Being True to Yourself

I am so encouraged by the positive reaction I am receiving to my “Vampire Thinking©” series of articles. Many of you have written to me to share your personal stories about the positive changes you are making as a result of understanding your self-incriminating behaviors. You are becoming committed to ending your self-sabotage once and for all. Many of you want to bring into your life the wonderful opportunities and relationships you have been missing. In the spirit of what is working for all of you, this article will focus on how “Being True to Yourself” can be a way to eliminate more of your Vampire Thinking© tendencies.

Not being true to yourself can take many forms. The most commonly reported self-sabotaging behaviors are wanting to please people, fear of rejection, inability to commit, and expecting reprisals. If you lump these together and take a look, you will see that they all have one thing in common: fear. If you then look beneath the fear, you will see another common thread: lack of confidence and self-acceptance. When you are afraid to be yourself, you masquerade as someone else and typically do a very poor job of it. You are you, and not the person you are pretending, or hoping to be. People can see through your facade so that when it fails, you feel worse than you did before.

The truth you know but discount is that you are capable, lovable, and worthy - that is until the vampires get to work in your conscious mind. You knew that about yourself at 5 years old and may have even still known it at 8 or 9. But somewhere along the line you lost your relationship to that confident, uniquely talented true self, and began to feel not worthy and not good enough. Soon this belief and perspective had invaded and infected your entire life.

This is not an uncommon affliction. In fact most people experience this lack of confidence in themselves on some level; it’s not just you or I who have to struggle with it. I’m sure even Oprah wakes up with it every day. The key to understanding your Vampire Thinking© is to begin to understand how not being true to yourself due to feeling not worthy has created a fertile field for all of your Vampire Thinking© tendencies to grow and flourish.

You commit forgery and let the vampires in when you pretend to know more than you actually know; when you don’t tell the truth for fear you will be rejected; when you work exhaustively to make other people like you; when you don’t take a stand for what you believe in; and when you live in fear people will discover you are a fraud. For some crazy reason, we seem to prefer to let ourselves down rather than be a success in the world.

The good news is that because you are human, you not only can hope for salvation from this negatively biased perspective on yourself, but you can also work toward that outcome. The more conscious you become of what is behind your lack of self-worthiness and lost confidence, the more you can take the right actions to embrace “your true destiny” before it’s too late.

The following steps will help you get started in:
(1) Rediscovering the unique role you are here to play in this lifetime;
(2) Regaining your lost relationship to who you truly are and always have been;
(3) Renewing your confidence and willingness to take bold action.

Step 1:
Divide a piece of blank paper in half, down the middle lengthwise. On the left hand side at the top write: “Where I tell the Truth” and on the right side at the top write: “Where I tell Lies”. Fill out each column being totally honest with yourself.

Step 2:
Take the insights you gained from the previous activity and turn them around, going from limitations to strengths.

For example:
“I don’t share my honest thoughts and feelings with others and lose opportunities for validation”
to
“I chose to share myself honestly and openly in all of my important relationships.”
or
“I make excuses about being late and I let people down”
to
“I take pride in being a reliable employee, spouse and friend”

Step 3:
Informally interview friends, family and co-workers on the subject of being authentic and how they perceive you in that role.

For example, you can ask:
“Do you think I am always honest?”
“What do you think I can be dishonest about?”
“What do you most appreciate about me?”
“What factors limit or get in the way of our relationship?

I hope this gives you some ideas about how to get going on becoming a more authentic you with all the benefits of love, unconditional acceptance and self validation that come with it.