Ever feel like you are playing a part and not being yourself? Do you see yourself emulating a person you admire instead of being yourself? I 100% have recognized this in myself. I really have had to sit down and reflect on why I do it?
The hard truth is that we all have insecurities about acceptance. We want to be loved, or at least liked. Depending on how great the need is how great we take action. Sometimes our actions are genuine and other times they are fabricated. Genuine is when we arw being our honest self. Fabricated is when we play a part.
Genuine actions come when we have confidence not just in ourselves, but with the people we are interacting with. Fabrications come when we are found lacking. It takes great strength to be real. It is easy to play a part, if it fails it is not really us, which is easier to accept.
As I get older I get more comfortable in my own skin. This is all because my wife and my 2 kids. My wife chose to share her life with me and my kids love me more than I have ever been loved before. I get so much love at home that I don’t need much from the rest of the world.
If people don’t like me, the real me, I am much less offended than I was in my younger days. I have grown to understand that we not only can’t be universally liked but it is important to have enemies. Having enemies means we stand for something. Being liked by everyone requires us to be a chameleon that changes to appease an audience. Appeasement lacks authenticity.
I can remember many a time on the mat where I would say and do things I saw those that I admire do. This is part of the maturation process as a coach. In time I shook off the inflection I adopted and found my own way, my own voice.
Not all fabrications are bad. In the beginning of everything new, all we can do is copy. If all we ever do is copy, we are not fully realizing our potential. Finding the confidence to evolve things into our own plus creating relationships we trust to be ourselves in, this is winning at life.
Who we surround ourselves with matters. How we view our place in the world matters. We can’t be real without real relationships of value or a confidence built thru understanding.
Brian Wright
Brianwright732.com