One of the most important things you can do in order to live a more full self-realized life and find your passion, is to shed layers of conditioning to ensure you live according to your values and to your own most inner profound sense of self. It is only from this aware state of being, you truly know what you need, like and what you don't want. Being authentic has to do with defining your own identity from within, and then communicate and relate to others from this point of view.
Start by asking yourself regardless of what anybody else's opinion is, what lights you up? What makes you feel inspired? What do you feel truly generous about giving and sharing?
In order to be able to answer these questions, imagine your best life and draw up a plan to reach specific goals, you must have good health. Having good health, doesn't necessarily mean that you need to be completely well or in some kind of elite shape. It does however mean that you live without survival stress, acute symptoms from any type of condition or solving any life-threatening situation. A good night's sleep is essential to make an important decision, so is also exercise, nutrious food and enough water to drink. Before we have health, we have nothing but to get better. Yet, feeling at home in our bodies both literally and figuratively makes it easier to endure stress when we are forced to due to outer circumstances, while making it less in need to beat ourselves up over our own wrong choices.
What is in your identity?
* What has formed you? Are you a small-town boy or a city-chick? Do you come from a big family or grown up alone? What did you do as a child? How did you do in school, both in terms of getting good grades, but also socially? Would you have become a different person if something profound hadn't happen or at a different time? (This is referred to as pivotal moments in coaching.) What led to what?
* What is your desired and most relaxed personality? Recall a time when you have sat together with a friend or a group of people and talked passionately about something, totally forgetting time and place without self-consciousness - this is how you are when you are in presence and flow. Was it about a specific subject? Which qualities would you like to develop more or less of and why?
* What is important to you? What do you value the most? Define areas in your life, such as home, work, faith, ethics, relationships, politics, church, groups etc. Also define what is important in your relationships in these areas. Which role do you play?
* Where have you lived and where would you like to live? Which country and within that country? Which cultural traits do feel comfortable assuming?
* Who would you be like if you wanted to find a role-model? Why? What is it that he or she is displaying - which quality or skill or result are you after? Is it a specific talent? Then claim rather that by practice and learning than assuming a role or pretend to be him or her.
* Who are you without anyone you know? Take a trip somewhere completely alone, where you never have been or anybody close to you have. This is how you best get to know yourself and see the difference in how you interact depending on where you are at and with whom.
My own search for a true sense of self was by facing much opposition early on, since I believe in saying what is true, which very few like to hear. In order to feel ok with still being truthful, I had to develop a strong sense of integrity built within my self-confidence which I naturally have had, taking initiative often and grown through many travels and moves with my parents and brother growing up. My perspective on truth is that if you say what you know, mean and feel, you have no skeletons in the closet that would fall out if someone opened it. People can hurt you with their truths but never turn your own against you when it is anchored by experience. We want it to be anchored in love, in our hearts, but doesn't feel it all the time.
It started on stage in my teens with acting where I found myself letting go of my own personality in the wings and kept it for writing, until I started working as a copywriter when I had to do the same in order to be the messenger with a company's voice for its CEO and employees, products and services with their name as the consignor, like a ghostwriter does for someone else. This job somehow made my own personality wither away, compensating with a large Ego which was of great positive use when I did presentations, only to have that destroyed too when my mother became more sick, while I explored different groups, looks and narrowing down my own preferences in life and then writing about my journey as myself instead. Now that I have reclaimed myself, I can take stage again.
Who are you?