Quotes About Authenticity

True belonging is not something that you negotiate externally, it's what you carry in your heart.

Perfect and bulletproof are seductive, but they don't exist in the human experience. We must walk into the arena, whatever it may be—

First, one of the most universal numbing strategies is what I call crazy-busy. I often say that when they start having twelve-step meetings for busy-aholics, they'll need to rent out football stadiums. We are a culture of people who've bought into the idea that if we stay busy enough, the truth of our lives won't catch up with us.

Denying emotion is not avoiding the high curbs, it's never taking your car out of the garage. It's safe in there, but you'll never go anywhere.

Creativity is the way I share my soul with the world.

The irony is that when we're standing across from someone who is hidden or shielded by masks and armor, we feel frustrated and disconnected. That's the paradox here: Vulnerability is the last thing I want you to see in me, but the first thing I look for in you. If

Believe me, comparison sucks the creativity and joy right out of life.

To feel is to be vulnerable. To believe vulnerability is weakness is to believe that feeling is weakness. To foreclose on our emotional life out of a fear that the costs will be too high is to walk away from the very thing that gives purpose and meaning to living.

The profound danger is that, as noted above, we start to think of feeling as weakness. With the exception of anger (which is a secondary emotion, one that only serves as a socially acceptable mask for many of the more difficult underlying emotions we feel), we're losing our tolerance for emotion and hence for vulnerability.

I am imperfect and vulnerable and sometimes afraid, but that doesn't change the truth that I am also brave and worthy of love and belonging.

bullshit is a greater enemy of the truth than lies are. Harry G. Frankfurt, Professor Emeritus, Yale University (From his book, On Bullshit)

we dismiss vulnerability as weakness only when we realize that we've confused feeling with failing and emotions with liabilities.

Owning our stories means reckoning with our feelings and rumbling with our dark emotions—our fear, anger, aggression, shame, and blame. This isn't easy, but the alternative—denying our stories and disengaging from emotion—means choosing to live our entire lives in the dark. When we decide to own our stories and live our truth, we bring our light to the darkness.

we stop respecting and evaluating people based on what we think they should accomplish, and start respecting them for who they are and holding them accountable for what they're actually doing.

When we spend our lives (knowingly or unknowingly) pushing away vulnerability, we can't hold space open for the uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure of joy.

I felt totally exposed and completely loved and accepted at the same time (which is the definition of compassion for me).

Caution: If you trade in your authenticity for safety, you may experience the following: anxiety, depression, eating disorders, addiction, rage, blame, resentment, and inexplicable grief.

We don't have to be perfect, just engaged and committed to aligning values with action.

This is who I am. "This is where I am from. "This is my mess. "This is what it means to belong to myself.

She was everything I thought she'd be. Fierce and kind. Gentle and tough.

But success and recognition and approval are not the values that drive me. My value is courage and I was just courageous. You can move on, shame.

Buber wrote, "When two people relate to each other authentically and humanly, God is the electricity that surges between them.

In order to feel a true sense of belonging, I need to bring the real me to the table and I can only do that if I'm practicing self-love.

Practicing courage, compassion, and connection in our daily lives is how we cultivate worthiness. The key word is practice.