I’m writing this article from Los Angeles, the “city of dreams.” I had some time to reflect on today’s topic.
Couple days ago we had a coaching call with my group coaching clients, where one of the guys mentioned his insight about how he gave up his opinion so many times in the past, and how much frustration it has caused him.
Everyone could relate to that in the call, myself included. When we don’t express ourselves authentically because of fear then we don’t respect ourselves highly enough.
Since in our 5 month long group coaching program we arrived to a phase of doing deep inner work, I’ve used this opportunity with the guys to dive deeper into this topic.
Authentic expression is close to my heart. So many times in my life I played games in social situations. I put up a mask, trying to hide behind that, and look cool in people’s eyes. Many times I was a people pleaser, afraid of confronting people, and expressing myself fully. Obviously it also caused me guilt and frustration whenever I realized that I am giving up myself. Basically I am leaving myself out of my life if I don’t respect my truth highly enough.
It’s only in the last one and half years that I have turned more and more towards giving up my mask, getting “naked”, and being vulnerable. I had to realize that the personality I have developed in my childhood consisted of constantly analyzing what other people might think of me, and how I should speak and act so I can avoid getting rejected. That was my internal compass. That directed my life.
I had to change the direction of my compass to speaking my truth. Since our focus is directed by questions I created a new question: “Did I speak my truth?”
And I started to evaluate my interactions on that, instead of evaluating it based on what I think other people might think of me (yeah it sounds super tiring, I know). If I spoke my truth great. If I didnt, then why not, what stopped me, and recommitted myself to genuine expression.
The affect it had on my life is enermous. Everything I subconsciously feared actually turned out to be wrong. Not only I didn’t lose connection with people around me, but they have deepened greatly. Since I was respecting myself more, it has translated to other person respecting me more as well, and me respecting them more too.
So what is our truth?
I believe we have an inner guidance that we can call inner wisdom, or intuition, or other names, that let’s us know what’s the right thing to do at any moment. When we are in a social situation we know what resonates with us, and when we are not expressing that because of fear, then we are betraying ourselves. We are not respecting ourselves highly enough.
What stops us from expressing ourselves authentically?
Fear. That’s the only thing that stops us from living life to the fullest. We have a strong need for belonging, it’s one of our deepest drives, and so our deepest fear as well.
Probably it has evolutionary reasons behind it, because of survival it was really important that we make sure we don’t do stupid things which could make our tribe cast us out, and then risking our survival.
We fear of expressing ourselves, because we might lose connections with people around us. And until we face that fear, we can never live a life of true freedom.
Our brain is conditioned by two forces: pain and pleasure. It wants to avoid pain, and wants to gain pleasure. If it links pain to speaking our truth, it will desperately want to avoid that. It doesnt matter if it’s true what our brain is afraid of or not, what matters if it looks real to it. So for example we might be afraid of expressing ourselves freely as it might make us be lonely in our lives. Until our brain believes that and links pain to that, it will avoid it at any cost.
How to start speaking our truth?
Mostly we are run by our conditioning from childhood. We are running on autopilot, instinctively reacting to situations with the same habitual patterns. Until we develop awareness we can’t change, we are prisoners of our past. So that’s why it’s so important to do self-reflection, and becoming aware of our conditioned ways of responses.
So the first step to change is awareness, which is at least 50% of the process. Recognize situations where you didn’t speak your truth, where you weren’t authentic.
Second, we need to face our fear. We need to question the subject of our fear.
“Is it true?” – asking this question can work wonders in our lives.
If we express ourselves authentically, do we really become lonely with no connections in our lives?
Is it possible that other people might get angry, or defensive if we express ourselves honestly?
– Yes.
Is it possible someone cant handle that level of honesty and we lose that connection?
– Yes.
Is it likely to happen?
– Probably not.
Not everyone will resonate with that, people carry their own baggage. People have to face their own demons. If we become authentic and the other person can’t give up their masks and games, do we really need that in our lives?
The question is what life we want to live. A life of freedom, or being prisoner by our fear and pleasing others, and having surface level connections.
By facing our fear and speaking our truth in situations we give a new reference experience for our brain so it can realize we are actually fine, we’ve survived. And the more and more it can see that it’s actually benefitial to speak our truth, the pain-pleasure association changes, and it no longer wants to avoid that. Actually it might start linking pain to not expressing our truth, acting as a strong force in our lives from then on.
That’s the process how our brain is reconditioned.
We need to understand that if we don’t value our truth, well then we don’t value and respect ourselves. Everytime we do that, we give up our freedom. We lose self-esteem.
So we need to value expressing ourselves honestly higher then the fear of maybe losing a connection. We are not serving the world by holding ourselves back, and wearing masks instead.
Also we want to note that expressing our truth doesn’t mean that we start blaming, critisizing, or judging others. If we find ourselves in patterns of reactivity in a situation we are still run by our conditioning.
Usually we can divide people’s personalities into two main groups under stress:
- One who avoids speaking up, afraid of confrontation.
- And one who attacks, criticizes, judges, and doesn’t have empathy for the other person. We could say a person in this group speaks their truth, but in reality they are blinded and reactive because of the defense mechanism that kicked in. This person wants to avoid feeling of inferiority, and thus feels the need to be right.
Both are actually ran by fear. And none of them leads to inner freedom. It can only emerge when we face our fear, and step out of pattern of reactivity. Then we can be in a situation and honestly express our feelings and opinions while being respectful towards the other person as well with empathy. That’s freedom. And that’s the foundation of deep connections.
So if you liked the article here is a challenge for you:
For the next 30 days focus on expressing your truth freely. Whenever you find yourself in a social situation where you would act on fear and hide your truth, slow down, take a deep breath, and express yourself authentically. Say what you feel deep down. Make this 30 days an experiment, where you show your brain that it’s actually safe and desirable to live authentically.
Start conditioning yourself for speaking your truth. Write a journal every day where you make a note on the situations where you expressed yourself freely, and also note down where you didnt, and why. So by this you build greater self-awareness, and start to recondition your brain’s pain-pleasure association.
Hope you found the article valuable. If you did, share it with others. I’m interested what thoughts you have on the topic, so please share it in the comments.
To your extraordinary life,
Tamas