Authenticity & "feeling seen". 🤔
And so we need our own perspective on this, our own metaphorical mirror reflecting, analyzing awareness. But we also need the human mirror. However, in both cases, we are approaching authenticity very subjectively and looking at these patterns, right? And so sometimes we project onto them, or sometimes we are blinded by whatever it is that we don't want to see or acknowledge for whatever reason
Chelsea Hanawalt
@allowthesun · 1:59
And I've realized over the years how I feel like, I don't know if it's the right way to, say a skill of mine or something I have learned from my childhood, but of just adapting myself to whoever I'm around. I feel like I can do that really easily. I can relate to people really easily. But over the years, I've had to really step into who I am and realizing that there are spaces where I'm like, this is not me
Kind of like when that person told you not to talk about that way, like you needed to engage with it in their way and that's not authentic. Right. So when I was thinking about authenticity, right. And when people tend to say be authentic, is that something you can put in a set of to do when you are being creative or whatever, being your authentic self? That's just something you just do, right? You just are. You don't just master
Swell Team
@Swell · 0:15
Kwa NateKo
@kwa · 1:15
I just really love the definition of authenticity, because that's kind of how it feels to me. Or your definition, I don't remember exactly, but it's like I think you said, the distance between your internal self and what you present to the world and how congruent they are. And the less space there is between the two, or the smaller the distance sense, the less effort it takes. And that is kind of pretty much exactly how I feel. Right
And I almost think that sometimes we need a longer lifespan, because the first few decades, maybe it's wrapped up in these other notions, but then we start to realize, and maybe not. Maybe the lifetime we have now is important for the finiteness of it, because would we begin to strip away these other frameworks? Would we begin to unveil and reveal ourselves to ourselves if we had more time?
It made complete sense, I think. There's those weird paradoxes of society saying, be your authentic self, but at the same time conform or exist in this way, whatever that is. Fill in the blank or be socially acceptable. So if you're authentically a jerk, revise yourself, I guess. And there's so many, like, how do we make sense of that?
Those things are yet done naturally. And I think that as we grow and evolve, that kind of thing is also happening. And perhaps the more congruent the internal and the external are. Then those fine motor skills, those fine adjustments that we're naturally doing become less effortful. But I do think, too, there's this idea I'm toying with of an aperture. And maybe I'll call it boundary to ness of we can be authentic and be seen as authentic
J.L. Beasley
@Her_Sisu · 2:49
I believe because I came from that space, they were able to truly hear me and receive my message and consider it versus me being something different and then having to backtrack or be like, oh, I didn't really mean what I said that day, or I thought that I could do the thing that you suggested I do, and I can't do that. It's just a really good space
And trying to figure out how do I not fall back into patterns because it has happened in the past and that anxiety of rinsing and repeating and somehow listening to you talk about your experience felt empowering and a really important reminder. There's still anxiety there, but I feel like I can go into that conversation just remembering to be present and remembering to ask myself those questions about whatever responses I might give or how I might interact and doing it on the fly and rolling with it come what may
J.L. Beasley
@Her_Sisu · 4:44
And so some strategies that I do is mentally and spiritually, emotionally preparing myself when I'm going to be around her. Now, it sounds like this is a blast from your past, and so it's not as though you're around this person frequently. So prepare yourself, ground yourself mentally, spiritually, emotionally is a strategy I would suggest and to take a deep breath
Thank you. This is an important reminder that I really needed. This person isn't toxic in any way, shape or form. They knew a caricature version of me. And when you return to a familiar environment with familiar people, you can fall back into familiar patterns of behavior. And that's really what. What I want to avoid. Yeah, it's going to be interesting. Thank you. I needed that reminder to pause