In my last post I was musing on Cultivating Authenticity With a Creative Practice, which ended with a word of caution along the lines of:
If we never give ourselves the opportunity to cultivate self-awareness, we can easily find ourselves walking through life unaware of where our authentic wants and needs are misaligned, and so we start to feel conflicted, lost, and yes – generally inauthentic.
It feels like something is missing… And so we begin searching.
But what exactly are we searching for?
Is it purpose? Meaning? Belonging?
Is it as simple as seeking a bit of relief from the constant internal conflict?
Whichever it is, I think that a lot of what we want – what we’re searching for – can be found within. Perhaps not a new, novel idea, but one that I think is worth exploring here.
The search outside of ourselves
When we have only a general sense of discontentment to go off of, it’s really uncomfortable. We can’t put our finger on what’s causing it or how to fix it, so we start looking outside of ourselves for solutions. Those solutions often come in neatly-presented concepts such as:
Work-Life Balance | Slow Living | Minimalism
These buzzwords are so appealing – they often feel like exactly what we need, myself included! I would throw “Authentic Living” in there as well (my deep-dive as of late).
Frequently, and understandably, we’re drawn to the image of lifestyles or lifestyle-related concepts that reflect more autonomy, more peace, less stress, less consumerism. Naturally, most of us are trying to counteract the feeling of lack of time and space for ourselves, lack of control over our daily lives, constant busy-ness, and the pressure of materialism on our personal definitions of success.
So we pour our remaining energy into researching habitual and aesthetic changes, optimistically trying out our newfound tips for creating the ideal lifestyle we want…
Yet days, weeks or months later, we find we’re still stressed, except now with fewer possessions and a general sense of guilt because we should be feeling peaceful and free now, but we’re not.
What went wrong?
We forgot to look inside
Commitment issues aside, I think we probably skipped the part where we get quiet and still and patient with ourselves, and we look inside. You, in there – what do you really need? What do you value the most? Who are you really, at your core, and what do you stand for?
And are you living in alignment with yourself?
(This musing came up while I was thinking more about my intention word for the year: “authenticity”, and I think this whole idea of authentic living works if we can do it our own way, rather than by following prescriptive guides on the subject.)
What is really missing is truly aligned intentionality with the lifestyle changes we’re making.
We might go “ah, minimalism – that’s what’s missing, that’s what I need.” But as we read up on how to live a minimalist lifestyle, what we’re often doing is perusing someone else’s minimalism recipe based on their experience, and we’re sort-of unconsciously letting a stranger tell us what our ideal lifestyle will look like and how to make it happen. We assume if we follow the guide, we’ll achieve the same result while relieving ourselves of the responsibility of figuring it out for ourselves.
Understandable, of course – the last thing we need right now is more responsibility!
Although it sounds easy, it actually becomes overwhelming. This is in part because we end up trying to make a bunch of changes all at once (ie. impatience meets a “10 Tips for Minimalist Living” article), and partly because we haven’t thought deeply about why we’re making them and what we’ll really get out of it in the first place.
Finding a deeper “why”
The conventional advice, then, is to “find your why”. Great. I want to do yoga three times a week – because I want a healthy body and a calm mind! That’s my why.
That’s a start, and a very logical and practical one. But if we are looking for a truly impactful change, one that is authentic to us and in strong alignment with who we really are, then I think we need to take it a step deeper and find out what’s going on internally for us first.
Logic is a fantastic decision-making tool, by the way, but I think it lacks depth and needs to be partnered with your feelings.
Let’s take the healthy body example and dive deeper.
If you take some quiet time to look inside, you might find some physical qualities – shallow breath, or sore joints, or stiffness and tension. What activities might address these? I know if I’m taking shallow breaths, I’d probably benefit from the controlled, grounding breaths of a yoga practice. Maybe swimming would be great for sore joints. That tension might be the culprit of my breathing pattern, so maybe that tension would be best shaken off with dance or a good run.
But if you look deeper still, I wonder if somewhere in there you feel some excitement over a particular type of movement. Is there something you’ve wanted to try since you were a kid? Did you forget about a type of movement that used to make you feel strong and powerful? Or graceful and expressive?
For me, I have some history with running. It’s become more than just a healthy body activity. It’s a metaphor, a moving meditation, and proof that I can do hard things that I previously thought were impossible for me. Running speaks to my inner drive and my affinity for discipline. I’ve discovered through just doing it (sorry Nike) that it is the exact outlet my personal brand of stress and frustration needs to settle down. I know I’ll be feeling powerful and accomplished at the end, and I love that feeling.
In moving past the logical response (I need to run because I want a healthy body), I’ve now got a truly unique-to-me “why”, inspired by my feelings, and I’ve got what I would call an “aligned” activity I can do to accomplish my initial goal.
I’m not saying you must do this for everything, nor am I saying that just doing an activity for logical reasons isn’t enough, of course it is! But this example demonstrates what deep a “why” might look like – a key factor in making any change stick. It can start with a basic want (eg. “I want to be a minimalist because clutter stresses me out”), but exactly how you execute it might depend on what you know about yourself internally, and it might look quite different from the minimalism gurus’ version.
The whole point is to find what’s authentic to you, and then honour it in your lifestyle without automatically following the “minimalist lifestyle guide” to a tee. As a bonus, this process is one way in which you can stop ignoring yourself, and is therefore an impactful act of self-care.
Just picking on minimalism for fun, by the way – I love you, minimalists!
What are we really searching for?
I think we are searching for a truly authentic lifestyle. One where we give our inner selves an ear and then a voice, and honour what comes out in our actions and the way we conduct our day-to-day lives.
We are searching for a lifestyle in which we rest when we’re tired, we work on something we believe in, and we express ourselves genuinely. One that probably does incorporate work-life balance and minimalism and slow living and all these great things that are coming out, because these are all founded in our collective needs.
But we’ll embrace these in a way that is tailored to us, rather than giving that responsibility up to someone else.
So by all means, feel free to peruse the listicles! Get inspired!
Then see if you can go deep, find your truest “why”, then implement it.
You are the artist of your life’s canvas.
