Today's Meditation:

Somewhere along the line, most of us develop an idea of our ideal selves, the perfect self, the person that we should be in order to be perfectly acceptable to everyone all the time.  We think that if we can just achieve that self, then everything else will fall into line.  And so we go about trying to turn our lives into what we think it should be for us as those perfect selves.  I know that when I first started teaching, there were plenty of people who wanted to tell me who I should be as a teacher, but it wasn't until I fully accepted myself as the type of teacher that I am that I was able to make positive things happen in the classroom.

For example, I used to think that I needed to be more of an authoritarian, especially with the high school students.  It didn't work-- things were never bad, but there was just too much tension in the class.  I figured out very quickly that I needed to be the person that I was-- someone there working with the kids, not teaching at them-- in order for them to be able to respond to me authentically.  How could I possibly expect them to be authentic with me when I was being less than authentic with them?

I constantly tell new teachers to be true to who they are, because kids sense very quickly when they're trying to be something other than who they are.  And when they do accept who they are and act as such, the kids respect that, and things in the classroom go much more smoothly.  We aren't all teachers, of course, but we do all have the choice to act according to our authentic nature or act in some other ways-- and when we finally accept our authentic nature and live it fully and passionately, then we open the doors for good things to happen in our lives.  But not until then.

Questions to consider:

Why does it sometimes seem easier to act as if we were someone else, rejecting our true thoughts, feelings, and desires?

Why might it be that change doesn't tend to happen as long as we're trying to be something we're not?

Who are you, really?  Have you accepted that reality?

For further thought:

It is finally when you let go of what people expect you to be and people's perceptions of you that you're able to be the version of yourself that you're supposed to be-- like in God's eyes.  It doesn't matter if you're half crazy, or eccentric, or whatever it is-- that you have to be true to who you were born to be.

Gwyneth Paltrow

More thoughts and ideas on authenticity.

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