Reclaiming your authenticity

If you've ever felt overwhelmed and boxed in by what the world is telling you to do, and feel like your identity has been stifled and stuffed down and ignored, this is for you.

This is coming from is a phrase I stumbled across in a book by Mark Nepo called The Book of Awakening. It's a really cool book because it has lots of different devotionals and meditations and things that you can read that are set up for the different days of the year. The one that I came across most recently starts out with the thought that the ways of others are going to fill the space in your life if you don't fill it with your authentic self.

If you've ever moved from a smaller space to a larger space, at first, it kind of looks empty in that larger space. But eventually, we find ways to fill it. Furniture, pictures on the wall, knickknacks here and there. But we always find a way to fill the space.

We can draw this out to our real life in terms of how we approach the world. If you're stifling your own identity and you're pushing that down, you're leaving space for the ways, thoughts, and expectations of others to come in and take the space that you're not filling. Something's going to fill that space, just as it would when you move into a bigger house or a bigger apartment or whatever it is for you. Something is going to fill that space.

We lose sight of the fact that if we push ourselves to the side, we're just leaving ourselves wide open to let everything else come in and take that space. Then we're surprised when we take a step back and wonder why is life not going quite the way we wanted it to. It's because we've allowed that to happen.

It happens without us really recognizing it or knowing it. When we do come to that realization of what's going on, it invites the question…where in my life am I making myself small? Where am I pushing my identity and who I am as a unique individual? Have I pushed myself down into such a far corner that I've even forgotten who it is that I am?

I invite you to allow some introspection into what is actually filling your life. If you're starting to feel like you don't even know who you are anymore, then take some time and really reflect on what areas of your life are being run by you…and what areas of your life are being run by everybody else.

Where is your true identity, your authentic self, that self that you've pushed away? How can we bring it back to the surface and start to really truly live as who we are and who we were meant to be?

I know it's a trap we fall into a lot as moms because we want to give, give, give to our kids, to our husband, to the PTA, to the soccer team, whatever it is that's in your life, but that's where we also lose who we are. They're not always the culprits. Sometimes those things really do resonate with who we are.

But we have to know who we are to know in order to know what we're hiding and who we're hiding.

My challenge to you today is if you're really feeling…

Disconnected.

Hidden.

Lost.

Take a step back and look at the things that fill your life.

See what truly resonates with you and what you're happy to be doing. Typically the first answer that comes to mind or the first feeling that comes to you is the truest and most authentic answer for you. Because if we sit and we stew over it for too long, our thoughts get in the way and we muddy it up a bit.

So take some time. If you're struggling, look at these things and look at where you can start to put your own self back into the driver's seat.