[EP 5 ] Living Authentically: Embrace Your True Self for a Fulfilling Life

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Welcome back to the Jack Canfield Podcast. I want to talk about authenticity today. About being your authentic self, your real self. Being transparent, expressing the real you and how important that is to you. Now I'd like to start with a quote from Oprah Winfrey who said, I had no idea being your authentic self could make you as rich as I've become. If I had, I'd have done it a lot earlier. I love that. Now there are major benefits to being your authentic self and huge costs from not being your authentic self. I want you to think about this. Do you ever feel as if you're wearing a mask? Perhaps you think you have to act a certain way around your boss or say certain things to your colleagues so that you'll be accepted. Instead of being yourself, you're playing a role to fit in or to impress others. Now most of us have gone through times like this. Instead of behaving in a genuine way, we tell people what we think they want to hear and we act in ways that go against our true nature. In short, we're living inauthentically. Now. Living and working this way is tiring, it's dispiriting and it's confining. And it can also hold you back from reaching your full potential. Now it is possible to run away from yourself for a very long time. You can be married to the wrong person for 20 years and pretend it's fine, and you can fake it for decades doing work you only half care about. You can hide behind all the so called symbols of success such as a big home, expensive cars, big screen TVs and exotic vacations, but ultimately you'll never fully get away with not being your authentic self. With being a phony. There are huge costs. And what I've noticed in my work with hundreds of thousands of people over lots and lots of years, like I've been doing this work for about 50 years, is that most people are not being their true authentic self. Instead, they're either trying desperately to be what other people, such as their parents, spouses, friends, peer group bosses and colleagues want and expect them to be. And they're usually genuinely not aware of their true values, their honest preferences, their real feelings and their deepest desires. And the cost of being unaware of wearing a mask and hiding your true self and of being a people pleaser are many, including anxiety, stress, unhappiness, physical and emotional exhaustion, and physical pain and illness, even up to the point of manifesting life threatening illnesses like cancer which can actually kill you. Now other costs include a lack of true intimacy, a lack of trust, low self esteem and lower non existent self confidence which can cost you success in your career and the experience of real joy in your personal life. Now let me give you a few examples from coaching clients and workshop participants and friends of mine. I had a doctor as a participant in one of our breakthrough to success trainings. And he reported that he always had migraine headaches. In fact, he had one at that moment. As we probed deeper, he shared that everyone in his family was a doctor. His mother, father, his older siblings, his aunts, his uncles and cousins, all doctors. He was expected to be a doctor. Everyone was expected to be a doctor in that family. Now I had him have his headache. Talk to him. What was their message? The message was he didn't want to be a doctor. What he truly wanted was to work on cars. But he didn't do that because in his family working on cars, being a mechanic was a lower level profession. Anyway, because of the seminar, he chose to stop being a doctor. He opened up a body shop and working on engines for exotic cars, Porsches and Mercedes Benzes and things like that. And guess what? His headaches stopped and he was happy again. Another one of my friends is Anita Moorjani, who's the author of Dying to Be Me Now. She had a near death experience. She died of cancer in a hospital in India. She weighed 85 pounds at that point and she had golf sized tumors on her neck and she flatlined and she ended up on the other side. And her father, who had predeceased her, who rejected her for not agreeing to marry the person they had chosen for her as an arranged marriage. And he said he was sorry, he didn't know any better. It was the only culture he'd grown up in. The only thing that mattered was love. He said. Not that you met all my desires and all my needs. He said, and the most important love is loving yourself. And she realized that she had been a people pleaser all her life, making everyone else's needs and wants more important than her own. And she made a vow not to do that anymore. And when given the choice to come back or stay on the other side, she chose to come back. And within weeks, the cancer was gone. As you can see, the benefits of being your authentic self, of course, are the opposite of the cost. They're the feeling of congruence, of wholeness, integrity, inner peace and happiness and joy and aliveness and physical well being and health and longevity, self acceptance, high self esteem and self confidence, A clarity of purpose. And a greater experience of fulfillment in both your career and your relationships. So the question is, how do you move from inauthenticity to living a more authentic life? Well, the first step is to increase your self awareness. To become crystal clear about who you really are, what your values are, what your purpose is, what are your strengths, your gifts and your talents, what you want and what you don't want to do, be and have in life, who and what truly makes you happy and who and what truly makes you unhappy, your honest preferences, your desires and becoming aware of what you're really feeling. Now take the time to acknowledge what activities and what kinds of work bring you the greatest joy. Answer the question, Are you an introvert or an extrovert? What do you truly want to spend time with doing? And who do you want to spend time with doing? Whatever it is we want to do. What what kind of music do you love? What kind of music don't you like? What causes you do you want to stand up for? And which causes don't you want to care about? Now the next step is to begin to live in congruence with who you are. Once you know the answers to some of those questions I just mentioned. To speak and behave in alignment with your values, your purpose, your dreams and your goals. It means following your intuitive inner guidance and having the courage to feel and express your true feelings. Now this means giving up your power to decide. To other people, this means making your needs just as important as their needs. It means having boundaries and learning to say no. Not doing things for other people's approval.

Not going along to get along.

It means speaking up when you feel the urge to, asking for what you want, not settling for less than you want you feel you deserve. It means publicly expressing your true feelings when you're sad, scared, angry, exhausted, or even when you're enthusiastically really happy. Now one of the things I'll be doing in a few weeks is conducting a three day public workshop called Breakthrough to Success. And a lot of what we do in that workshop are exercises to help people expand their self awareness, build their self esteem and self confidence, and create a life that more fully aligns with and expresses their authentic self. For example, one of the seemingly simple but powerful exercises we do is pairing you up with another participant and having them repeatedly ask you the question who are you? And as soon as you answer with a word or a short phrase, they ask you that same question again and again and again for several minutes. Now that sounds fairly simple, but the longer you do it, it's like layers of an onion are being peeled off.

One at a time.

Now most people start with answers like.

Their name, their profession, the roles they play in life, their hobbies that they like, and so on.

And then they start to go deeper.

With answers about their values, their feelings, their concerns, and their deeper aspects of themselves. Now it might sound like this.

Who are you? Jack. Who are you?

An author. Who are you? A professional speaker. Who are you? A 79 year old man. And the answers continue like Inga's husband.

A college graduate, someone with a master's.

Degree, an American, a Californian, a father.

Of three sons, a stepfather of a.

Son and a daughter, someone with two.

Grandsons, a coach, a business owner. And then it begins to go a.

Little deeper with answers like someone who.

Is concerned about the huge cultural divide.

In America, someone concerned about global warming, someone struggling with how to transform my.

Business to the next generation, how to transition it to the next generation, someone.

Who thinks I am working too hard.

Someone who needs more rest and recovery time.

Someone who needs to take more time for exercise and self care and so on. And the next question we work with.

Is who do you pretend to be?

And you start to get answers like someone who cares about everyone all the time, even when I don't.

Someone who's happy in my job, when sometimes I'm not.

Someone who's never been divorced, someone who has more money than I actually do, someone who's on schedule to meet our.

Project deadline when I'm not.

Someone who exercises more than I actually.

Do, someone who's never scared, someone who's braver than I feel, someone who's read a book I've only skimmed, and so on.

And then another repeating question.

Exercise we do with a partner is.

To continually ask you the question, what do you want?

And again the answers begin at the surface level. Things like a nice home, a new car, more money, a new computer, the.

New iPhone, an assistant to be married, and so on. And eventually they too go deeper and deeper, revealing what you really want.

To be pain free, to heal my.

Relationship with my mother, to feel free.

To say no to my father.

More free time to spend with my children. To no longer feel depressed and be.

Happy, to find my soulmate, to feel.

More joy, to experience inner peace, to love and be loved, and to have.

A closer connection to the divine. And so on.

Now another exercise that we do that.

Leads to more transparency, more vulnerability and more authenticity is an exercise we call.

The how do you hide?

Exercise. It seems that everybody is hiding things for fear of what other People might think if they knew. And that fear restricts your natural expression, dulls your sense of aliveness, blocks the possibility for true intimacy in your relationships, and gets in the way of your.

Getting what you need in life.

Now, see if any of these things.

Are things you might be hiding. Your true feelings, your anger when you're angry, your true hair color, your weight, your age, your baldness, your sexual preferences, your medical history, your past relationships, your religion or lack of religion, your spiritual beliefs, your political party affiliation, who you voted for, who you're dating, where you.

Went to school, a physical condition.

You have behaviors like drinking too much alcohol or being addicted to it, smoking or vaping cigarettes or marijuana, experimenting with psychedelics like psilocybin mushrooms and ayahuasca, gambling, how much debt you have, the TV shows you watch, how much money you make, which news channels you watch, the.

Food you sneak or binge on when.

No one is looking, if you've ever broken the law, and so on. Now, again, we have a partner process for this. And once you have a list, we have you make a list. First, your partner asks you a series of questions related to each of the.

Items you wrote on your list.

For example, what do you hide? You might answer, how much money I have. Who do you hide it from?

Most people.

What do you fear if they knew? Well, they might always be coming after me for money. What does hiding cost you? I don't feel really comfortable being who I am around certain people. What would you rather have? I'd like to feel comfortable about who I am and just be boldly willing to share that with anyone. How could you get it? By just telling the truth all the time. At the end of the exercise, you clearly see the cost you're paying for hiding. The constant fear of rejection, the peace that comes from being yourself, your integrity. People have said they've lost jobs or not getting the promotion they want. Sales, income, isolation, relationships, true friendship, the feeling of inclusion, intimacy, peace of mind, your health, free time to do what you want, trust, happiness, and so on. That's a lot of cost to pay. Now, one of the most common expressions of not being authentic is that of being a people pleaser. And the cost of being a people pleaser are anonymous. As I mentioned earlier in the story about Anita Moorjani, in addition to happiness and depression, the cost can be giving yourself cancer and almost dying, or maybe even dying. Now, just last week, my wife and I watched the movie Barbie, which, by the way, I absolutely loved.

And every other man I've talked to.

Has watched it is also really thought it was a wonderful movie. Now, in the movie America Ferrara, who plays the character Gloria, who is a stressed out Mattel employee who's been struggling to connect with her daughter Sasha, delivers a brilliant monologue about what women are expected to be rather than their fully authentic self. And I'm going to read to you this monologue because it so perfectly illustrates the pressures that women face to be something other than their authentic self. In what I'm about to read, it's about women. But beware that men also have their own social pressures, such as to always be strong, brave, self reliant, earning money, emotionally controlled, and so on. Now here's Gloria's monologue. She says it's literally impossible to be a woman. You are so beautiful and so smart, and it kills me that you don't think you're good enough. Like, we have to always be extraordinary, but somehow we're always doing it wrong. You have to be thin, but not too thin. You can never say what you want to be thin. You have to say you want to be healthy, but also you have to be thin. You have to have money, but you can't ask for money, because that's crass. You have to be a boss, but you can't be mean. You have to lead, but you can't squash other people's ideas. You're supposed to love being a mother, but don't talk about your kids all the damn time. You have to be a career woman, but you're always looking out for other people. You have to answer for men's bad behavior, which is insane, but if you point that out, you're accused of complaining. You're supposed to stay pretty for men, but not so pretty that you tempt them too much or that you threaten other women because you're supposed to be part of the sisterhood. But always stand out and always be grateful, but never forget that the system is rigged. So find a way to acknowledge that, but always be grateful. You have to never get old, never be rude, never show off, never be selfish, never fall down, never fail, never show fear, never get out of line. It's too hard, it's too contradictory. And nobody gives you a medal or says thank you. And it turns out, in fact, that not only are you doing everything wrong, but also everything is your fault. I'm just so tired of watching myself and every single other woman tie herself in the knots so that people will like us. And if all of that is true, for a doll, she's referring to Barbie, just representing women.

Then I don't even know.

By the way, if you haven't seen Barley I've mentioned again, I highly recommend it. It's truly a delightful movie. Now the Another main thing about being a people pleaser is not having clear, strong boundaries and then consistently honoring those boundaries. Saying no to requests and demands when you don't want to say yes Owning up to I don't want to go out drinking with everyone after work. I'm tired. I just want to go home and sleep or curl up with a book or watch a TV show. I don't want to bake cookies for the PTA meeting. I don't want to volunteer for that committee. I don't want to go to dinner with them. I don't want to give money to that group. I don't want to come home for Christmas. I don't want to sleep with you. I don't want to lend you my van. And so on now in my own life, it took me a while to be okay saying no to requests from first time authors for testimonial quotes, endorsements, writing forwards for their books. I was afraid of not being seen as someone who wants to help others as not being a nice, kind guy. I wanted them to like me. However, saying yes was overwhelming me and taking time away from my writing, from spending more time with my family and having time to exercise and to rest and to play. Now one of the things I did to break that habit of saying yes was to put a note on my thumb that said no so that every time someone asked me for something I was reminded of the option to say no because there it was staring me in the face. I also created an affirmation that I repeated and put on post its around my house that said my needs are just as important as your needs and and I repeated that affirmation every day until it became part of my consciousness. Another process for reclaiming your ability to have a more authentic life is discovering and releasing your unconscious limiting beliefs, most of which were formed between the ages of 2 to 7 during your childhood. And we all have them. And mostly we're not aware that we have them or even what they are now. However, they are constantly blocking us from expressing our true selves for asking for what we want and taking the actions that would get us more of what we truly want. Some of the most common beliefs that I've seen when helping people identify and release those limiting my beliefs in my workshops and retreats are it's not okay to express anger. It's not okay to Cry. It's not okay to ask for what you want, or to be loud or to be sexual or to be funny. It's not okay to be gay or bisexual. It's not okay to talk back or to refuse to do what you're told. It's not okay to want to make a lot of money. That's selfish. It's not okay to make more money than your parents. Don't trust men. Don't beat a man when you're playing tennis with him.

He won't like you.

Don't burden others with your needs. You can't have a career and be a good mother. Don't air your dirty laundry in public. Don't be so demanding. Always be nice. Don't talk too much. Don't ask too many questions. Now, we also picked up our creative, limiting beliefs from our friends, our peers, our teachers and coaches while we were in high school and middle school. And because we wanted to fit in or be included, we went along with things that we may not have been totally aligned with in terms of our values, our preferences, and our true desires and feelings. In my own life, I was always someone who valued life, treated others as well as animals with love and respect. But I remember one night my next door neighbor Mike, who was quite the opposite, who used to shoot birds and cats with the BB gum, had somehow caught a bat, and he had that bat in a jar. And that night he called several of us into his backyard and then proceeded to pour gasoline on the bat and then lit it on fire. Now, the bat, who is now engulfed in flames, tried to fly away and then tumbled back to the earth. Now, everyone but me seemed to think that was really cool. I wanted to say something, but I was afraid that if I did, I'd be ostracized by the group. So I remained silent, not being my true self. And I felt guilty about that for years. Now high school has its bullying, the Internet cancel culture. It can be very cruel. And many of us have buried our natural self to fit in, to belong. And what's important to remember is that we either created the limiting belief ourselves by our own inner thinking and decision making in order to survive, to fit in, et cetera, telling ourselves how we needed to be, or we subconsciously were just programmed by our friends, our family, our educational, religious teachers, or our dominant culture. For example, one of the cultural traits of most Japanese women is to avoid confrontation, which results in not speaking up when their needs are not being met. One of my friends is Japanese, and I've seen that over and over with her. Yet underneath, their more authentic self is not happy with not getting what they really want. So let's look at some of the things you can do to begin being and expressing your authentic self. First is becoming more aware. Here are a few things you can do to get com to become more aware. Number one, Set aside some time to make an I want list. Start writing for at least 10 minutes, completing the sentence I want. You can also make an I don't want list and then turn each of those statements into an I want, which is the opposite of what you don't want. For example, I don't want to spend so much time alone would become I want to spend more time with people I like. Second thing I recommend is to make a 20 things I love to do list. Now mine includes listening to music, playing my guitar, hanging out with friends, getting a massage, reading self help books, watching TED and TEDx talks on YouTube, playing ping pong with my wife, cooking and eating great food, dancing, making love, writing and editing books, watching really good movies, conducting live in person workshops and trainings, making, meditating, and so on. Now once you make that list, what.

We talk about is first becoming aware.

But then you have to act on your awarenesses. You want to start doing one of those things on your list every single day. Now another similar exercise is to make a list of your passions.

And you do this by completing the.

Sentence My life is perfect when I am what I say.

Put an ing word in there when.

I'm listening to music, playing tennis, etc. Now my list includes learning about myself, playing with and petting my cats, teaching others, traveling to new places I've never been before, singing and chanting with other people, hanging out with highly conscious people, talking about things that matter, etc. Now set aside time to do a joy review. This is the fourth thing I'm suggesting. Set aside 20 minutes to make a list of the times when you felt.

The greatest joy in your life, when.

You felt like your best self, when you were really happy, what were you doing? Who were you doing it with? Take note of these things by journaling, thinking or talking it out with someone and then allow yourself to seek more authentic experiences. Look for patterns in terms of your joy and then it tells you what you really care about, what really makes you happy. Remember that joy and happiness are your feedback system telling you that you are on course with your true purpose. And when you're not feeling that joy, it means you're off course.

The fifth thing I suggest is spend time clarifying your Values. Now you can find many free online quizzes, exercises and assessments and all those kind of things online for clarifying and rank ordering your values. There are also many coaches you can work with and workshops you can take to clarify your values as well. One of them is led by my good friend and colleague Kathleen Seeley, whose website is massivelyhuman.com you might want to go there. Check that out. Now, the sixth thing is to add a few minutes of meditation to your daily schedule. Begin to notice what thoughts you're having about what you want and what you don't want. So when you quiet down, you're not distracted by all the other things in your life. You can begin to see where you're feeling unhappy, the things you're drawn to that you're thinking about. A seventh suggestion is to visit my website@jackcampfield.com and consider taking one of my live or online trainings. They're all designed to help you become more aware of who you are and what you really want. They'll also teach you how to get it and to sustain it. Now let's end by talking about once you're more aware, what are some of the things you can do to live more authentically? The first thing is to start noticing and acting on your preferences. When you have a choice to make between alternatives, take a moment to really tune in and then ask yourself for what you want, what do you want to do? What do you want to experience? Do you want a table indoors or outdoors? Do you want an aisle seat or a window seat? Where do you want to go for dinner? Do you want Thai food or Italian food? Do you want to drink red wine or white wine? Do you want to watch Barbie or an Indiana Jones movie? Do you want to go hear Beyonce sing or Taylor Swift? Do you want to leave now or do you want to leave later? Now I want you to stop saying it doesn't matter or I don't know. I remember asking my mother in law if she wanted vanilla ice cream or chocolate ice cream one night. She said I don't care. I asked her, well if you did care, which one would it be? And she immediately said chocolate. So we all have preferences. Now another way of escaping having a preference is saying I don't know. And again, the question I would ask is, well if you did know, what would the answer be? And that can elicit your true answer.

Now the second thing I want to.

Tell you is when you have a preference, speak up. Ask for what you want. I remember when I first started taking workshops and trainings. I attended a workshop in which we were led into the training room in a single file and told the file into a particular row in order. We didn't have a choice about where we're going to sit. And on each set seatbelt there was a spiral bound notebook and a pen. The notebooks were all different colors and mine was yellow. And I'm not a big fan of yellow. I don't own any yellow clothes or no yellow fabrics or pillows in our home. And the person to my right had a blue notebook, which I would have rather had. I remember actually really feeling bummed out that I was stuck with a yellow notebook. And when the leader of the workshop eventually came up to the front of the room to start the workshop, she started by saying, if you don't like the color of your notebook that you have, see if you can trade with someone who has a color you would prefer. Now, I want to tell you that had never honestly ever occurred to me before. So I turned to the person on my right and I asked her if she'd be willing to trade her blue notebook for my yellow one. And she said, absolutely. I actually prefer yellow to blue. Now, that was a huge turning point for me in terms of asking for what I wanted in life. So my suggestion is to look for one thing a day where you can exercise. Asking for what you want, honoring your preference about what deli to go to for lunch, what do you really want to eat? What do you want? What do you want to watch on tv? At the end of the day, you can close your eyes and ask yourself, where could have I honor my preferences more fully? And then imagine doing that, and then commit to doing that the next time you find yourself in a similar situation. This is a behavior you can build up over time until it becomes a habit. Now, the third thing I recommend is to also notice when you're making decisions in order to fit in, rather than honoring your own preferences. If you go out to a meal and everyone's ordering vegetarian meals, can you order a hamburger if that's what you really want? If no one's ordering a drink but you really want a glass of wine, can you give yourself permission to order one? Take the risk of ordering what you want. Remember that self confidence is the result of surviving a risk, and you will survive it. Think about this. You've survived everything you've ever done. The fourth suggestion I have is take time every day to notice what you're feeling and then take the risk of telling someone what you really feel. Now you might want to start with someone you trust and build up over time to where you can share.

It doesn't matter who you're with.

If you're in a big group, in a meeting, a business, etc. They ask you what you're feeling.

Tell the truth.

One of the best ways to begin to develop this is to journal writing. Take even just five minutes in the.

Morning or at the end of the.

Day to write in your journal, which can be written in your computer or you can write down in a notebook, but write down your feelings now. Another tip is to stop trying to be perfect. Give yourself permission to make mistakes. Mistakes is how we learn and grow. Rene Brown has said, to be authentic, we must cultivate the courage to be imperfect and vulnerable. We have to believe that we're fundamentally worthy of love and acceptance, just as we are now. I've learned that there's no better way to invite more grace, gratitude and joy into our lives than by mindfully practicing authenticity. And I totally agree with Bernay. Now one final thought. TV psychologist Phil McGraw has said, Awareness without action is worthless. Which means to me, now that you're aware of all this, your life only changes and improves if you put some of these ideas into action. I strongly encourage you to do that. I also encourage you to tune in again for our next podcast, where I'll be in discussion with a major authority coach or thought leader who can help you create a happier, healthier, more productive, successful and fulfilling life. I'll see you then.