I spoke to two of my clients today – back to back, and the same exact thing came up for both of them. I found this fascinating as it shows that we all go through things that are very similar. What my clients have been experiencing is the feeling of having two different versions of themselves inside. Often times we have the version that is scared, afraid and lacking in confidence and we have the version who is open, expansive, confident, in love with themselves and knows who they are.
We’re constantly looking for approval but we tend to go to the wrong people for this. Instead of going to the confident, authentic and open person we go looking for approval from the person that is hiding and afraid. It’s interesting that we go to this place of feeling ‘not enough’ to look for approval and end up chasing other people for it when all we really want is approval from ourselves. We don’t actually care if our dad doesn’t like us or if our boss thinks we did a good job. What we actually care about is how we feel about ourselves – waking up each morning feeling like we are actually living authentically.
A lot of us have these different versions of ourselves hiding within us and it seems more often than not that the vulnerable, afraid version tends to be the one that we live in the most. This version is the ‘lack’ and ‘fear’ that we let drive our lives. Then we’ve got this other version which is actually us, the version that is in our heart. This version is our confident, authentic self. The fear will likely always be there, but our confident, authentic self can always shine through and take the lead. The authentic version of me is the Carlee who works in the studio, loves to dance, loves to create and is present in each and every moment. At times the other fear version of me comes up to tell me to ‘Watch out! You can’t be too authentic, what about money?!, what about that fat on your stomach, what about that tragedy that might happen?’. This fear voice is often really a mirage and it takes our authentic self to be present to realize this.
We always say what we want to be: more of this and more of that, but technically we already are all of that inside of us! The problem is that we let fear override this because we get too comfortable in this version and forget about what’s truly inside our hearts. With the two clients I spoke with earlier, they have separated and boxed their authentic/confident self from their fear/lack version of themselves. So in their authentic/confident box is where all their passions and creative talents lie. This box tends to be shoved to the side, while the fear/lack box wreaks havoc. We’ve compartmentalized our authentic self and buried it so that it’s so separate from all areas of our lives resulting in us not truly knowing who we are.
With my clients, they feel that they have these two different personalities that are so separate but need to be merged to create this new self. In order to do this, getting in touch with one’s true desires and passions and using these as a compass is a good start. Listening to what you really want whether it’s to travel, dance, lose weight, create a garden, etc. is a guideline to what’s already in you. It’s all already there, it’s just the fear/lack version holding you back.
Where in your life have you compartmentalized your authentic self and where can you integrate it into all other parts of your life? How can you be more authentic and let the person inside you that you’ve suppressed, come out and show you the life that you want to live?
If you resonate with the experience of feeling like you have compartmentalized your authentic self, I'd love to hear from you.