Do you consider yourself to be authentic?
Could you say to someone, anyone you encounter: “This is me. What you see is what you get”?
I started saying that phrase about myself back in college. “What you see is what you get.” I guess it was kinda a tag line for me. A desire to claim that I wasn’t interested in being someone else. A claim that I would at least try to always show up as me.
The problem is… I didn’t really know myself all that well back then. And when I did show up in a way that I considered to be authentically me – I second guessed everything I said or did immediately after.
Still, I returned again and again to that phrase: “What you see is what you get.” I showed up and tried again and again attempting to discover what it meant to be authentically… me.
Over the last decade, I’ve come to learn a lot about who I am and what makes me… me. Maybe it’s age or maybe it’s years of working on myself… but it’s a whole lot easier now to say the phrase “what you see is what you get” and mean it and not second guess it.
My attempts at authenticity over the years showed me a lot about what authenticity really means. I’ve learned that:
- I can’t show up authentically unless I also shows up vulnerably.
- I’ve learned that I can’t show up authentically unless I show up honestly.
- I’ve learned that when I’m vulnerable and honest and uniquely me (and stop wasting time questioning my worth) people respond better to what I have to offer.
So I’ll ask again:
Do you consider yourself to be authentic?
Can you show up to the week ahead as the wonderful, unique person you were created to be?
Can you believe that is exactly what God wants from you?
Can you believe that authentic person is exactly who God loved into being and who God has been waiting to see come forth ever since?
