How to Be True to Yourself

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Have you met someone new whom after some interaction prompted you to think “Is he (or she) real?” We are quite good at sniffing out insincerity in others, but ironically we often can’t make our way out of our own deception, especially those directed towards ourselves.

But, what does being real, or true to ourselves actually mean?

Simply put, being true to yourself is about being who you are. Rather than getting caught up with imaginary fears in your mind or expectations of others, being true means resting in the simplicity of being yourself. When you are real, you experience yourself fully without internal censorship. Whereas there’s a gap when we’re disconnected from ourselves, the separation from our authenticity disappears when we are being real. Our individuality then emerges naturally as we become at ease in our own skin.

Why Should You Bother?

Don’t mistaken being real as a magic pill that will dissolve all your fears, problems and debts. It doesn’t promise that you will always be on cloud nine, and neither is it a license to be selfish and disrespectful of others.

Then, why bother? You probably think: Isn’t it scary to face the real me? Won’t others find out all my weaknesses and vulnerabilities when I show them the real me?

Let us look at some good reasons why you should stay true to yourself:

• Trying to be someone else is not only physically and mentally exhausting, it also reinforces the belief that you are not good enough — definitely not a good way to build a healthy self-respect or self-confidence.
• Not being real puts you in an precarious and insecure position where you will live forever in dread of being found out.
• Others, like you, can sniff a fake from miles away.
• As Zig Ziglar has put it well, “You will make a lousy anybody else, but you will be the best ‘you’ in existence.” We’re best at being ourselves, not someone else.
• Hypocrisy, lies, and deception only make you more confused as you start to identify with your make-believe self.
• True bliss, happiness and peace are only possible when we are real.

How You Can Be Real

How then can we be true to ourselves? Let’s count some of the ways together:

1. Solidify your core values and passions. It will be tough to stay true to yourself if you aren’t sure about what you really care about in the first place. You’ll find yourself wavering at the slightest challenge or threat simply because you don’t know what fires you up and what are the things that are negotiable in your life. Then you end up wondering why your life is so crappy. So it’s helpful to take some time to ponder over the core values that you live by and things that you really enjoy doing, and crystallize them in black and white.

   Although at first try it may appear that you’ve no values at all, don’t take that as the final answer. Everyone holds something dearly in his or her heart. If you’ve come this far in this article, perhaps honesty, credibility or respect is something which you really care about. If you need help, here’s a seed question for you: “If a great Genesis-scale flood is going to descend on earth again and you get to choose who can enter Noah’s Ark, on what ground will you use to decide who should be your travel companions?”

2. Identify your vulnerabilities. What are the times when you’re most likely to be untrue to yourself? When you’re dating someone new? During important business occasions? Or when your mother-in-law is in town? Examine your motivation carefully for each situation. Is it necessary to pretend to be someone when you’re not, or force yourself to do something that goes against your values? What is the worst that can happen if you stay true to how you really feel? Can you achieve what you want without having to sacrifice your beliefs?

3. Meditate. Without a steady mind, we are like a candle in the wind, flickering and dancing to every distraction that comes our way. Meditation is a simple but effective method to train the mind. It helps you to recognize the countless thoughts floating and drifting in your mind and trains you not to go along with them.

4. Be true to your emotions. ‘Negative’ emotions tend to make us uncomfortable, hence the moment they surface, we quickly reject, disown or change them. But as I’ve mentioned in the article on how to live in peace with emotions, our feelings carry important messages about us and are invaluable aids to finding out more about ourselves. The way we feel also tells us whether something is in conflict with our value and belief systems. If we can’t respect our feelings, how can we ever be true to ourselves?

5. Activate the invisible mode. Whenever you’re in an am-I-selling-out-my-soul crisis, try imagining you’ve the power to turn invisible. Then ask yourself: “What would I say or do if no one can see me?” Would you be speaking or acting the same way you did now? Always keep your core values in mind when you’re answering the questions.

6. Live in the moment. “Any life, no matter how long and complex it may be, is made up of a single moment — the moment in which a man finds out, once and for all, who he is.” — Jorge Luis Borges

   Your true self happens now, not a second ago or a second later. So to stay true to yourself, you need to live in the now, not in the past or the future.

7. Admit your mistakes. Everyone makes mistakes, even seemingly successful people like presidents and CEOs. But the moment we try to hide our errors, they start to take a (larger) life of their own. In the process of covering up, we also tend to create more silly mistakes. So it’s much simpler and cleaner to just acknowledge what we did wrong, see them as opportunities, not failures, to learn new facts and ideas, and apply what we’ve just learned as soon as we can.

8. Surrender to reality. Somewhat related to the earlier one, but on a wider perspective, surrendering to reality means opening ourselves to life as it is, not out of habits or limited thinking. The reason why most of us cook up a different story from reality is because we cannot handle the truth. So we try to manipulate reality by painting a different picture. That’s whitewashing. We hate it when big organizations do it, but yet we are doing it, albeit on a smaller scale, unknowingly.

   But surrendering to reality isn’t the same as asking you to be a helpless, sacrificial lamp. It essentially means, be open-minded so that you don’t end up shutting yourself out of the myriad possibilities out there and trying to mold reality into those pigeon holes in your head.

To end off, I hope you’ll derive some courage from this inspiring quote by Eleanor Roosevelt to stay true to yourself:

“Do what you feel in your heart to be right, for you’ll be criticized anyway. You’ll be damned if you do and damned if you don’t.”