5 Ways Living Your Truth Makes You Stronger
In this age of social media, pressure to perform and a plethora of environments that ask and portray massive expectations around who to be, how to be and what to be is resulting in a lot of people trying to be something they’re not.
When we buy into the security of the tribe, we are promised things like happiness, acceptance respect and success, but there is often a cost of “doing what they say.”
There is a more powerful way to the connection we all seek. Authentic empowerment is a quality born from inside of yourself. It’s being safe and secure in who you really are and what you know to be true for you, regardless of the other apples on the tree.
It requires being present, aligned and taking inspired action on one’s life. Authentic empowerment is a well spring of strength that comes from inside of us and it is nurtured and cultivated in the following ways:
1. Live Consciously
Living consciously is the awareness that we are all connected. That we are all one. It’s the understanding that what you give out, is what you get back. What you do to others is what is returned to you. Living consciously is the profound spiritual truth that I am you and you are me. That the sum of the parts makes up the whole. Every one of us is a spiritual, energetic being on an epic human adventure. We share the same energy expressed and vibrating in different forms.
2. Practice Radical Acceptance
Radical acceptance is coming into cooperation with “What Is”. It is letting go of any desire to fix, fade, move, hide, alter, deflect or change what is present and unfolding in our lives right now. Radical acceptance is the opposite of resistance. It is allowing “what is” to be “what it is”. When we can compassionately and willingly accept all of our humanness in its many diverse forms, we can then more easily accept everyone and everything around us. It is seeing ourselves and our life through the “spiritual context”, a term defined by Drs Ron and Mary Hulnick at the University of Santa Monica. Radical acceptance is an inward movement toward the higher knowing that the Soul incarnated in exactly this body, with these parents, in this country because it is with these circumstances and conditions that our earth school lesson plan unfolds.
3. Use Response Ability
It was Victor Frankl in his book “A Man’s Search for Meaning” who said, “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”. We can make a conscious choice to let go of the martyr mentality, refrain from blaming others and move into the radical acceptance of “what is”. We can recognize that every situation, circumstance and condition – no matter what they are – invite us into a more conscious way of relating to ourselves and the world. This single radical shift in awareness empowers all of our life’s experiences and removes the perception that some are positive, and others are not.
4. Be Courageous
The smallest steps, and the simplest act, all can truly require the biggest leaps of courage. Anytime we face our fear, we are transforming it. There is a magic elixir that occurs in the traversing of that invisible space between staring fear in the face and leaping through to the other side of it. What happens in that chasm is where our true gifts are born, and our entelechy is activated. Your entelechy is the dynamic code inside you, navigating the fullest realized expression of who you came to this life to be. It is in the discovery of our innate capabilities that return us to the knowing that we are so much more powerful than what we have been pretending to be.
5. Live Life on Purpose
Many of my clients say they want to “find their purpose”. This was me for more than 40 years. Searching, seeking, exploring…ultimately refusing to see what was right in front of me. Life unfolding as me. Our purpose is simply this: the birthing, the blossoming, and the becoming of our true self. When we let go of purpose as a destination, we become aware that in every moment we are fulfilling our purpose. We recognize that each choice we make, each decision we resolve, every breath we take are the many individual moments that make up the whole of our life of purpose.
Each of these ways of being are invitations into authenticity in one’s life. When living in alignment with these ways, the grounded sense of a real and true empowerment rises from within. The inner strength of a quiet, confident centeredness in oneself, leads us on our journey, regardless of any outer uncertainty or difference.
Donna Bond, M.A. is a spiritual life and business coach, author, and thought leader. After a 28-year long run as a corporate marketing executive who “had it all”, she decided to change course and get a master’s in Spiritual Psychology. Donna helps people to live with reverence by activating their entelechy - the fullest realized expression of who they came here to be, from the inside out. She and her husband, award-winning oil painter Paul Bond, live part time in Southern California and Costa Rica. You can learn more about her transformative 1:1 coaching, group classes, and workshops at www.donnabond.com.
