Authenticity
Living an Authentic Life
How to always choose yourself.
Posted March 3, 2025 Reviewed by Hara Estroff Marano
Key points
- Many people are liviing out of alignment with their true self.
- Feelings never lie and often tell us when we are out of alignment.
- We must scrutinize our thoughts and feelings to discover their deeper meaning; journaling helps.
- We can make the brave choice to step into the unknown and live an authentic life.
Life is a beautiful but often tumultuous journey. From the time we are born we are bombarded with external influences, which, we hope, will guide us on the path to personal growth, fulfilment and wisdom. However, if you’ve lived long enough on this planet, you realize that such is not often the case.
There are many external influences in our early lives, including our parents and extended families, our peer groups, the education system, religion (if we are indoctrinated in a particular faith), popular culture, mass media, social media, marketing and advertising for various services and products, to name a few.
Most of the influences aim to fulfill their own agenda and do not necessarily have our best interest in mind. How can that be said about parents and family? The fact is that parents often want for their children what they think is best for them without deep knowledge of the child’s wants and desires.
For example, parents may want their child to engage in certain extracurricular activities, follow a specified career path, or marry a particular type of person. Their preferences are based on their own personal history and goals, even though that parents usually want "the best" for their children.
The issue with parents and other external influences is that they condition us in a specific way but leave us with the illusion that we are free to choose our own way. We often grow up at the whim of influence of others and feel unfulfilled and out of alignment.
It is when we are out of alignment and not living authentically that we feel challenges in our lives. They could be in our health, our relationships, our careers, our spiritual beliefs, to name a few. Such challenges are not meant to torment us but to alert us that we are somehow out of alignment.
The issue is that few people have the wisdom and insight to see their challenges in this greater perspective; they get mired in the drudgery that obstacles bring with them. The question then arises, how do we live authentically and always choose ourselves?
The first step is to cultivate awareness of what we are thinking and feeling at any given point in our day-to-day lives. Our feelings do not lie and are the most genuine way to know whether we are living in alignment with who we are or our greater calling in this life. Journaling about our thoughts and feelings is a great way to facilitate putting these into perspective.
Once you can identify your thoughts and feelings through journaling, then you need to discover what they mean. For example, if you wake up everyday despondent and melancholy, you need to scrutinize why you feel this way. Is it because you are not with the right partner, have not reconciled your differences with a friend, dread your job, or are not looking after your health?
Your second point of journaling is to uncover the deeper meaning behind your thoughts and feelings. You do this by writing down everything that what you think or feel could mean. Do not hold back, but scrutinize every part of your life until you have exhausted every possible cause of your inner state.
Once you have the list of possible meanings of your thoughts and feelings, sit with the information in deep contemplation and introspection. Eventually, one item will stand out above the others and point to a deeper truth about yourself, one that you may have been ignoring or neglecting.
Now, you have a choice to make—whether to address whatever you have discovered about yourself that is causing you discomfit. You could choose to continue the same path, and many people do, despite feeling out of alignment with who they are. They may be afraid of initiating change because it’s easy to stick with what is familiar.
You could choose to make a change in the situation triggering the sense of being out of alignment. This could involve ending a relationship, leaving a job, moving to another country, just to name some possibilities. It is difficult to do because if often involves changing course in life and facing uncertainty and fear.
However, it is only by embracing uncertainty and leaning outside our comfort zones that we will truly be able to grow and evolve as sovereign human beings who have free will and can create our own destiny.
There is little honor and integrity in not changing when all your instincts and intuition are screaming for you to do so. The way to make the right choice when you are facing a crossroads in your life is to list all the pros and cons of each possible choice, no matter how dramatic a change it might entail. Be honest with this exercise, the course of your life is at issue.
Despite the fear of entering the unknown, there is a higher likelihood that you will make the choice that leads to personal growth and fulfillment and everlasting joy.
Once you make that choice, then you must take the next tiniest action that you can take in the direction of being back in alignment with who you truly are. Once you know what you must do, do not hesitate; otherwise the comfort of the past will enter your psyche and coax you into nonaction.
This is how you choose yourself above all else and start on the path to living an authentic life.
