Living As My Authentic Self
Hi, I’m Taryn, it’s nice to meet you. I can be described as loud and outgoing, sometimes high-strung and anxious, overly caring, mildly dramatic, and I wear my heart directly on my sleeve.
These aren’t things I’m ashamed of or feel awkward about, they’re just simply my truths.
Lately, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about my truth and what that means and how it relates to who I am and what I want. I just came back from a spring trip to Costa Rica with Startup Island where I spent a week exploring my purpose with some pretty incredible people.
One of my takeaways from the week was my need to present my authentic self to the world. See, for most of my life, I have been pretty ashamed of my anxious tendencies and my reactive nature, and how sometimes I never know when to shut up. And then that shame turns to more anxiety over how people are viewing me and whether they’re going to leave me because they think my anxiety is weird, or the fact that I’m always talking is annoying, or if I’m simply too much for them to handle.
I’ve spent all 28 years of my life worrying about these things day after day, and (surprise!) it’s really only made my anxiety worse.
Most of my problem has come with dating. I go on a first date and I’m so worried about whether they like me or if they want to see me again or if they think I’m weird that I don’t even act like myself. So by the time we get a few dates in and I start to relax and act naturally, they actually have no idea who I really am and the anxiety starts all over about whether they like me or not. And by then I’m so afraid that they don’t like me (even though they’ve given me no reason to think so) that I’ll just push them out and run away.
Are you exhausted? I am.
I’ve always been overwhelmed with this pressure to be the person others want me to be but the pressure is only coming from within myself. How could I know who someone wants me to be? And how do they know I’m not? They can only see who I show them.
The way I see it is we only have one life to live, and there are a whole lot of people in this world that we can live it with so why bother trying to impress the ones who don’t want to stick around? My week in Costa Rica started out with total strangers and ended with great friends, and I wasn’t worried once about whether they liked me or approved of me. I went into it with the idea that I would totally be myself because I wanted to get the most out of the program as possible, and if I got close to anyone, great. If not, meh, life goes on.
What I found was that being myself and presenting my authentic self actually paved the way to genuine friendships and an incredible circle of trust. There was no anxiety, no constant nagging in my head to hide all my weird little flaws and imperfections. Just love, excitement, and happiness. And isn’t that what we all want, anyway?
We’re all humans, and humans are not perfect. Everyone we meet has their own insecurities and fears, as well as strengths and talents, and we each have our own place in this world. It’s always our choice to determine how we want to present ourselves to that world, and how we want to live our lives, no matter how others may choose to view us.
