Authenticity
Crass Historical Generalisations I want to make some crass historical generalisations that I think are largely true. The feminine has been devalued in western thought. (I don’t know enough to comment about other cultures. I would love to hear from others about this. Personally I would especially like to hear from those with experience of [...]
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The Usefulness of Habits In self development awareness is very important. Habits are what we do ‘automatically’ (without much awareness at all) so they seem to be almost the opposite of self development. How can they serve self development? Habits assist us by allowing our awareness to be free from what we are not interested [...]
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Perhaps I am a born teacher or learner. I am impressed by how much of who we are is learnt. We learn: to walk to speak our first language sports hobbies schooling social etiquette rules of our particular workplace and so much else There is nothing so natural to people as learning. Which leads [...]
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Today, a guest post from Harriet M Welch. It is a post about what happens when one stage of life ends and it feels like we don’t have a purpose anymore. I recently did a post about Authenticity and the Stages of Life. This post is the ‘inside story’ on what it feels like when [...]
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The last post was about change happens and sometimes we need to mourn. The complement to this is that there are some parts of us that remain fairly stable. I think there are two broad kinds of themes in our lives. The first is about our individuality (passion, interest, style) and the other is about [...]
For me our self development needs to be based on something real in our selves. There needs to be a real self that develops – not just something that we make up. For me authenticity is the key to self development: the fake doesn’t provide lasting satisfaction. But how lasting is that satisfaction? Change is [...]
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This is part two of my response to Harriet’s comment, in response to this post. Here is what Harriet said when I asked for the biggest problem people had with living an authentic life. My biggest problem with being authentic is my fear of being hurt. I hate feeling vulnerable, and I don’t trust anyone. [...]
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Trust and being hurt can be big issues in living with authenticity. When I asked people in this post the greatest difficulty they had with living an authentic life Harriet had this to say: My biggest problem with being authentic is my fear of being hurt. I hate feeling vulnerable, and I don’t trust anyone. [...]
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I think it was Victor Frankl who said words to the effect that “happiness is like a butterfly – if you chase it, if flees; if you are still then it may come rest on your shoulder”. In one way this is good sense. Frantic pursuit of the good times will mean that we are [...]
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I don’t feel blah about authenticity. But I understand if you do. Authenticity seems be everywhere at the moment. Which I would love – except that it seems to mean everything and nothing. So let me say what I mean. What Authenticity Isn’t Authenticity isn’t: Just doing what you feel like at the time. [...]
