One of my deepest fears, and greatest desires, has always been the same:
To be seen and heard.
I’m collaborating with a visionary thinker to delve deeper into the intellectual property I’ve developed as I craft my second book.
I want to serve the reader by exploring all avenues and seeing connections I haven’t yet seen in my IP to earn the readers’ investment of their most precious, non-renewable resources:
Time, energy, and attention.
I’m writing my second book for midlife professionals who have done everything they believed would make them happy, only to find themselves lost, disillusioned, and searching for answers (most likely in all the wrong places).
In other words, I’m writing to my thirty-nine-year-old self.
The Northstar, the ethos that guides every page, is distilled in this line:
“If you’ve checked all the boxes and something’s still missing, the only thing missing is the authentic you.”
This visionary thinker asked me how I would define the “authentic self.”
Because “Authentic Self” and the word “Authenticity” are far from unique, she’s working with someone else who’s also championing authenticity.
The phrases are ubiquitous in the personal development world and, quite frankly, overused and beaten to death.
Before her question, my definition was clear to me, internally, but more as a feeling than an articulation. Her question challenged me beyond merely a feeling.
I invested time yesterday playing in the brainstorming sandbox to meet her challenge.
Reinventing my life after prison has been one of the most extraordinary journeys I’ve ever experienced, as captured in what Nietzsche wrote in “Will to Power.”
“To those human beings who are of any concern to me I wish suffering, desolation, sickness, ill-treatment, indignities—I wish that they should not remain unfamiliar with profound self-contempt, the torture of self-mistrust, the wretchedness of the vanquished: I have no pity for them, because I wish them the only thing that can prove today whether one is worth anything or not—that one endures.”
Nietzsche’s quote fueled me through my reinvention; it reframed the circumstances of my own creation, but it’s incomplete.
To endure is one thing and a grand thing at that.
We must first endure, and then an option presents itself. Do we stop at survival, or do we seize the massive opportunity that flows naturally through the process of enduring?
Surviving “suffering, desolation, sickness, ill-treatment, indignities” and “profound self-contempt, the torture of self-mistrust” transforms an individual; it’s impossible for it not to.
We’ve traveled a path no one ever wants to travel, but far too often, life places us on it, whether through our own choices or circumstances beyond our control.
Our survival can become someone else’s guide.
But how?
Everyone’s path is different; what follows is mine, and this is what I believe is the clearest answer I’ve found to her question.
As a child, I dreamt of creating, inventing, and writing.
When I immersed myself in what I loved to do as only a child can, time and space ceased to exist; I was limited only by the boundaries of my imagination and lack of skills.
As I grew older, like most people, my childhood dreams were pushed aside by the responsibilities of adulthood, the shoulds, the expectations, and the opinions of others.
What used to make us come alive is labeled by our family, friends, and societal conditioning as,
“Silly.”
“Not a real job.”
“A waste of time.”
Our little minds struggle to comprehend what we hear; this might be the first moment we experience shame.
We desperately want approval and acceptance, especially from those who put food on our plates and keep a roof over our heads.
So we scan the world around us for clues of how we’re supposed to behave and who we’re supposed to be.
We build lives based on a collection of beliefs we’ve constructed to adapt to our ever-changing, unsafe world, and we create lives that aren’t our own; they’re built from a hand-me-down blueprint.
We chase a version of ourselves we believe will give us the approval and acceptance we desire.
And perhaps one of the saddest experiences of our human existence happens.
What once created joy transforms into something to fear.
My journey has created many lessons, one of which is the title of one of my keynotes, but it’s deeper than that; it’s a principle I do my best to live by:
“Our deepest fears contain the keys to our extraordinary lives.”
My deepest fear was being seen, heard, understood, and ultimately rejected for being creative.
My deepest desire has been to express my creative self, not without fear, which is unreasonable, but through that fear.
My childhood dreams have evolved; I write non-fiction (I didn’t know what that was when I was a kid) and speak on stages across the world (I used to think airplanes stopped over everyone’s home, dropped a ladder down, and that’s how people traveled-so I didn’t quite grasp travel all that well.)
But the core is present, taking ideas that live within me and expressing them.
It’s taken me a decade of reinventing my life after prison, but I have what, for now, is the clearest answer I’ve ever had to the definition of authenticity.
Our authentic selves are the unlived lives we sacrificed on the altar of other people’s approval and acceptance.
It’s the truth we left behind in pursuit of safety.
For me, the journey of reinvention isn’t about becoming someone new; it’s about reclaiming the person I’ve always been but was afraid to express.
It’s about exploring and stripping away what isn’t mine, the hand-me-down blueprint, imprisoning beliefs, and a definition of success that’s not my own.
Through this journey of ever-evolving layers of truth, our authentic selves reveal themselves.
This journey doesn’t need a crisis to begin; it needs clarity.
You don’t have to wait for life to change in order to change, nor do I suggest it. However, you do have to break free from who you are to become who you’ve always been.
One of the first steps you can take today is to ask this question,
“Who designed the blueprint of the life you’re living?”
How sure are you, that it was you?