How to embrace your authentic self

I got an amazing question from someone I'm connected with online today, and it inspired me to not only answer it there but also come over here to my blog and answer it as well. The question that she asked is, how do you embrace your authenticity? I love this question so much because authenticity is a major value of mine. It's something that I prioritize not only in my brand, in the way that I show up, but also in the suggestions and in the support that I give my clients. A struggle that I see in this online space in general is I see so many copycat coaches, in a sense that they see someone that has a podcast, they want a podcast, they see someone that has a YouTube channel. Now they feel like they have a YouTube channel. They see that this brand is a certain color, and they feel like they need to have their brand match that same color. All of these things are great, but only when you’re doing it because it feels aligned. The truth is that it requires more energy to be someone you're not than it does to just simply be yourself.

So today I want to talk about how you can begin to embrace your authenticity and how this can truly change your entire life.

The first step may and probably most impactful is to strip yourself. And that is stripping yourself of all of your accolades, all of your applauses, all of your awards, all of the things that you feel like define who you are, all of your titles. So let's say that you're a mom. Who are you without being a mom?

Let's say you're a wife. Who are you without being a wife? Who are you without being a coach? Who are you without being a student or an employee? Who are you at the core?

When I did this, I dug deep, and I came back to my Christian faith and remembered I was made in God's image. So I'm loved. This was so valuable because what I learned through stripping myself of all of these things, all of these external things that we focus on is I realized that the court that I needed to solidify who I was. After all, then it didn't matter what applause, award, or accolades I was receiving. I still get to be loved. I still get to be made in God's image. Those things never change. So considering that, who are you at the core? I would challenge you to take some time to deeply reflect on this and journal this and process it. It is so powerful.

The second step, to be able to embrace your authenticity is to identify your values start to think about what are the most important things to you. So, for example, if you're a coach in this online space and a value of yours is time freedom, how are you incorporating that into your business? How are you incorporating that into your life?

When you identify your values and you begin to incorporate them into your actions, you will in an easier way be able to keep your priorities straight, and you begin to align your life with your business and with your brand. There's this idea that we have to have this work-life balance. But what if we prioritize a work-life integration by prioritizing our values and weaving them into every single aspect of our lives? If you notice, in my brand, family is very important to me. So my kids are often on my YouTube videos or my reels etc.

Freedom is important to me, so I'm not afraid to hire and bring people in to support me on my team. Making sure that I also am authentic is important to me. So I'll show up online no matter what I look like. If I have a message to share I no longer wait for the “perfect” time to share it. It's interesting because, for a long time, I watched all of these coaches show up with, fancy outfits and the perfect background and all of these things. And then one day I just happened to have a tight schedule, but also something on my heart to share. So I decided to, against my fear and overthinking, go live.

I had just got done running, so I was sweating and my hair was out of place and I wasn't coordinated. I just spoke from my heart. And that to this day, was probably one of my most shared lies. And from there, I stopped being afraid to go live if things weren't perfect if I didn't have the right thing to say if I didn't have on the right outfit or the right background. I just started to speak.

It took me a long time to be able to embrace this. I want you to start thinking about your values and how you can begin to weave those into the way that you show up and into your life fully and across the board with that. One of the things that I've also really prioritized to embrace our authenticity online specifically, is focusing on connection instead of impression. That is why I'm not afraid to show up uniquely myself and share things that contradict others or seem very creative, because I'm focusing on that deep connection, which is going to last far longer than your ability to impress anyone.

The third step is to tune in to your intuition. Your intuition is your guidance system. It is showing you where you are being pulled towards, where you're being drawn. And it's showing you what's deeply desired by you. I am a firm believer that what's desired by you is also available to you as well.

So allow yourself to connect with your intuition. Tune in to what feels right for you, tune into what feels true for you. Connecting to your intuition requires you to turn off the noise around you. So one thing that I prioritize to tune into my intuition is when I first wake up in the morning, I pray, I tap, I identify what I am grateful for and I take time to be still. I avoid touching my phone right away because upon first waking up your brain is most vulnerable.

I don't run to social media. I don't run to emails. I don't even run to my coach right away. I just tune in to what feels right. It always lights me up to see what my intuition is drawing me towards and what creative ideas I have during my still time. It always inspires me to see what intuitive ideas are being dropped into my spirit and doing this always inspires me to take the next step, which is to be willing to take risks.

You have to be courageous enough to take risks. The truth is, when we are moving towards new things and stepping into who we are called to be, to be able to effectively align with our purpose, we have to be comfortable and brave enough to take risks. This is pivotal and so important.

I want to challenge you to tune in and start determining how you can take risks that are aligned with where it is that you want to be. How you can take risks that prioritize your values and your vision, how you can take risks that help you to embrace your authentic self. Now, if that step scares you, I have good news. It doesn't need to be you jumping from point A to point B overnight.

A risk could look like you going from point A to point B. It could be, for example, let's say instead of going from thinking about starting your business to quitting your job overnight, it could be that you say, “I'm ready to start this business” to saying “I'm going to start showing up online every day on Instagram/Facebook live, even though I feel really scared”.

Or “Today I'm going to do my first story post”. Or “Today I am going to start working on a sales page”

It doesn't need to be this massive step because here's what I've learned. Little small, sometimes even seemingly meaningless steps in the direction of your dream add up and they build that momentum. Before you know it, you're even closer to your vision than you could have even imagined. So how can you begin to incorporate aligned not random, but aligned risks with your vision and embrace your authenticity?

So as you begin to compile and add all of these steps together to begin to embrace your authenticity, one of the most important things that you can do is to celebrate yourself. There is a quote that I love that goes “if there were more than one of you, you wouldn't be needed”. Hence why you are exactly you. You are made to be different, and that's on purpose and for a purpose.

I want you to think about how you can begin to celebrate every aspect of yourself. The good, the bad, the ugly, the beautiful, the failures, the setbacks, the successes, and the wins. I want you to consider how you can begin to cultivate that genuine self-love. The more you begin to work through this process and these steps, it will start to feel natural. Because you'll start to see the parts of you that are different.

On this journey, you will also start to learn to leverage those, and you'll start to see why those are a foolproof formula for you to stand out in this coaching space. Through this journey, you'll start to fall in love with who you truly are. You'll start to feel so at peace with yourself. And you'll start to be able to actively celebrate your uniqueness, your flaws, your positive qualities, and your perfect imperfections. So, I trust that these strategies have supported you in starting to understand how you can begin to embrace your authenticity.

One piece of advice that I want to give you on this journey is to be patient with yourself. Just because I share the story of me embracing my authenticity and going live and looking halfway crazy three years ago doesn't mean that there are still times today that I don't struggle with wanting to hide different parts of myself. Now, the difference is I'm just more intentional about making sure that that doesn't happen. Most of the time that forces me out of my comfort zone. Sometimes that requires me to take risks. Sometimes that requires me to do things that feel a little bit scary or a little bit intimidating.

This has helped me to not only show myself grace on the journey, but it has helped me to reconnect to embracing my authenticity. Because you see it's not a one and done, I recommit to it each and every single day. It's not that you wake up this morning, check out this blog post, try one thing and then say you’re all set.

It's a daily commitment and the shift and the transformation that takes place when you repeatedly commit to it. So, I challenge you to take some time to determine how you can be committed to embracing your authentic self. Your future self will be so grateful that you did.