either too proud or humble to admit you recognize yourself in others. And therefore prefer to place blame rather than accept accountability.

All learning then, is recollection. Feelings, judgment and emotions aside, your job is to identify the trait / action / inaction that you’re most passionate about.

No matter what it is, you’ll be reflecting your own self even though you’re not yet ready to admit that. You own the traits you like / dislike, 100% quantitative and qualitative. No exceptions, no excuses.

Changing Your Perspective

Define how that same thing serves you, even if you perceive it as a negative today. Anything that doesn’t serve you eventually goes extinct. Everything else stays around. Realizing this balance softens the judgement about certain emotions, experiences and ultimately the story you tell about yourself. It’ll help you move towards resilience.

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This post is based upon notes taken during a public talk by one of my dear friends, mentors and coaches: Dr John Demartini.

Click here to read what international bestselling author Dr John Demartini had to say about my latest Freedom Project book: Love 2.0.