Tag: conformity

The Greater Risk Is Not Being Authentically You

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” →

Your Past Doesn’t Have To Be Your Future

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” →

What A Tomato Can Teach You About Loving Yourself

What A Tomato Can Teach You About Loving Yourself

“Dude…they look weird!”

On a recent trip to Whole Foods I was intrigued by the conflicting comments of two young teens. They had just stopped to look at a display of heirloom tomatoes. One offered his “they look weird” opinion while the other thought they looked “pretty cool”. Funny how two people can look at the exact same tomatoes and see two completely different things.

Which made me wonder…Is there a correlation between what you see when you look at heirloom tomatoes and how you see yourself?

Heirloom tomatoes look dramatically different than what we’ve come to know as traditional tomatoes. Traditional tomatoes are engineered for consistency of size, shape, color, and texture, mass produced to meet the needs of millions. Heirlooms are far more individually Continue reading “What A Tomato Can Teach You About Loving Yourself” →