Navigating Life with Ease – What Authenticity Means from a 3 Principles Perspective

Welcome. This podcast is a series of candid conversations exploring the human experience from a completely new perspective. In it, we will be diving deeply into the meaning of commonly used words and pointing you away from that old, stressful way of looking at life towards a new paradigm. This will help you find a sense of calm, cultivate meaningful relationships, and create harmony in every aspect of your life. Here is Navigating Life with Ease with Michaela Ellis and Claire Downer. Hello.

Hello. How are you? I'm good. How are you? I'm good, I'm good, yes. Good.

I have a word for you.

Do tell.

It's authenticity.

Authenticity? Yeah, well, you know, authentic. I just had a vision of.

Someone.

Had recently picked something up from Value Village. Value Village, here, it's a place where people donate and you can go there, you can buy. It's like a thrift store kind of, but it's made to support, you know, money goes back to help. Somehow I can't remember how. Sorry. Value Village. It's good. Anyway. Sometimes there are some real gems in there, authentic antiques or whatever, and someone had picked something up. It was actually my daughter. She picked this thing up and she said, this is for you, but it's really for me. When you die, I. This is gonna come back to me.

And.

And we kind of looked and she. She said. She called it a recipe box. And it looked. It was with the recipe type stuff, but it's actually for photographs. You could use it for whatever you wanted. But it is really cool and it has a look of authenticity, of authentic old stuff, antiques. Right. But it's not. It's not. So it's like on the surface. And it's a lovely piece, by the way. It is very lovely. So. And I appreciate that. And I love that she got it with the intent that one day she's going to get it. She'll get it sooner than that, sooner than before I die, let's say. But this whole idea about something can look very authentic on the outside, on what you're first seeing, and as you sit with it, or maybe you open something up or in the case of human beings, have a conversation. And of course, as we converse, as we get to know each other, what are we really doing? We're peeling off the layers, we're peeling off the outside, and we're getting to know what's on the inside. And there's a feeling of authenticity in the way of an antique. There come. There can be some tells. Now, I'm not one of those specialists, so I couldn't tell if someone said some this was an antique, I wouldn't really know the difference unless I saw something really obvious in it. That's like I don't think they made this type of material back then. But in the way of humans and our experience of each other and our experience, first of all with ourselves. It's like. We can even fool ourselves into believing that we're being authentic. I see it all the frickin time in myself as I dare to be with myself. And I've been using Emotional Freedom technique more more in a way that when I first learned it I. It didn't really kind of do anything for me. But it's a way and you can do this anyway. You don't have to have this. It's really just being with yourself that you get to really see what's beneath the surface and you can catch what is real and true or authentic and what is like dang, I, that is not me. I don't believe that I can see for so long I believe this or I really felt like I was being authentic. And that's sort of a second part of this, I guess. The more and more we dare to be with ourselves and to get to know ourselves, the more authentic we become. Because the more we see that where we weren't being true and where something has changed, where in this exploration of ourselves we get to see that it's actually okay to be who we are and to let go of. And I kind of see a lot of that. It's protection, protective things that we do. And the more we get to know ourselves, the more we can see that oh wow, we don't. There's nothing to protect. We don't need to protect that. We don't need to defend who we are. We can just be it. Yeah, I guess that was sort of the part two that I was seeing was that the more we get to know ourselves on this on a more intimate level, the more, well, the more we, we, we are. And it's okay. Like I. This is a tendency I have when I'm going through a big shift in change. I tend to hide. I've discovered that recently like really obviously like in my face. I mean I think I knew it for a while and that's the thing too. We might know for a long while that oh, we're not really being authentic. But there's no freaking way I'm gonna let people see what's really going on, man. When we do allow that, like allow, allow our, our journey to back to authenticity, to be Seen and shared with others. I think the more we help others, you know, and, and not just you and I as coaches, any human being, no matter what your profession is, no matter what you're up to in life, the more you be you, the more you let yourself lean into and allow people to see your journey back to who you really are. It's not going to be easy necessarily. There can be some things that will be bumped into along the way. Right. Because people who have known us all our lives all of a sudden start seeing that we're being someone different. It, it frightens them. It can frighten them. Like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. I was depending on you being like this. So don't change. It's like, no, no, no, this is good for all of us. Yeah, that's what first comes up about, about that. Do tell, tell me where this authenticity subject came up for you.

Well, I mean, quite literally off the top of my head just before he came on the call, because I hadn't realized it was my word. But the bit I, the bit that really resonated about what you just said was the, was the thing about connecting to other people. Because I think maybe like I feel like we're kind of multi layered beings, aren't we? Like there's our behavior, there's our thoughts, there's our feelings, and then there's this, this otherworldly essence, the truth of who we are. And I would say that's, that's our authentic kind of us really. You know, on the journey that I take people on from inner critic to inner knowing, it's, it's the inner knowing bit and the inner critic bit is the bit that, that's blocking all of that really. But when we, the more we kind of show up raw, really maybe raw is another word for authentic, you know, more. The more we show up that way, I feel like we're just more in that being ourselves, being, being at one with everybody else. You know, being in the place of connection. We're not in, if we're in our heads. There is a disconnect between us and other people always. There's always a, a separation created by all that thinking. Whereas when as that falls away, we do connect with others more deeply. I find that when I do my lives on insight time that even though I can't see them and they're little when you do like, you know, when you do a live and insight time, they're just little heads in circles. Well, not. Some of them are not even heads. They're like pictures of People's dogs and flowers and goodness just bobbing along at the bottom of the screen. There isn't. You can't really see them. But I've had times when I've been really vulnerable and really just shared, you know, shared my own struggles from the heart kind of thing, or really shared a message that I really feel passionate about. That's something that I really believe is helpful to the people that are there. There's often tears at that moment, and then. Then people in the chat will say, you know, or they'll be clicking the little heart thing that they can click, but there'll be a resonance, maybe, is the word between me and them, a kind of sense that we're connecting on that deeper, more authentic level that is. Yeah. That is beneath. Beneath the Noise. It's a lovely podcast that we both know that, you know, it's called Beneath the Noise. And it is that it's beneath. I think our authentic essence, maybe we call it is. Is beneath the. Well, the madness of life and all the stuff that's going through our heads, through our bodies, you know, the stuff we're doing out in the. It's. It's sort of deeper than that, really. And it is. There is something that happens about connecting with other people when we come from that place. And that's. Yeah, it's got a. It's got a nice feeling to it. And I think the other thing that. That comes to mind is that it's remembering that it's always there. Like, I think there's a lot of. There's a lot of waiting around for it to come. This. This feeling of authenticity, like, oh, I've got to make sure that I've done all my healing work or anything. No, no, actually that you've got access to that all the time. And the only reason you don't think you have is because there's a voice in your head saying that you haven't. And that is bringing up some kind of fear, some kind of block in your body that doesn't feel very nice. Yeah, but that. That who we truly are isn't something we can pick and choose when to be connected to. We are connected to it all the time. It's just if there is a lot of noise, we don't. We don't realize that it's always there. I was talking about that in relation to sort of creativity with somebody the other day, and because I think that's probably connected to authenticity. You know, when we're connected to that authenticity, we. We do create, you know, Put stuff out into the world. And it was all about just, just starting something, sitting at the computer and starting to write, if that's what you're doing, or do a video, whatever. And just starting kind of jolts us into that connection to our authentic, you know, voice or whatever you want to call it, creative energy or whatever. And we don't have to wait. You can just start. And when we start, it'll, it'll be there. It's always there. Don't have to wait for it to turn up. It is always there, that creative potential all the time. And I think we just forget and then we remember and then we forget again and we remember again all the time. Yeah.

Yeah, that, that, that very last line you said is key to know. We forget and we remember, we forget and we remember. I think it's one of the things that can have us move away from authenticity because when we forget we think, oh my God, what's wrong with me? And there's something wrong and I need to go out there and out there and find something that's going to fix me. It's like, no, no, no, just remember that you just forgot. Put a little sticky, put little stickies and move them around regularly. Just remember, you know, you, you only forgot or just remember or whatever because that's all that's really happening. And it feels sometimes that, especially in the beginning, I'm going to speak for myself personally. When I go through a period of, you know, like my world has shifted and it's like I'm seeing something new. And it, in essence, it is, it's like a layer, something, you know, some kind of filter has been removed and I'm closer to being me. I'm more, I'm having an experience of being me. And it's. Things change. Well, when the experiences that we have, they're not always about one thought. You know, we talk about our body holding our thoughts, holding our memories, being. It's not always just one thing, one memory, one instant that has, causes us to be the way we are when we're not being ourselves. So there can be multi things. So when I have an insight now and see something really big, it's like, whoa, you know, I still get caught in the trap where I think, whoa, now everything's going to change. Things do change, things do. Things are changing all the time. But sometimes there's so many small that, that like that 1%, they're so small that we don't really notice it until we look back and say holy, holy things have changed. I don't do that anymore. I do this. Or when did I stop start doing that? Or when did I not be. Start not being bothered by that? It's like, this is curious. But what I find is that just like those onion layer kind of things, it's like once you pull one away, there's another that might come up to show itself. And it's not a bad thing, it's a good thing. It's like, this is when you might think, oh, my God, I thought I dealt with this already. I thought I put this to bed. Like, am I going to be dealing with this for the rest of my life? That truly is me. Those are my words to myself about some things. And then something changes. I think it's all going to. And then it's like, okay, there's something else to see around it. There's something else that's holding it in place. It's not in the same place. It's different. And that is really important to notice that sometimes these changes back to our authenticity is. Is minute. Sometimes there can be a big one, but there can still be some little things that are sort of like hanging on. Right. So it's just good to notice that. And it's okay. It's okay. This is just part of us being. Us just being aware of what might be going on and get curious about those things. Just like you would with a friend. You know, when they say something, they reveal something to you and it's like, oh, what. What's that about? Where you know. And you might ask more questions. Right. Get to know them deeper. You can. That's what we're doing with ourselves when. When we choose to. We could also avoid it.

Not going there. No.

And that's something good to be aware of too.

That's one thing, isn't it? The awareness. Yeah. And knowing that it's all like you keep saying, it's good to know. It's good to know that we're gonna remember and then we're gonna forget. It's good to know that we're gonna be. Yeah. Feel like we've cracked it with this one insight and then find that we're still having issues with whatever thing it is or.

But just.

I just. That knowing that it's always there, you know, the. The authenticity, if that's what people in a court want to call it, that just. That truth of you is just always there. And maybe that's something for people to take away. Is that what helps them to reconnect to that now? What is it in the moment that, that helps working out. Not like, not like I'm gonna do an hour of meditation every morning, but during the day when we're going up and down all the time, when we're feeling connected and disconnected, what is it that helps you to just quickly really get back to. Get back to presence? Get back to your authenticity? Get back to. I guess, I suppose for people who have got a business or a message that they want to share with the world to get. How quickly can you get back to. Yeah, actually this is my, this is my thing. This is how I show up authentically. This is how I want to be in the world. How do I get back to that as soon as possible? And I mean, maybe it's just feeling your feet on the floor and taking a breath or having a shake or a bit of a dance around or. But not to feel like that has to take, it has to be some great big process because otherwise we'll spend all of our time spotting that we're not showing up authentically and then going into some great big process that takes us to the day long walk in the woods and then like, you know, then discovering, oh, we're not there again, so we've got to go off and like, what is it that quickly gets us back into, you know, like I was saying in the beginning, like just turning up and making a start on something. Quite often for me, just like, come on, let's, let's crack on and do a thing, let's make a video, let's do a thing, let's write something, let's start that kind of active flow towards sharing my authentic message or whatever.

Yeah. Oh, I really like that word, active. Yeah. You know, and it's like, why, why when we do get in motion? Because things that I do when I'm working through something, I might walk around, pace around my living space downstairs or go swing, I have a chair, swing outside. Or I'll go here know, I'll go swing. So yeah, jumping on my little mini trampoline, it's like, what is it about action? You know, it's like we're energy, we're energy. The energy is always moving. So when we're doing something in, in motion or in action, it's, it, it, it's, it's like starting the snowball, rolling downhill. When we physically get into action, it can help what's going on in our mind. Like dissipate, move, carry, carry out or on or whatever. Action is good, action is good. And when you consider that we have this body. Because if we're just still, like in our mind, we can be very busy and be running our butts off, but nothing is happening. It's all just staying in there. Nothing's really changing. I do see. It's like we have this physical part of us. They're intertwined, and it's a way moving the body physically. Action in that way gets action moving in your brain as well or your mind. Does that make sense? It does.

But also what's coming to mind is what's distraction and what's action like me. I know there is a. I know. Oh, I don't really feel like it. So I'll go make kombucha. I know there's a bit of that. Or I'll just go and fiddle about with something or I'll procrastinate. To me, the action would be about connecting to that authenticity in that moment. What is it? I want to say what is it? I want to put out into the world. What. What is me showing up authentically and. And the action being. Starting so that then you get into that kind of movement. Because I know there is. There is a distinct. Yeah, big difference between me in action, really connecting to my authentic purpose. Don't really like that word, but you know, in inverted commas. Purpose connecting to that thing that is really pulling me through the world and. Or distraction, which is me faffing, you know? Yeah. Really different things.

Yeah, yeah, you're right. Yeah. You don't have to go do those things. I will do those things when I really. I'll call it caught. Right. And it's like, I know that it'll pass.

It'll pass.

But you're right. Like, it doesn't have to be any kind of anything. It's just noticing what's going on and then carrying on. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I love that, actually. That's a good place. Yeah. Notice what's going on and then carry on with. With the original authentic mission or what. Whatever it is. Yeah, definitely.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Yeah, yeah, you're welcome. Thank you. That was really great. Yeah.

Thank you.

Yeah, you're welcome. Thank you too.

See you next time. See ya.

Have a great one.

Bye. Ciao. You too. Bye.

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