Living Authentically
by Kenny Toh, May 2005
Imagine living a
life of simplicity, where you never have to pretend to be what you are
not, where what you see is what you get, where you never need to read
someone’s mind to figure out what they are really thinking because you
trust that they mean what they say, where you never need to keep tap of
the lies you told yourself or others because you have stopped lying?
Welcome to “authentic living”, a way of life centered on simply
being who you are, no more and no less. Be the person that you are
meant to be. In other words, be YOU. So, who is this “you”
that you could authentically be?
Living
is more being alive. Living involves being, thinking,
and doing. Who you are being shapes your thinking,
which in turns directs your doing. Hence, authentic living is about
being authentic, thinking with authenticity, and acting authentically.
What does being “authentic” mean to you?
Being authentic is about being true to yourself as well as to others. It
is about being honest and upfront in acknowledging your thoughts and
emotions. No lies. No denials. Nothing to conceal. While it takes
courage to face the vulnerability from being authentic, it is such
self-honesty that is required for healing to take place, enabling us
to move forward with abundance of joy and inner peace.
Every thought or emotion that we experience is just a fact. And fact is
devoid of judgment, until we subject it to our opinions. For example, “I
am afraid” is a factual statement about the state of our being at a
particular moment. There is something that is causing some degree of fear
in us. But it does not follow that being afraid is good or bad, or that it
reflects a lack of personal strength. In fact, it is just another
phenomenon that shows our humaneness. It is human to be emotional, and
being fearful is simply being emotionally human.
When you practice authentic living, what you are essentially doing is to
develop a heightened awareness of your thoughts and emotions, untainted by
a desire to make them appear better or worse than they are. And it is from
that vantage point, that you could proceed to take charge of your thoughts, and
act consistently with how you think and feel.
Thinking with authenticity means directing our attention to the “what is”
of a person or situation, unadulterated by unnecessary dramatizations. The
ability to focus on the “what is” enables us to function effectively and
efficiently, hitting the nail on the head with minimum wastage of energy
on potentially erroneous judgment and assumptions.
Acting authentically becomes a natural manifestation of our thoughts that
seeks to preserve our integrity, maintaining congruence between our inner
world of thoughts and feelings and our interactions with the external
world through our words and our deeds.
Living authentically sounds reasonably simple and easy, isn’t it? What is
the ultimate reward for living authentically? Could it be joy, freedom,
inner peace or all of them? If it is that simple, then what’s stopping people from experiencing the
joy of living authentically? Could it be
pride, or fear, or an unwillingness to let go of the need to
be right or to look good? I will leave you to ponder over that, and look
forward to hear your thoughts.