The Greater Risk Is Not Being Authentically You

Authenticity sounds simple, right? To be yourself, fearlessly. Yet at some point for most of us we learned our authentic self expression was actually something to be feared.

Authenticity comes with great risk, a risk that who we really are won’t be understood or accepted in our most-important relationships. The fear of such isolation often leads us to suppress many of the parts of us which make us so beautifully and authentically unique.

So, to provide a perceived sense of safety, we dim our light for those who can’t handle our brightness, for we fear being left alone in the darkness. Our fear of abandonment leads us to abandon our truest self, an increasingly high price to pay the longer we choose to do so.

Conformity makes everyone comfortable. Except us.

In time we will be pained realizing the greater risk is in not authentically expressing who we are. And Continue reading “The Greater Risk Is Not Being Authentically You” →

Compassionate Moments Of Self-Discovery

“What’s wrong with me?” Gretchen sang, quite painfully.

The high school drama club’s spring production this year was “Mean Girls”, a condensed musical version of the motion picture written by Tina Fey originally released in 2004. It retells the age old story of fitting in and acceptance in the high school environment. Gretchen was in the inner circle of the school’s most important clique led by Regina. In exchange for being somewhat accepted, Gretchen paid the very steep price of essentially sacrificing her authentic self in the process. A painful process which led her to painfully question her own worth and value.

Insecurity is a powerful force. It preys upon our perceptions of unworthiness. It preys up our need to be safely accepted as we are, even if we compromise who we are in the process.

It’s a rather cruel process.

We are exposed to messages of insecurity daily. Our economy needs us to feel insecure about who we are, what we look like, how much we weigh, what we drive, and where we live. Social media is littered Continue reading “Compassionate Moments Of Self-Discovery” →

Finding Your Own Sacred Space To Be You

I didn’t intend it to turn out this way.

But I guess it did.

It’s late 2008 and I’m highly annoyed. The world inside me and around me full of frustration and negativity. At that stage of my life I was quite good at complaining, easily adding my highly opinionated voice to the “somebody should do something” chorus knowing that I would not be the one to try and actually do something to change anything.

But for some reason something told me I should try and do something. My lack of qualifications as a writer was offset with a passionate conviction to try and give positivity a little more visibility in the world.

Especially mine.

15 years ago – April 20, 2009 – I anxiously hit the “Publish” button for the first time and this blog went live. I offered my faint voice of optimism into an increasingly negative and hostile universe.

Posting uplifting quotes gradually lead to me to actually attempting to post original content, again, driven by a desire to add my own voice and share some positivity, hope, and optimism into the lives of those who visited the site. And while the goal was to write for others, writing eventually became something I needed to do for me.

Turns out I needed the same positivity, hope, and optimism I wanted to offer others.

Writing these posts over the years has served as a form of self-therapy. Often posts are birthed out of my attempts to deal with my own frustrations, confusion, and pain life at times creates for us all. The Continue reading “Finding Your Own Sacred Space To Be You” →

Maybe You Should Pick Yourself First?

It was a one-sided conversation, but sometimes that one side can tell you everything.

Standing in line at the grocery store is always longer around the holidays. It’s part of the tradition. Along with the obligatory crying baby, many in line kept themselves busy by scrolling through their phones waiting for the convoy of overstuffed shopping carts to eventually make their way to the cashier.

One woman in line was deeply engaged in what seemed to be a rather significant phone call. In this age of indifference, having personal conversations in public spaces has become rather ordinary. And this was a very personal conversation.

It was evident that this woman was having some sort of relationship issues. And the disdain and self-loathing radiating from her words indicated that this was not the first relationship she’s had issues with.

“I know how to pick ‘em, don’t I?”

You could feel her pain in those words, a pain I sensed she was very familiar with as history appeared to be repeating itself once again.

Maybe her problem wasn’t who she was picking. Maybe the problem is who she wasn’t picking.

Herself.

Relationships don’t come with instructions, do they? You kind of have to figure them out on your own. Ideally, though, you’d try and figure yourself out first. Traumas, those intentionally and unintentionally inflicted, can often instead send us down the path of looking outside of ourselves for what we can Continue reading “Maybe You Should Pick Yourself First?” →

Your Past Doesn’t Have To Be Your Future

I’ve never been good at being dishonest to others.

But I can be pretty good at lying to myself.

Manipulating the truth when engaging with others would always make me cringe, a painful side effect of knowingly not honoring the truth. Yet that cringe could easily be suppressed when I’d engage myself in discussing how I was not honoring the truth of my own authentic self. Lying to yourself by not accepting your true self is quite traumatic. But if that’s all you’ve known, it doesn’t really feel like you’re being emotionally dishonest with yourself at all.

We instinctively know when we are living inconsistently with our authentic self. Life feels like a compromise, we know we are settling, we disregard our value system and boundaries, we’re forcing what we know isn’t for us, often ignoring the clearly visible red flags and warning signs in hopes of making something work that really was never designed to work. It’s a painful process to witness or experience.

Somewhere along our life’s journey we felt our authentic self wasn’t good enough. Childhood is often a place where the vision of who we are is contorted and molded into who we are told to be. Parental expectations, peer pressure, conditional love, and a fear of being alone are powerful forces that can dim Continue reading “Your Past Doesn’t Have To Be Your Future” →

Creating Your Unapologetically Authentic Life

“Pain pushes until vision pulls.” – Michael Beckwith

It wasn’t a pleasant birthday. Yeah, I was happy to have been given another one. But this one had something it needed to tell me and it wasn’t going to stay silent.

As I approached this particular birthday, I began to hear some annoying voices I’d thought I had repressed. Annoying in the sense that I just didn’t want to deal with them but they showed up yet again. But I guess when you’re willing to have open and honest conversations with yourself about yourself that creates a safe space for some uncomfortable feedback.

There had always been this feeling of a misalignment of sorts, a long-running inner conflict between who I was and who I knew I was created to be. I’ve always been very grateful for What Is, but there was an unrelenting gnawing that I’d yet to allow myself to fully embrace what was possible for me. With yet another birthday just ahead that repressed voice of inauthenticity began to scream. Loudly.

There are many reasons why we live a life of Less Than. Of settling. Of abandoning our own authenticity, of habitually taking what we are given instead of creating what we know is possible. We Continue reading “Creating Your Unapologetically Authentic Life” →

A New Tradition Of Authentic Self Expression

Donuts.

I’m not a big fan of rumors, but when I hear one about donuts my ears do perk up just a little bit.

I’m at Alexa and Juan’s wedding. And there they are. Donuts. An entire table full of donuts. Some stacked high, others displayed on large platters. Donuts.

Having attended a fair amount of weddings over the years, I’ve never had donuts at the reception. Donuts took the place of the more traditional wedding cake. I do love cake, but donuts are as perfect as a dessert could ever be. As I munched on yet another donut I scored at the donut table, I started thinking about the traditions which make up what we’ve come to expect at ceremonies like weddings.

Weddings can often be pretty formulaic, almost an assembly line of sorts taking two committed people and merging them into a married couple. An assembly line built around a framework of traditions which are almost always expected to be upheld as part of that process even if those getting married perhaps didn’t honestly want to celebrate the most significant of their days in that manner.

Marriage is a sacred tradition. Not from a dogmatic standpoint. It’s far more significant than that. The voluntary union of two willing hearts committing themselves to each other for all their living days, no Continue reading “A New Tradition Of Authentic Self Expression” →

What Would God Change About You?

Nothing.

In a Universe of intention, we are all created purposefully and deliberately, each of us a unique collection of talents, gifts, and abilities here to fully express the intention inherent with our creation.

Sometimes we forget that part.

Sometimes the inner and outer voices would have us believe a different story, the one in which we’re not good enough, smart enough, beautiful enough, or strong enough as we already are. We often feel a pressure to change, to abandon who we are in order to become something we inherently are not.

When we become something we are not, we abandon those things that make us the beautiful, never to be repeated, once in Continue reading “What Would God Change About You?” →

Some Saviors Will Never Save You

So there was Rose, floating on top of a door as Jack remained submerged in the frigid waters of the North Atlantic, hanging on until he could hang on no longer.

Titanic. The movie. Many survivors clinging in the darkness to whatever they could find to keep themselves above the freezing water, to keep themselves alive long enough to be rescued.

Survival Mode. Hanging on and hoping to be saved.

It’s a great plan for a shipwreck. But it’s not a great way to live a life.

Life does at times unexpectedly throw us into the water and sometimes the only thing we can do is simply hold on and hope. It can be a matter of our survival, either physically or emotionally.

But how often in life do we continuously cling to uncomfortably familiar doors such as toxic situations, needed outcomes, outdated belief systems, and self-destructive habits, while waiting and hoping for someone or something to come and save us?

Sometimes we stay in survival mode for so long we accept it as part of our identity. And when we accept ourselves as survivalists we abandon our own innate capacity to heal as we find ourselves always in search of a new door, a new outcome, a new savior, someone or something to keep us afloat and to pull us out of the frigid waters of our limitations and fears.

Yet the saviors we continue to attract tend not to be saviors at all. No matter how much we want them to be.

Because no one is coming to save us, to fix us, to keep us afloat.

Our emotional rescue?

That is up to us.

Peter Mis LivingHalfFull.com

Lessons From A Life Unfolding

Tag: abandonment