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Living an Authentic Life

by Jackie Kosednar

When you live your life ignoring your true gifts and talents, you are putting your trust in a broken compass and an empty, fictional life.

Are you living a life that is in tune with your authentic self — who you were designed to be — or your fictional self — the identity you made up from what your family and the world told you to be? The latter is guaranteed to keep you endlessly chasing fulfillment that never arrives. We are taken away from our authentic self by degrees throughout our lives. It happens because of the conditioning we receive and believe from the outside world. ‘Supposed to,’ ‘should be,’ ‘of course you can,’ and other false belief systems convince us to create patterns of acting-like-someone-else in order to feel accepted.

The Authentic You
A key element in self-esteem is allowing yourself to be who you are designed to be, in spite of your bad character traits and the supposed ‘missing elements’ of your personality. When people try to be what they are not, chasing dreams not meant to be or trying to live up to social models, self-esteem goes down and so does physical health. Why? Because you go against your energy flow and life path. You feed the continuous pattern in your brain that says, “I am not OK,” which feeds into the collective belief, “We are not OK.”

I once asked my granddaughter Trinity, “Who are you, Trin?” I expected her to answer “I am grandma’s girl” or something cute like that. Instead she looked at me very seriously and said, “Grandma I am just me.”

Your authentic self is the you that can be found at your core. It is not the part of you defined by your job, function or role. It is first a uniqueness, and then a composite of the skills, talents, and abilities that belong to that uniqueness. These are real talents — not ones you have pretended for approval. It is all of the things that are uniquely yours and need expression, rather than what you think you are supposed to be and do. Human Design Technology shows us our own design on paper: who we really are, and the energies that are always present for us to use. These energies move us along our life’s path.

How Do We Lose Sense of Our Authentic Self?
Human beings have a deep survival need to connect with others and, hopefully, to be loved, appreciated and recognized for our unique contributions. We need to feel we are important. When we are ignored, rejected or pushed into roles that others want for us, a confusion and insecurity set in. Who we are becomes unimportant. We start to believe that unless we change to others’ expectations and ‘be somebody,’ we won’t be loved and are not important.

Society conditions us to believe that we can be anything or anybody we want to be. We act out of the collective presumption that we are made of plastic, to be molded into any kind of individual we choose to be, as if all humans are the same, with equal opportunities. This just isn’t true. We are born unique, with a built-in identity, and a path to walk in life. Only your own path will bring you the fulfillment you are instinctively looking for.

Divine Discontent
When you live your life ignoring your true gifts and talents, while performing assigned, made-up or inherited roles, you are putting your trust in a broken compass and an empty, fictional life. When you're not living faithfully to your authentic self, you feel as if there is a hole in your soul. Living this way drains you of the critical life energy you need to pursue the things you truly value on your own timetable. It takes energy to suppress our authenticity.

It also takes immense energy to keep yourself on a path not designed for you, especially when life is constantly trying to pull you in a different direction. Sooner or later we fall into a deep rut; living becomes a painful struggle because so much doesn’t work. Regret sets in. “What’s it all for?” Depression becomes a real issue. Getting back to the authentic self can seem a daunting task when your entire life — your career, choice of mate, and learned behavior — is based on who you are not designed to be.

Becoming Authentic
Living from your authentic self requires self-honesty. Trying to be something you are not is a subtle dishonesty that puts you on the wrong path. The more honest you can be with yourself and others about who you are, what you really want and what you value, the quicker you move into your right place, along your natural path — where all opportunities to live out what is important to you exist. The real intention of the Universe is for your life to be for you. We are not here to live for or through others. You’re here to express your uniqueness, to learn and grow, and make a contribution to the world at large. In the process, fulfillment happens; the pursuit of truth is the fastest way to get there.

Becoming conscious requires self-reflection and observation. This might entail sitting down with a journal and accessing your life, thinking and behavior. You might ask yourself: “What is important to me?” or “What do I really want?” To determine if your answer is a true desire, ask: “Why do I want this?” Self-reflection wakes us up to a deeper, more awake way of being. It creates an awareness of our inner wisdom and intuition. On a daily basis you can ask, “What’s running me?”

An authentic life is built from the inside out, with attention to one’s Inner self. When we no longer want to chase someone else’s dream, we begin to live our own dreams. We become committed to the idea of being our own person. When you live authentically, you know what you stand for and make conscious choices to honor those values.

When you are in harmony with what's important to you and are being true to yourself, your life is authentic. It is not necessarily a life that others admire or think is good for you, and they might try to keep you in the old mold. But it will be a life that you know in your heart is your own and right for you. Your authentic self will shine.