5 Powerful Ways to find your Authentic Self

Definition of Authenticity

Its the birth place of everything we want in life. It’s where joy is, creativity, love, innovation. Its also where failure is.

Being authentic to me means being unapologetically yourself. No matter where you are, you are sure of who you are and not afraid of expressing yourself. It’s a daily practice.

Did you know you have control over your destiny?

By controlling the words you tell yourself everyday, you can control your thoughts.

Habits are what we do everyday without thinking. Like driving a car. Create new habits and you can create your destiny.

Tools Journal

Journaling is used to catalogue your success and failures.

Helps you sort through mental clutter and deal with conflicting feelings. It can also be used to monitor and set your goals.

How to use a daily journal:

1. Gratitude: Write down 5 things you are grateful for and then add the reason why u are grateful for it.

2. Set your intention for the day: It is setting the direction you want to go for the day. If you don’t want others to direct how you think, decide how you want to feel today. It is as simple as saying today my intention is to present my best self.

3. Write down your 5 daily goals: They can be small things and you can repeat them as often as you like. Daily goals are a reminder of what you want to achieve for yourself.

Comfort Zone

A comfort zone is place where you feel safe and at ease. It is a working environment which requires little effort and produces barely acceptable results. It is the place where your anxiety and stress levels are at their minimum. You don’t have to be vulnerable or really try to be, and you don’t have to push yourself. It’s a place you feel you have control.

Why do we need to move out of the comfort zone?

1. Limits your growth
2. Helps you find your passion
3. Helps you understand yourself and test your limits

How to start

1. Start educating yourself on self-development topics. Understand what your limiting beliefs are and what your values.
2. Don’t rely on limited points of view. Expand on your views. Read and inform yourself.
3. Challenge yourself from time to time

Take it a day at a time. Step by step

The People

Be around people who inspire you and make you want to be more

Surround yourself with people who uplift you, push you and who are smarter than you.

Michelle Obama said “Find people who will make you better”

Remove the mask

Types of masks:

Physical masks

• The clothes we wear
• The cars we drive
• The manager position

Emotional mask

• Being a bully, because we fear to be hurt by others. So we pretend to be strong
• The intellectual mask
• The people pleaser mask

Unless we take off the mask, the wounds we have will not heal.

How to take off the mask: practice not having the mask one day at a time. Listen to the story you tell yourself. This can be, “people will not like me for my real self” or “ I am afraid of not being accepted.”

Remember you are special and the faster you accept your true self the faster people will learn how to accept you.

“Everybody has a calling. And your real job in life is to figure out as soon as possible what that is, who you were meant to be, and to begin to honor that in the best way possible for yourself.” – Oprah Winfrey

Written By: Ceri Samvilian, SWOI Associate