How to Overcome Obstacles on the Path to Living an Authentic Life
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If you want to start living more authentically, you might encounter obstacles on the way. These can be challenges you have to deal with as you begin making changes, but they can also be obstacles that stop you from even trying to make those changes.
To deal with these initial obstacles, let’s first identify what they are. Ask yourself this question to find out: What do you think might make it harder for you to start living an authentic life?
Seriously think about what might make this more challenging. Is it mainly external pressures like those I talk about identifying in this post? Or are there other reasons? Family obligations maybe? Financial constraints? Responsibilities? Not enough time? Lack of resources? Really think about what the obstacles might be.
Now that you’ve addressed them, I want you to see these obstacles for what they really are—excuses. While it’s true that you may have things you’re dealing with that make it harder for you to be yourself, I can imagine that in most cases, you can still find ways to be more authentic.
I wouldn’t advise you to aim to be so authentic that you neglect your duties or forgo all your responsibilities. But there are probably ways you can incorporate more authenticity into your life if you really try, even if they’re small. They count, too.
And now, here are a few tips on how you can start overcoming these challenges, both initial and ones you may encounter along the way.
3 Tips for Overcoming Obstacles as You Try to Live an Authentic Life
Have a strong and compelling why.
Having a strong why can make it easier to do anything difficult. But it might not be enough for that why to be strong to encourage you to make the changes necessary to live more authentically. The why should also be compelling. And when I say compelling, it has to be compelling to you. It doesn’t matter whether it’s compelling to anyone else.
The question you really want to ask yourself is, why is it so important for you to be authentic or live an authentic life? A strong why could be, “I don’t want to feel disconnected from my true self anymore.” While that’s a valid reason and may encourage you to get started on that journey, you may still be in the dark as to why it’s important for you to feel connected to your true self. And that may make it hard to continue when things get challenging.
Instead, a strong and compelling why could be, “I want to be able to make decisions decisively because I’m clear on what my core values are and why they’re important to me.” Not wanting to waver when it comes to making big or small decisions could be a powerful way to encourage yourself to keep going.Empower your inner voice.
We’ll address this more in the next section. But for now, you need to know that you have authority in your own life. And empowering your inner voice can help you remember that.
Take small actions.
As you begin understanding what an authentic life looks like to you, you might be tempted to start making huge changes to start living it. But this can overwhelm you and end up leaving you more discouraged than before.
Instead, try to incorporate small doses of authenticity into your daily life. Try to focus on making small changes that you can build on over time instead of immersing yourself in everything authentic to you all at once. This will make it easier for you to adapt the changes to your schedule, balance them with your current responsibilities, and allow your system to slowly adjust to them.
So, whenever you find yourself encountering obstacles on your journey to live a more authentic life, these tips can help you stay focused on your goal.
Empowering Your Inner Voice
None of the work you do to start living authentically will help if you don’t believe you have authority in your life. Because even if you try to implement some changes to begin living more authentically, when difficulties come or when others criticize, judge, or misunderstand you, you may resort to listening to outside voices, succumbing to external pressure, or even agreeing with your inner critic.
One of the reasons we can start to let other people’s opinions weigh so heavily on us is because we don’t believe we have power, or at least not much of it. Or else we can become afraid of our own power, afraid to take ownership of our lives.
It can seem much easier to let other people have authority because then we don’t have to take big risks or go too far outside our comfort zone. We don’t have to experiment until we find what truly makes us happy. We can just do what other people tell us, essentially putting our happiness in other people’s hands.
To really start living an authentic life, though, you’re going to have to reclaim your inner power. And that starts with recognizing that you do have authority in your life, which means that your inner voice has power.
Distinguishing Between the Active and Passive Voice
Before we really dive into how to empower your inner voice, I want to make a distinction so you’re clear about which voice you’re empowering.
I mentioned above that you might resort to listening to your inner critic when challenging times come. That’s the voice you hear that doesn’t seem to think you can do anything right and it may question why you should even bother trying to change in the first place.
I refer to this type of thinking as coming from the passive voice in the head. I’ve never heard of anyone talk about it like this before, but it’s something I use to help me distinguish between the inner voice I want to listen to and the voice I want to ignore. The passive voice is the voice you hear when you’re just idly letting the voice in your head talk. Sometimes it can say random things, but sometimes it can say bothersome or hurtful things. It’s the voice of your fears, worries, anxieties, and frustrations.
Instead of just passively listening to the voice in your head talk, though, you can take a more active approach. You can actually use the voice to tell yourself the things you believe to be true or that you want to be true for you. I call this the active voice. And this is the voice you want to empower.
Now that you understand which inner voice you’re trying to strengthen, here are a few tips on how to do it.
3 Tips for Empowering Your Inner Voice
Use your outer voice.
Sometimes we can become so used to listening to outside voices or the passive voice in our head that it can become hard to even hear our inner voice when we’re actively trying to assert ourselves or tell ourselves things we want to hear. So, you might find it helpful to speak to yourself out loud with authority before you can really empower your inner voice. But you’ll probably only want to do this when you’re alone.
Remember a time you demonstrated authority.
If you can, recall a time when you felt like you demonstrated authority in your life. Try to remember how that felt. And if you can, try to lean into those feelings when you want to feel that sense of authority now. Or try to remember why you felt so authoritative then and see if you can bring that why into the now.
Practice telling yourself empowering things.
It’s only too easy for us to allow the passive voice to say whatever it wants to say, including when it’s telling us negative things about ourselves, others, and the world around us. But as I said before, we don’t have to just passively listen to it. So, after doing some of the outer voice work in tip #1, or even while you’re doing it, practice telling yourself things you believe to be true or that you want to be true.
Get used to using the active voice to tell yourself kind and empowering things. Use it to tell you how great you are or that you’re doing your best. Use it to remind yourself of why you’re embarking on this journey. Use it to encourage you when doing something new or courageous, or when going after a goal, big or small. Use it to applaud your efforts regardless of the result.
Just try to get used to the idea that you can actually choose to tell yourself things you want to hear. And in this way, you’re reclaiming authority in your mind—and your life.
Action Items
To help you begin putting these concepts and techniques into practice, here are two action items you can start doing today.
Determine your strong and compelling why for going on this journey.
Start telling yourself kind, encouraging, or empowering things—out loud, in your head, or both.
Concluding Thoughts
If you’re determined to live a more authentic life and your current one isn’t feeling aligned with that, you’re going to have to make changes. But it’s possible that obstacles or challenges you encounter may make it harder to implement those changes or discourage you from changing anything in the first place.
If you really are determined, though, I believe you can transform your life so it feels more authentic to you. And I hope the tips in this post help you do just that.
~ Ashley C.