Be True To Yourself

It’s a message we hear over and over – “Be true to yourself,” and whenever someone has looked me directly in the eye and said this to me, it always hits me straight in the gut – “YESSSSS” every cell in my body cries out, “please be true to yourself!” There have been so many forks in my life where decisions have had to be made and I’ve stood at that wavering point until, thank Goodness, someone came along and told me that the only right decision is the one whereby I’m being true to myself.

It’s completely black and white – the times that I’ve followed my gut have always worked out for the best, and conversely when I ignore that inner voice, it all goes pear-shaped.

Watching the glorious Oprah on her brand new OWN Network, I was again reminded of this true-to-yourself philosophy. It’s pretty much always been Oprah’s message and her guests reflect her truth. Jay-Z was the first man to be featured in her excellent Masterclass series, and he finished the segment by saying how important it is for him to remain true to himself every step of the way. He added that this is easy to say, but not so easy to do. I agree.

The first step in being true to oneself is figuring out who you are! Can I be true to me if I don’t know who I am? Not really.  So who on Earth am I? Not always an easy one to figure out once you get beyond the superficial (I’m a mom, a writer, British, married blah blah,) even when I get down to my food/music likes and dislikes, the kind of friends I chat with on Facebook etc – none of this gets me any closer to knowing who I really am. How do I peel away the layers of the onion to reveal that shining truth?

I’ve found part of  the answer is to “take yourself home,” or take yourself back in time to when you were around 8 or 9 years old. Despite your family circumstances, what did you love to do then? What stirred up your imagination – your dreams? When I look back to how naive I was at that age, and how little I had to prove, I had the freedom to play around with things that spoke to my soul. I loved to write – oodles of poetry, plays and strange stories. Like many children, I lived in a totally make believe world. I wonder if I had been raised today with all the tech that our kids have at their fingertips, my imagination would have flourished in quite the same way? I think not.  So when I took the time to look back and rediscover what had made me tick age nine, I knew that would give me a pretty good inkling of my “truth”.

Did you have something you loved to do as a child? Did you have a flicker of a dream, which was eventually snuffed out? Taking yourself back in time and exploring your childhood dreams and desires – even scribbling them down – however outlandish they might be, may well take you closer to that kernel of truth we’re all searching for.

The other fun exercise is to time-travel forward and imagine you are very old. You’ve been lucky enough to live a very long and healthy life and now you have a little sit to lie back and reflect back on how you’ve lived your life. Did you do the things you really wanted to do? Did you give of yourself completely? Did you leave the world a richer/better place than the way you found it? Did you stand true to who you really were? This is a powerful exercise for me because we honestly never know when our last day will be – in that respect I like to try to live each day although it’s my last – which means living my deepest values. What a torture to have to look back and realize that you had short changed yourself because you didn’t think you deserved the best. So the final question to ask yourself is: What are your deepest values? The answer to this will get to even closer to your deepest truth.

A joyous life can only come to us to the extent that we align ourselves with those values and truths. It’s sometimes really hard to do this, and the true test is when things get tough and fear creeps in telling us that we have to make do with second-best or that our dreams are silly and irrelevant  – these are the very moments that we need to take ownership of our lives, stand firm and speak out. There is nothing more beautiful than a women who is true to herself.

Speaking my truth was writing a book about what I really believed in, and was trying to do in my own life. My youth was spent in the nature with a strong connection to her cyclical rhythms. I wasn’t conscious of it at the time, but that connection flowed deep in my blood. I couldn’t wait to get to the nearest city as a teen, but our truth follows us, gently tapping on our shoulder, until we either shut it out or invite it in.

I invite you to join me this year in discovering your inner truth (if you haven’t already,) and then take it to the next level by living it. According to Tory Johnson, workplace expert on Good Morning America, now is the perfect time to start your own small business. So if you are out of work or just hate what you do, give it some thought. She outlines how easy it can be to start.

I believe the angles sing  when we align with our truth – things happen and we see that God really does work in mysterious ways. I wish you a deeply fulfilling 2011, and I hope to stay connected with many of you along the way.