KNow THYSELF
Four-Part Blog Challenge: “ATTRACTING YOUR TRUE TEAM!”
KNOW THYSELF to Reveal Your Truest Team
This week’s challenge is all about digging further into identifying your truest team of friends! Rather than looking externally for the answers, we go inward. Answering perhaps the most freeing question you might ask yourself in this lifetime:
With whom can I be 100% my most authentic self in all regards, without fear of rebuke, withdrawal of love and support, or sabotage?
When I first made my list, it was short! I realized quickly that I was spending so much of my time with friends and even family members who did not fully embrace or approve of the “real” me. So many of us are caught in this trap! And, when it happens, we naturally begin to doubt ourselves, feel lonely, sad, ashamed, or like a misfit.
But you see, when you step back far enough to see how valuable and uniquely wonderful you truly are, other people’s approval of you and the stranglehold that has on you, begin to disappear. In that disappearance, comes power – YOUR SOUL’S POWER to live a life of your creation – surrounded only by your biggest and most loyal companions! The world needs you, just as you are, and when you finally decided to show the world who you truly are, wonderful things happen: you find your real voice; you find your deep well of courage; and you find your TRUEST TEAM who will joyfully walk with your along your life path, with all its twists and turns, ups and downs!
This Week’s SOUL CHALLENGE: KNOW THYSELF to Reveal Your Truest Team
The Challenge: Constructing Your Authenticity Scale. When you are seeking your team, your tribe, your people…the key to your success is knowing, embracing, and ensuring that you are ready and willing to show them the “REAL YOU!” This challenge will help you do that. This week we will identify which people in your life love, support, and cheer you on even when you are brave enough to show them 100% of your most transparent, unique, and truest authentic self?
Preparation: Have your journal ready, pen in hand, and close your eyes. Take three cleansing breaths in through your nose and out through your mouth: counting to four on the inhale, and five on the exhale. You will also need the list of friends and family that you constructed in last week’s challenge, or you can make a new one.
Step 1: In your journal, draw a horizontal line across the bottom of one or two pages, and equally space ten hash marks to create a scale from 0% - to 100% - showing the scale at 10% increments. Leave plenty of room so you can make a list of people above the scale. It should look something like this.
!______!______!_____!_____!_____!_____!______!_____!______!______!
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%
Step 2: Using the list of friends and family from last week, or making a new one, say the name of each person, and ask yourself where they fit on the scale? You do this by saying, “What percentage of my authentic self can I reveal to this person without feeling unsafe, uncomfortable, or judged?” Don’t try to edit your initial gut reaction – just place their name on the scale and go to the next person on the list, until all are placed somewhere along the continuum.
Step 3: When you initially do this, allow it to settle in for a day or two, revisiting the initial scale often. You may even find it interesting to compare this authenticity scale with your response to last week’s challenge where you categorize these same relationships, according to the type of friendship.
Step 4. As your week progresses, journal about the results of your authenticity challenge. What patterns have emerged? How much time do you spend with people on the lower end of the scale trying to change their minds about you? How much time do allot for the people that embrace your truest authenticity? How can you improve those cherished relationships at the top of the scale, or release those that don’t serve you anymore to make more room for more people who can be your truest team?
Until Next Time,
Live Well, Love Well, Lightwell the World
