The way to live authentically is paradoxically to stop trying to protect who you are. Who you really are, never needs any protection, or any justification, in any way, whatsoever.
When we try to protect who we are, in truth, this is then presenting to someone, someone who we are not. We are pretending to be someone, who we are not. This is always the case, as the real person that we really are, never needs any protection like this. The moment we start acting from this idea of wanting to protect ourselves, we are really protecting the person that we never really are, in fact. We are protecting, and trying to maintain a falseness, or an ego self.
We are only acting from fear, because we are thinking that without this constructed and artificial person acting for us, we will never get what we want, or the other person will think less of us, in some way. The subtle reason behind this, is that we really want to control what that other person is thinking about us. But this only controls us, and prevents us from being authentically ourselves.
When we overplay our need to appear stronger than what we are, the other person will recognise this never as a strength, but will always see it as a weakness in us. The more that you demand to be recognised, or respected by others, the less likely that you will ever receive it.
This is where the psychologists use of techniques such as assertiveness training, or using various communication ploys, or the utilisation of artificially structured behaviours, falls down. They only ever really lead to another cause of your deeply held inner conflicts remaining inside of you, and actually being amplified. They grow even bigger inside of you, because another barrier to the real you has been constructed. Whether it is a barrier of "good" techniques, or 'bad" techniques, every use of such a technique, is a barrier separating you from being the really authentic you, always living now, as you, in the moment of you.
You are you, never are you only a technique. Sure, you can follow a technique, but follow it knowingly from your higher self, not from your lower self trying to be something it is not. Your lower self can never be your higher self, it is never its role to do this. It has its own role to play, assisting the higher self to gain experiences in life through its human experience.
Any self-compromising actions, or artificially constructed routines manufactured for you to follow automatically within you, is really only coming from fear, and fear is never authentic. Always choose to be you, authentically following your own inner self, rather than anyone else's artificially constructed rules, or norms of expected behaviour patterns. This is the only way to ensure that you are always being authentically you, and not self sabotaging yourself out of being the real you, through fear of others, and also through fear of being the real you.
Now is all of this entirely true, and balanced in approach? This is a question I am asking myself around here, in my presentation of these ideas about being yourself authentically. To be totally self directed, assumes that all only ever revolves around me. If I take this idea to the extreme, then nobody else's opinion is valid, or counts for me in a relevant way.
This would all imply that only my idea of me, is truth, or my truth. Isn't this a segregation, and separating process, rather than a rejoining, and a combining with others, with love? It is an adversarial approach, rather than conciliatory. Although I can see the truth in there somewhere, and that it is indeed true, that we do need to be ourselves entirely, as much as we can be. But we can be ourselves, even as we be another person, and walk in their shoes with compassion, and understanding, without fawning or grassing them, or trying to impress to them that we are someone other than who we really are.
What then is the right approach to take here? Where does the truth lie here?
Your higher self is always operating as you. The fear in you is what removes, or breaks this continual contact with your higher self. Loving is what restores it. It is that simple. Never worry too much about all of this other stuff.
If your only considering your own weaknesses all of the time, it is also only really a reflection of your lower self, and shows to you that your actually living from there too, and ignoring your higher self. Learn to recognise these approaches of fear bringing weakness to you, and then act still with love for yourself, with added strength of conviction in yourself and as your higher self, authentically now.
When you are being your higher self with love, there is never then any weakness.
Being yourself gives strength, and acts from a real strength, and which is only love. You are always the strongest that you have ever been in your life up until now, right now. Act from all of this strength, and don't return to contemplate weakly about your other perceived weaknesses, and which are never really yours, but only reflections of the other people bringing out of you weaknesses, that you have at some time worked through, and by no means now need to revisit. Accept this from understanding and compassion, to better understand the other person's own unique growth through these, their own weaknesses, and painful experiences.
This only means that instead of always considering your own weaknesses again, allow the contact with these past weaknesses, being invoked by others, to allow you to love more, and not to withdrawer into contemplating again these weaknesses, thinking you still must have them, hidden somewhere. When you do this, and accept weaknesses as a real part of you, you accept the limiting fears that accompany all weaknesses as well. Grow authentically from past strengths, and allow the weaknesses to disappear naturally, as these strengths replace them with their love, in place of fear.
Strength always accompanies love, weakness is always fear.
These are all different ideas, and approaches to living an authentically real life, and your life will only fully count for you, the more that you are being you. Otherwise a life of fear, acting as someone other than you, will remove any real meaning from your life, and you will never be fully satisfied, or contented. You will think that you have wasted your life, and that it hasn't really counted for anything much, at all.
But this is never the complete truth. All lives count. You can never stop being the real you. Your life is always authentic. You never stop being yourself. It is only that for moments of time in your life, your fears have stopped, and prevented you from marching along this path of your own, and recognising it as your own path. It is always your own unique path, and journey. It's only recognition that becomes a problem, because of generated fear masking the true journey for you.
You look at your journey through the eyes of fear, and see pain, and hardship. When you accept this same state through the eyes of soul, or the higher you, you only ever see love, and valuable new life experiences of joy, for you. It's all a matter of attitude, and reframing the way you see your life. Through the lower eyes of fear, or the higher eyes, and insights of love.
Truth itself never lies anywhere in particular to be located, and to be found by you. Truth sits in all situations, and you can sit with it, or you can just move past it, not noticing it because of your fear. All approaches contain truth for the person moving through them. You just need to take the truth that will be part of your own truth, and then integrate this new truth with love into your own heart, and then move on, building always on the understanding of these previously established truths, now part of your own wisdom.
This is how you can follow your own approach, and give compassion to others by sharing your own wisdom from the strength of who you, and so you are never again acting out from weakness. Following your own soul, owning your own journey, taking your own unique slant, and approach to life, as authentic, leads to authentically loving your life, and recognising how much it does count. Every life counts, every life is priceless. Every life is authentically, uniquely its own to live, for that particular individual, uniquely, perfect soul, and person.
This is what it means to be you, from the strength of you, rather than being sabotaged into thinking that you have to match someone else, by being then them, or what you think they would want you to be, and not being the real you.
The point often missed though, is that you are not just you entirely, and they are not just them completely either. All is connected, you are partly them, and they you. You are joined in your separation, connected by love to God, and to each other. Another's approach to life, and to their own life in particular, is a part of you as well. Another's truth can be your truth. It is always a part of your truth. Love connects us all with its sharing of its truth, that can never really be owned fully by anyone, only experienced and shared, and given back to love once more again.
It's all a matter of perspective. Your truth, only becomes your own real truth, when it is accepted, and processed through your heart into your own understanding, and wisdom, and growth, and then becomes part of you, for ever after. But at the same time by doing this, and creating new wisdom for you, you have created it also, for all other souls. Experience, plus individual truth, brings new wisdom. And this adds to the great store of ever growing wisdom, and we all grow together towards this greater love, which is wisdom living in love, by love showing parts of itself, and its truths to us all.
When we can live, truly authentically as ourselves, while also being part of all else, at the same time, without separating ourselves to be ourselves, we are only then being truly authentic.
As to our life counting though, all lives always count, and truly we are always being ourselves authentically. We just never know, or own this authenticity, that our fears are masking, and stopping us from seeing, or following right now. But our soul, our inner self, is always authentic, always being our real self, behind this fear, and there, always ready to love us, and to help us connect to it, so that even our lower selves, and human self, will then feel that they are part of it all, as well.
And so then fear is removed, and all parts of us also then see the bigger picture, that all is forever acting as it should be. All is always perfect, and authentic, and everything counts, at all times, in all places, and nothing ever does stop counting for even one tiny microsecond of infinitely running time.