Being True to You, and living authentically. Part 2

In the first part of this post, I talked about how to find what you can be true to. But that is only the beginning, and there is more: For once you know what matters most to you in your life, you then have to live authentically to this. And that can be quite hard. For as as soon as find yourself, and then step back onto the public stage of society as yourself, society, that constant critic, is right there to put you back in "your space." Being true to you, and living authentically to who you are is once of the hardest things you will ever do.

For being authentic is something we never learned to do. We all just assume we should be able to do it, but that is not quite so. Sure, we have moments when we are authentic, but when the going gets tough, and there is outside pressure, we don't know how to properly "be ourselves." So we must learn how: you need some tools and techniques that help you be true to yourself, even in situations that would normally stifle such behavior.

This is what the whole second half of my book The Steps of Essence is about. We look in detail at where you already act authentic, and try to recreate the conditions for this in an areas of your life that you so choose to.

At the heart of this is your emotional life. You have a problem being authentic when your emotions are raging, and are not aligned to what is important to you. Therefore, you must learn to gently pull your emotions back to what matters, and recreate an inner emotional state that would be present when you are acting authentic.

To help you learn how to do this, you look to the great masters who are able to do so. It turns out, those are actors! Think about seeing a movie with Marlon Brando, Robert De Niro, Dustin Hoffman, etc. What you see on the screen, what really pulls you into the movie, is the emotions that they display. And with a great actor, the emotions they display are always real. Great actors know various techniques to bring up real true and authentic emotions--under the most adverse circumstances. Clearly, acting in front of a camera crew, or on stage in front of an audience, and then bringing up a certain emotion on cue is not something that comes natural--yet they learned ways to do this.

And so can you.

In The Steps of Essence (and in Be True, Be Happy ) I teach you various techniques, the same that the greatest actors use, to help you pull your inner emotional state back to where you choose it to be. And this will help you act authentic to yourself, even in circumstances where you usually would not be able to!

Namaste — I and the Divine in me bow to You and the Divine in You.
~Hanns