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The words you choose or habitually use to tell and give meaning to your personal narrative are powerful. They are energy! They create and build or destroy.
The story you tell about yourself and to yourself sets the tone and direction of your life. The words you say to yourself largely determine how you feel; in relation to yourself, your body, and other people. Understanding the meanings you have given these words and the beliefs and emotions behind them helps you to see why you are stuck in a story, image, behavior, or way of moving that ‘hurts’ and robs you of your precious life force energy and inner sparkle.
Take the word and concept ‘authenticity‘, for instance. A word and concept widely used in the self-development world and in the spiritual circuit. Many of the women who visit me tell me they have a deep desire to be more authentic and to express themselves more, so they can live with more purpose and fulfillment.
What does ‘authenticity’ mean to you?
How does being Authentic feel to you? Does it come naturally or does it take effort?
In my retreats, I meet many women who see only their so-called beautiful, society-accepted side as ‘authentic’. They often push away the other, rawer, shadowier side that society does not value, resulting in a whole gamut of soul and physical problems, and blocked access to both life force and genuine physical and spiritual fulfillment.
Often, they feel unable to access their sensations and emotions: their sadness, anger, fear, passion, sensuality, wildness, and intuition, for example. Or find it difficult to set their boundaries or take good care of themselves. They have lost connection with their inner compass because of the fear of feeling a part of themselves that does not fit into the concept of the perfect wife, mother, friend, colleague, businesswoman, or spiritual person.
They often have forgotten how to interpret and give meaning to the language of their inner, sensuous body, their soma. The sensations, emotions, images, movement, sensory perceptions, and thoughts that softly tell about our unique inner world, our inner narrative, and the whispers of our Soul.
The way we fill words with meaning influences how we show up in life and understand ourselves. Its energy drives our behaviour and our deepest beliefs. It create filters that determine how we listen to our bodies, to others and how we shape our perception of the world and ourselves.
For many of us the meaning of the concept and word ‘authenticity’ has become muddled. It is driven by the rules and ‘truths’ of society, the family or group we want to belong to, by old painful stories of shame, punishment, or rejection of who we really are. And often also by generations of passed-down family values, and beliefs. And the centuries-long dominance of patriarchal values and a patriarchal model of the world in which many feminine qualities, values, and strengths have lost place.
By re-exploring the meaning of ‘authenticity’ and testing it vis-a-vis your own truth, you create space to stay close to yourself, and tap into your unique potential. It will show you where to let go and relinquish that which limits you from being yourself very naturally and worry-free. It allows you to start living more of your truth in how you perceive, feel, think, move, express yourself, respond, decide, make choices, and give meaning to what you perceive, feel, and think. So you can live and connect more wholeheartedly and passionately from your heart.
For me, this is in the meaning behind the word ‘authenticity.
How do your words shape who you are? And is that how you want to feel about yourself?