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Simply Authentic...Your Soul Voice is Calling. Your Authenticity as a Model for Others

Writer's picture: Kimberly GenlyKimberly Genly

Your Authenticity as a Model for Others There is no duty we so much underrate as the duty of being happy. By being happy we sow anonymous benefits upon the world. –Robert Louis Stevenson Don’t we all know deep within that being happy is a good thing…even at our most unhappy? And we feel happier when we are around happy people. During my most challenging times as a step-mom (for over 12 years), I knew this in my heart and still managed to suck at it – being happy – a surprisingly large amount of the time. A lot of us suck at being authentic in relationships. Perhaps especially around people (like children) we feel we need to teach, who can also be the most likely to emulate us. Which is pretty back-asswards, when you think about it. I suppose this is why people grow up convinced they will do everything the exact opposite of their parents. Which typically doesn’t work either, in the long run. At certain points, many of us have expended so much energy trying to make other people happy, we end up tense and unhappy ourselves, which does just about as much to please as poking a hole in a bicycle tire so the bike will fit into that tight space in the garage. Approximately as effective as expecting other people to change for the benefit of our happiness. Whatever we say, do, or even think, can be a gift of our (hopefully happy and tension-free) authenticity to the people around us. They can absorb our experience, from our example, without us having to “teach” a thing. Doesn’t that feel like a relief?! If you’re a parent, you have a good idea what your children absorb from you because of their behavior. If you’re a teacher, the degree to which you reach your students shows up in their attendance and results in the classroom. If you’re in a romantic relationship, you emotionally know how your lover is responding before they say a word or you ask a question. On that end, here’s an excerpt from one of my favorite books and favorite writers: Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life. My son, Sam, at three and a half, had these keys to a set of plastic hand cuffs, and one morning he intentionally locked himself out of the house. I was sitting on the couch reading the newspaper when I heard him stick his plastic keys into the doorknob and try to open the door. Then I heard him say, “Oh, shit.” My whole face widened, like the guy in Edvard Munch’s Scream. After a moment I got up and opened the front door. “Honey,” I said, “what’d you just say?” “I said, ‘Oh, shit,’” he said. “But, honey, that’s a naughty word. Both of us have absolutely got to stop using it. Okay?” He hung his head for a moment, nodded, and said, “Okay, Mom.” Then he leaned forward and said confidentially, “But I’ll tell you why I said ‘shit.’” I said Okay, and he said, “Because of the fucking keys!” I cannot promise I have never sworn in front of an acting or voice student. Just sayin’. Do you know how to give folks what they most, most, most want from you without even asking what it is? In all regards, just be yourself. That’s what they were after when they manifested you into their lives. Whoa! –The Universe www.tut.com (Thoughts become things…choose the good ones®.) Authentically Yours, Laura

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