Ronni
The motormouth ;)
- Location
- Nashville TN
I've been reading a lot about living authentically and with mindfulness.
Some years back I stopped dying my hair, stopped wearing makeup all the time, stopped being so focused on my appearance, as my first step towards living authentically. It's not that I stopped caring about my appearance, just that I began approaching that differently than I had been doing all my life.
“Be yourself — not your idea of what you think somebody else’s idea of yourself should be.” — Henry David Thoreau
I laughed out loud when I first read this...such wisdom.
Being authentic is about staying true to what I believe. It's not about my image...what I want others to think of me. It's about being brave enough to express my genuine feelings and opinions no matter how unpopular or different or atypical they might be. It's making the way I behave on the outside match what I feel on the inside. It's being true to my own personality and character. It's not only being accepting of myself, with all my warts and bumps and imperfections, but allowing those flaws to be visible to others, accepting that they may be judged, that *I* may be judged, but allowing them to be seen anyway.
I realized very quickly that becoming more authentic, at its root, was becoming more self-aware. I can't BE authentic if I don't KNOW who I truly am at my core. For me it's been at times a scary journey, requiring some courage and grit as I stripped away the masks and facades and false fronts of my being, sort of like peeling an onion.
I'm a different person now than i was when I began. I'm not done, and i don't know that I will ever BE done, and that's OK, it just means I will continue to grow and change and flex and morph, and I don't mind that. Part of that continued growth, something I've begun to realize goes hand in hand with authenticity, is mindfulness...sort of the flip side of the same coin.
That's my next quest.
Some years back I stopped dying my hair, stopped wearing makeup all the time, stopped being so focused on my appearance, as my first step towards living authentically. It's not that I stopped caring about my appearance, just that I began approaching that differently than I had been doing all my life.
“Be yourself — not your idea of what you think somebody else’s idea of yourself should be.” — Henry David Thoreau
I laughed out loud when I first read this...such wisdom.
Being authentic is about staying true to what I believe. It's not about my image...what I want others to think of me. It's about being brave enough to express my genuine feelings and opinions no matter how unpopular or different or atypical they might be. It's making the way I behave on the outside match what I feel on the inside. It's being true to my own personality and character. It's not only being accepting of myself, with all my warts and bumps and imperfections, but allowing those flaws to be visible to others, accepting that they may be judged, that *I* may be judged, but allowing them to be seen anyway.
I realized very quickly that becoming more authentic, at its root, was becoming more self-aware. I can't BE authentic if I don't KNOW who I truly am at my core. For me it's been at times a scary journey, requiring some courage and grit as I stripped away the masks and facades and false fronts of my being, sort of like peeling an onion.
I'm a different person now than i was when I began. I'm not done, and i don't know that I will ever BE done, and that's OK, it just means I will continue to grow and change and flex and morph, and I don't mind that. Part of that continued growth, something I've begun to realize goes hand in hand with authenticity, is mindfulness...sort of the flip side of the same coin.
That's my next quest.