Authentic Much?

I don’t think you’re showing up as authentic.

I haven’t met you but I don’t think you are doing the one thing that makes you authentic:

Allowing your insides to more or less match your outsides and connecting, even for a moment, with your soul as you imagine alignment.

Of course, you are not always going to express on the outside what’s going on on the inside. You are going to choose what you are going to express.?

And when you don’t express what’s going on inside, you are going to carefully and consciously acknowledge what is going on inside to yourself. You are going to hold your entire experience in your awareness and imagine that the face you present to the world is in alignment with your soul and your own inner experience.

You are not going to cut off from the neck down. You are not going to suppress or repress your emotions. You might have some tears show up, like Jon Stewart or Jimmie Kimmel have as they communicated what they found meaningful on stage.

Amanda

Amanda came to me because she is a speaker. For years she enjoyed speaking but lately she felt false, like some deceptive show person or like an animatronic being who said the same things over and over. The enjoyment and ease she once felt were gone.

She thought maybe she needed to update her material but doing so didn’t seem to make a positive difference. And in fact she was getting fewer speaking opportunities as the months went on.

Then she gave me a clue as to what was happening:

“I’m going through a divorce. And my teenage son is driving me bonkers. It’s like I’m getting this divorce to mess with him and his life, specifically. At least, that’s how he’s acting.”

I suggested that maybe she wasn’t showing up authentically the way she once had.

Amanda pushes back

She reacted with anger. “What? I’m supposed to ball on stage? Tell them what’s really going on in my life??”

“No,” I said, not reacting to her push back. “What I’m saying is that you can feel what you are feeling while you are speaking. Feel the grief, feel the anger, notice that those feelings are there while you also maintain your focus and intention to connect with your audience as you show up as the professional you are.”

“I don’t know how to do that!!”

“I know. It’s not easy. But you can learn. It’s about being true to yourself.”

I paused. “It’s about being true to your soul.”

Think of the soul as your Source—or a part of your Source

I told Amanda that her soul is like her source. I had her imagine her soul behind her, its material flowing through and into her and then flowing forward into her personality, the face she presents to the world. That she could edit what the personality displays and expresses but she could hold her real and true experience within herself.

I also explained that presence is about present moment awareness but it is also about the presence of the soul. And it is that presence that makes her moments on stage magical and powerful and amazingly potent.?

“Like it used to be,” she said, nodding with growing understanding.

“Like it used to be,” I echoed.

“Okay,” she said, sighing. “I’ll give it a try. I’m speaking next week. If I cry I will blame you!” She said this last bit with a little laugh, as if she was joking, but we both knew that she wasn’t.

Our next session

When she showed up after her last speaking engagement, she was beaming. “I did it! My insides matched my outsides! I imagined my soul behind me, just at the beginning, and I imagined sending that energy out to connect with the souls out there in the audience. It was so powerful!

“I even shared a little of what I’m going through! Not a lot, and I choked up a couple times but I kept going. I felt like the audience got me! Like they were really with me!”?

“I also forgot to say this one thing but I decided that wasn’t the end of the world.”

Then she smiled broadly and said, “And they asked me back for a panel discussion on, um, authenticity!”

We both burst out laughing.

Would you like to experience the soul alignment process I took Amanda through? It’s coming up next week: Thursday, November 21, 2024, at 12 noon MDT.?

Would your soul want you there??