The journey to being authentically you starts by simply standing still. Mindfullness is making a come-back...and it's a great thing. It may be a "new-age" concept but its been around since day one. Stillness and silence. Meditation. Prayer. It's about communing with something greater than this world, greater than ourselves. In taking time to be silent, to be still, we open ourselves up to listen...really listen. To hear what reverberates through our minds, what makes our heart beat, makes our stomach tighten in desire or fear. I challenge you to be still for a single minute. One solitary minute. What do you hear?
The journey to being authentically you starts by simply standing still. When I am still...I fight. If you're anything like authentically me then you understand. When I try to be still with my mind...I go into battle. It's always a struggle. Sometimes I come out victorious, sometimes I take ten steps back. Still, I press on. Our mind is filled with negative land-mines, lies so embedded into our core that they look like truths. One of my favorite movies is Inside Out. A great visual representation of how complex and beautiful our minds really are. One of my favorite parts is:
Joy: All these facts and opinions look the same. I can't tell them apart.
Bing Bong: Happens to me all the time. Don't worry about it.
General facts and people's opinions can blur into grey. A truth and lie can do the same. What one believes to be "fact" is in fact their "opinion". Odds are the opinion is based from their own experiences and more often their own insecurities. Sadly, somehow these tar-like "truths" burrow into us, taking us further and further away from Authentically You. We even begin to chart a new way of being, of behaving based on these lies. For some of us we believe:
I am too much. I need to be less.
I am not enough. I need to be more.
I am nothing. I need to be something.
The journey to being authentically you starts by simply standing still. It gets easier. The more you listen the more patterns you can detect. The more lies you are able to decipher. The more lies you know, the greater the opportunity to understand where they came from. The better chance to see they are not facts but rather one person's opinion. At the end of this self-awareness journey lies the truth: freedom. The truths does set us free. The more tar-like lies we remove the more room there is to begin to believe the real truth about who we are...and whose we are. These truths set us free to be Authentically You.
The journey to being authentically you starts by simply standing still. From the beginning I've stated that my authentikos, greek for original, is Jesus. The more I stand still and be mindful...the more I see Him. The more I see Him...seeing me. You know what? He is always smiling. Always. Each and every time. It's what love sees when He looks at me... and when He looks at you.
-Authentically His
