Radvent: Challenged Authenticity

“Challenge yourself,
it’s fine not to be a totally finished person.” 
~ Leigh Steinberg

Happy Radvent to you! I’m following Princess Lasertron’s series and will try to blog my own version as I can (not necessarily daily). Her post from yesterday asks:

Reposted with permission from Princess Lasertron

I declared this my year of authenticity. After being miserable not being able to pursue my dreams with a draining job, I stripped away all expectations of what I was supposed to do with my life at my age, and ventured on this sabbatical year with some expectations of what would happen, but trying not to plan too far ahead.

It’s been a very interesting journey that challenged me to break away from 9-5 job thinking, forced me to change some aspects of my business plan, and still has me learning to be patient and allow things to unfold. I am not where I projected myself to be, but it is OK.

Being authentic forces me to evaluate what is truly meaningful in my life. Without work deadlines and peer-group expectations distracting me I can be more true to my aspirations. The challenge is to stick to that and not fall into old patterns. People have recently been trying to lure me back to my “old life” on a professional and personal level. Going back to the familiar would have been “safe,” you know what to expect. I almost fell back into “bird in the hand” thinking.

Yet the whole point is to embrace the unknown in order to grow.

“I challenge you to make your life a masterpiece.
I challenge you to join the ranks of those people
who live what they teach, who walk their talk.”
~ Tony Robbins

True authenticity is harder than it seems. But I also feel so much better knowing that I am finally pursuing what fulfills me instead of being “practical” and conforming to the logical path my degree, my professional skillset and ‘communal standards’ would dictate.

I guess the theme I tell myself is to not look back, to break away from the familiar, and to have faith that I am on the right track. There are plenty of affirmations telling me so, but I tend to give the negative more weight than the positive.

It goes back to the scarcity thinking vs. abundance thinking. Even though I know that what is in my heart is what I deserve, there is always an inner voice saying “maybe you don’t and you should just settle for what you know/is logical.”

“We need to find the courage to say NO
to the things and people that are not serving us
if we want to rediscover ourselves and
live our lives with authenticity.”
~Barbara de Angelis

On a lighter note, I had a project challenge too this week. I had copies of pages of a library book for a fun wire ball project that I attempted to replicate this week. But in spite of the wire class I took at The Creative Connection Event, it did not go as easily as it looked. I could not replicate the pretty ball in the photo. After a frustrating evening, I pressed on the next morning, spraypainted, and declared my non-ball “modern art”. 🙂

Believe me, it looks nothing like the picture in the book!

“The truth is that our finest moments are most likely to occur
when we are feeling deeply uncomfortable, unhappy, or unfulfilled.
For it is only in such moments, propelled by our discomfort,
that we are likely to step out of our ruts
and start searching for different ways or truer answers.”
~ M. Scott Peck

This project certainly gives me more appreciation of the scribble heart my friend Jennifer Swift gifted me with, which got a bit of bling this year. It represents “Love Came Down at Christmas” during this season.

“Being authentic is the ability to be true to oneself.
Living an authentic life requires the ability to be true to our own wants,
needs and desires and not live our lives by the opinion of others.
Being authentic is the ability to make self-honoring choices and
stand firmly in who we are in our core.
Being true to ourselves gives us the insight and
compassion to see others for who they are, not who we expect them to be.
It frees us up from the judgment of ourselves and others
and it gives others the freedom to be themselves as well.”
~ Victoria J. Reynolds