We have 2 lives, but how often do we only breathe life into one of them?

What are our two lives?

The “Should” Life and Our Authentic Life

The “Should” life is as it sounds; it’s all the steps and actions we believe we should be taking.

Why?

To be happy, successful, fit in, and please our parents, to name a few.

It’s the hand-me-down blueprint of life.

By the time we reach the midpoint of our lives, our “Should” life is firmly established, including our career, family, and a certain kind of lifestyle.

It’s become our identity.

It’s also around the midpoint of our lives when we begin to take inventory of our lives and find something’s missing.

We’ve checked all the “Should” boxes, and yet when we do a personal inventory, we find ourselves asking through a veil of disillusionment and disappointment,

“Is this all there is?”

The reason we ask this question is simple, we’ve sacrificed our authentic selves to fit the mold of the “Should” life.

So, while we may have checked all the “Should” boxes, we’re missing authentic expression.

We don’t know where our other life fits within the mold of the “Should” life. In fact, it feels like there’s no room for it at all.

Hence, the reason we feel “off.”

Life becomes binary, “Should” vs. Authentic; it’s as though the two can’t exist simultaneously.

It feels like we need to give up our “Should” life to breathe life into our authentic selves.

This belief creates a tremendous amount of fear.

Who will we be without the identity we know?

How will we meet our financial obligations?

We fear being rejected if we express our authentic selves because we feel we’ve already been rejected (in childhood), hence the reason we chased the “Should” life to begin with.

Authenticity isn’t safe, the “Should” life is.

This couldn’t be further from the truth.

A “Should” life is a life destined for regret.

We don’t have to give up everything we’ve worked so hard to create.

We also don’t have to wait until retirement to discover and breathe life into our authentic selves.

If we want to stop asking, “Is this all there is?” we must discover our authenticity now and learn how to show up in the “Should” life we’ve crafted authentically.

The “Should” life and our authentic life can coexist, and the sooner we understand this, the sooner our true journey begins.

The simplest first step I know to begin the journey is captured in one word:

Alignment

Life feels “off” because it’s out of alignment. We find alignment when we connect with our core values and make our choices and decisions through the filter of those values.

If you say you love creativity yet find no time to express that creativity, you’re out of alignment.

Create alignment, and you open the door to authenticity without giving anything up.