Let's break the status quo for good

"I should be this way, I should show up this way, I should hide this in me, I should project this in me, I should not do this, I should behave this way, I should..."

When you live your life in 'shoulds', you get disconnected from who you truly are. And when you live by shoulds for long in life, that becomes your way of being.

Success is not getting what you want, but who you become in the process and what you contribute to.

Let's reflect on who we have become as a result of these 'shoulds' and then ask ourselves, if it is worth living by these. Is this uplifting our growth or curbing it and making us less human & disconnected from our truest self?

“Obligers take their commitments to other people seriously, but generally let themselves down,” writes Rubin. Check out Gretchen Rubin's, The Four Tendencies. Take the quiz here to see your tendency. And we have more obligers in the world. And thus the status quo isn't challenged and we live in familiar ways even though these might not be working for us.

This post is evoked by someone telling me what is right to do and what is not right to do; how to show up and how not to. And so I would like to challenge this myth of showing up in a way that we are not. Let's break the 'shoulds' and live by who we are, our truest self. After all these 'shoulds' were created by someone else and these are their wants that we are living with.

Let's set a trend to be who we are, be it in the corporate world or in our personal lives. Let's bring our complete self (body, intellect & emotion), let's BE and allow its expression.

We have lived enough in disguise, in duality and in the boxes as if we are not a whole entity but robots that can be dismantled as per requirement. Masking here and unmasking there!

"Don't bring emotions to the workplace. "

But then who defined these and for what? Don't you think we need to re-look at the status quo? At a time when we are talking about authenticity and authentic leadership, then we should also look at the 'shoulds'. Are these supporting authenticity & vulnerability or just a contradiction to what we are desiring & what we are supporting?!

Many a times I hear this from people specially taking pride in their masked roles that when they are in the office, they are different than when at home; when in private, different from when in public. This duality is a slap to our integrated self that has to constantly contradict with who we truly are and who we show up to be.

Wherever you aren't bringing your complete self, you are expressing yourself with lot of efforts to camouflage a side of you that is you. Kind of disowning yourself from who you truly are. In such a scenario, do you think you are at your highest expressive self? You are constantly putting up a show, a mask and so it becomes draining for you to accept yourself and others when they authentically express themselves. Sometimes this duality becomes our reality and so later in life there comes a place where we start questioning who we are, what truly matters and all sorts of spiritual awakening questions that probably leaves us with despair when we realize the futility of living a masked existence.

As a leader, you will be able to embrace authenticity only when you are authentic to your self. Why bringing your authentic self is important?! To live a more fulfilled, content and joyous life. And most important of all, honouring yourself.

This life itself is a vow and you honouring it's truest expression, is you being a YES to life itself.

#authenticleadership #truestself #getoutoftheboxes #challengethestatusquo #letlifeflow #debunkthemyth