Authenticity and expression guide our relating
Your authenticity and expression guides your relating
Insights from Chapter 6 of my book The Joy Of Authentic Expression into the type of happy and fulfilling relationships that can be created with the consciousness, love, and adequacy we have been cultivating. Let’s take a look at what our authenticity and expression can look like in our relationships with our village, our work, and our lover.
Hint: They are all the same - how we relate to ourselves is the same as how we relate to the world. Our expression of our integrity is demonstrated in our presence and our demeanor - our inner confidence is recognized and felt by others.
With your deepening confidence, you will demonstrate that you are a centered and capable person in everything that you do and attempt. We are patient with ourselves and others as we carry ourselves with a wealth of time and equanimity. We demonstrate that we are not attached to any specific outcome, in our personal or professional lives – but especially with our lover. Our high self-esteem and determination coupled with our inner peace and open-heartedness makes us very interesting and attractive to others. This confidence along with our playful and loving nature is a rare combination in society.
- We exude optimism for our continued fulfillment and success, and we encourage and inspire others to be their best.
- We exhibit a leadership capacity which we can comfortably step into if needed.
- We are not driven by ego.
- We prioritize our needs and get them met.
- We show up as an adequate and open hearted person and we do not need to show off or be the center of attention.
- We approve of ourselves and are not “needy” for the approval of others.
Margarita writes:
“The quality of the lover we attract relies on the confidence and authenticity we exude. If we choose our lover out of desperation, they are likely not going to be a good fit for us. We want to embody our adequacy and confidence, so we can make a conscious choice when it comes to our lover.” Brilliant!
Through our sense of adequacy we maintain our internal validation, and we cultivate independence from the good or bad opinion of others. We are aware of our accomplishments, and we challenge ourselves “on purpose” regularly among our friends and colleagues. We can therefore more easily challenge ourselves and recognize (and receive) the full amount of praise that we need. It’s a challenge in itself to build this mindfulness. It’s yet another challenge to maintain it throughout our day, the week, the month, and the year. But it’s doable and it’s worth all the effort!
It requires a bit of the discipline of the warrior as we have been describing:
-Choosing challenge over comfort in our effort towards contentment
-Understanding all of our needs and diligently working towards getting them met.
-Remaining conscious of our efforts on our purpose.
-Understanding the power of our attention and how it is one of our greatest assets; we can apply our attention with intention on our purpose to create love and freedom. Conversely, if we do not apply our attention we might squander our resources or worse, it can erode our wellness in disempowerment or a struggle with the ego.
Our mindfulness around our adequacy and our empowered perspective on ourselves and others helps us keep our cup of wellness constantly being refilled in gratitude for the love all around us. All the forms of love which nurture and support us, from the Earth to our loved ones in our village, are vital to our success. We express gratitude for our lives and for the influence and support of others by working towards our deeper purpose. Our purpose gives us this clear direction towards love and freedom, and with our grounding, we are poised to receive and share love in abundance.
Joe? Are you sure this is going to help me in my relationships?
Yes: the world is a place of abundant opportunities and when we begin seeing ourselves as good enough and lovable we being noticing that connecting with others who inspire us to do our best is the path to our authentic expression and success.
Releasing resentment
Let’s all release all forms of resentment towards others. Resentment and victimhood are close cousins. In a scarcity mindset, someone else is always holding power over us. Either it’s God who must have dealt us a bad hand or the world doesn’t have enough for us to thrive or some group of people is keeping us down. We get pissed off and resentful as we take it personally and lower our estimation of ourselves through this disempowered perspective of limited possibilities; we limit ourselves in a position of victimhood. Yuck!
So yes – we must release all forms of resentment from every cell in our body in order to see things as they really are. Release all resentment towards others and towards your parents and towards every person you ever wanted to date but who was not interested. Only when we release resentment can we see the love that is there for us to experience and enjoy in the world.
I’ve written about this and explored it for 15 years. It’s part of the wisdom that what we put our attention on grows. If we don’t believe there are opportunities out there, then we won’t go looking for them, and we won’t even notice them walking by us!
I’m suggesting it’s the same thing with our resentment. If we’re pissed off because we didn’t get love, then we are unlikely to appreciate the people who have loved us or even recognize those who are actively interested in loving us now.
If we put our attention on what is missing, then we will remain stuck in discontentment. This is a misuse of our greatest gift of our attention. Let’s help others and ourselves to see the bright side in all situations - to remain fully creative and empowered to apply our attention to cultivate greater love and freedom.
Similarly, we must open our hearts in order to let love in. Refill your cup as we have been describing. Just as we cannot see the abundance around us through our perception of scarcity – we cannot see the love that is available through the dark clouds of these layers of resentment.
Forgive everyone who you feel has wronged you. Forgive yourself for your mistakes. Ask the world for forgiveness for the wrongs you have committed. If you loved someone, and they did not reciprocate your feelings, forgive them and release all ill will. As we have been discussing, there are hundreds of reasons why someone might or might not be interested in us at any particular moment. It is our ego which interprets our success or failure and tries to protect us from feeling inadequate by concocting an inaccurate story about our value. It is our ego that limits our growth and our ability to understand the truth about ourselves, the truth about others, and the world. If someone else is not interested in us, that is fine. Let’s not take it personally. It doesn’t mean we are unlovable or inadequate. Move on and meet some new people who appreciate your gifts and what you have to offer. That’s where we will thrive!
In resentment, we destroy the love we have inside and block new love from entering. In the world of abundance, there are always openminded and openhearted people to connect with, but they might not look like what our ego dictates they should. Recognizing abundance often requires us to release our attachments to how we think things “should be”.
Once we adjust our perspectives we will begin to recognize the abundant opportunities for thriving and success that exist around us. Success and thriving will require some creativity and effort, but with our revised perspectives on ourselves and others we will have greater access to our creativity. The shift in our optimisms boosts our motivation and enthusiasm as we become more determined to express our truths. Our gratitude practice makes it easier too - gratitude helps us cultivate optimism and recognize the beautiful opportunities for connection and expression around us.
To perceive the abundance around us, we must release fear. Scarcity is a fear-based perspective where we do not believe there is enough goodness in the world for us. It is compounded by our inaccurate internal shame around our progress and inaccurate ego projection of inadequacy. This keeps us stuck!
No worries - I have summarized these concepts and assembled the tools in my books to as a way of saying “thank you for my life”. We can help each other step out of scarcity and fear and into our expression of Love and abundance.
Download my books for free at
www.LoveCoachJoe.com
Thank you,
Joe
