“When you find alignment, the conditions will not matter.”
– Abraham Hicks

Alignment

Alignment in life is the position of closeness between how we are living in life to what matters to us in life. If you can imagine a scenario of hanging up a picture, using two nails – one nail that represents what is happening, and the other nail representing what we wish were happening, the better the straightness on a line that we place the nails, will determine how the picture looks when we hang it on them. The picture will be lopsided if the nails are not aligned.

This metaphor represents the alignment we have in our own lives. What does our own life picture hang like? On one hand, it isn’t about stressing to get the perfect straight lined picture, because life for the most part is not perfect. It is more how comfortable are we with how it hangs? It is our own resonance to what it feels like internally which no one else can determine.

Life alignment isn’t easy to get that perfect line. Think about simply the educational path. Going through school, there was an emphasis on grades, then moving to the work force it’s not about grades but our character, then moving beyond work to retirement, it isn’t about our character but our meaning in life. How can we all be aligned when external criteria keeps changing along our life line?

Perhaps it is that we are focusing on the external criteria rather than the internal criteria. It is about using our internal landscape to guide the decisions for our life. It is about asking ourselves honestly, what is it that matters to me? How do I feel about this? What excitement or lack thereof do I notice in the decision that I have made?

Sharing with you my own experience:

My own experience has been a whole bunch of trials and tribulations. Part of being a creative human being, is always thinking of possibilities and new ideas. The outcome is not so important. Let me share with you an instance where I was not aligned to what mattered to me.

I have discovered I love to talk about the deeper aspects of life with others, and about coaching, mentoring, teaching. I love human development and life topics and it is why my kids say “mom is the spiritual parent’’. I had recently joined a Business Networking group and I had found it somewhat difficult to explain what life coaching really is. How can you explain an experience of awakening to someone? I remember asking my sister-in-law the same question “so, what is life coaching?” and it took me years to figure it out because it took me years to notice my own life transformations. So, instead of signing up in my networking group as a life coach, I signed up as a nutritional specialist. I have a basic knowledge about nutrition but I really was not a specialist nor did I have a passion to become one. That was the first sign of misalignment. In my mind, I thought I could attach the passion of life coaching to the ‘tool’ of nutrition – that if other topics came up with my clients, I would coach them through it.

Though I had a plan to use the tool of nutritional products as my primary business focus and coaching as the added on secondary, the opposite turned out. Throughout the year as the ‘nutritional specialist’, I began to feel more and more misaligned to what was my true calling. I began to notice I was not excited to talk about the subject matter. It felt like work. My true calling is to be a spiritual life coach. And as such, I have elected to change my category….which is so much more aligned to who I naturally am.

I have come to notice that misalignment feels “off”. But do I plug through the “off” feeling or surrender to it and try again? The “off” feeling represents an inner knowing that this is not really me. It is something that I can do, something I can learn how to do, but it doesn’t excite me doing it. It isn’t speaking to my soul. It may to someone else, but not to me.

Turning it over to you:

Let us explore alignment from a place of curiosity and noticing.

1. How does your life picture hang on the wall?
2. How do you come to your own tipping point when you know you are not living a life aligned to your values?
3. What would your life look like if it was aligned?
4. How would it be for you if you continued living the way you do for the next 10 years? The next 20 years? The next 30 years?

Tips and tools to hopefully help you:

1. Take notice how misalignment feels like for you and how did you arrive to this conclusion for yourself?
2. Be honest, not critical to your internal truth.
3. Find one small non-aligned thing you could let go of in your life to make room for something new that is more aligned to who you really are.

“Authenticity is the daily practice of letting go of who we think we’re supposed to be and embracing who we are.”
– Brene Brown

Authenticity

Authenticity is one of those topics that is easy to comprehend, but hard to practice. We all want to be true to ourselves and not hide behind some mask. There are social norms to uphold, expectations to fill, fears of judgment and criticism that leaves us scurrying from one masked identity to another like a squirrel in a forest.

Authenticity requires us to be our true selves, express our true words, and feel our true feelings. But what is that ‘true’ piece? That ‘true’ part of you is this inner knowing that everything has been laid out and nothing is held back. You will feel it. Along with authenticity, comes along a feeling of inner peace, because you have connected to the ‘truest’ part of you.

Some question the value of authenticity especially in the arena of interpersonal conflict. Does being authentic mean we can say or do whatever we want because that is just how we feel? Does authenticity justify judgment or criticism of another?

Being authentic means that one is true to oneself. It doesn’t have anything to do with another human being. It is being able to live in a way that aligns with one’s inherent values. If I value honesty, then saying untruths, or partial truths would feel non-authentic to me. If I value taking responsibility for mishaps, then blaming others for my mishaps would not feel authentic to me.

The balance (and the tricky part) is being able to reveal one’s authentic nature without stepping into the energy domain of another through blame, shame, or criticizing another. It is the balance of authentic self-expression while giving the respectful space to another person for their self-expression of authenticity.

Authenticity requires one to recognize one’s own ego. The ego hides our authenticity. By ego, I don’t mean being egotistic or self-centered. Rather, ego means our own inner thoughts in our mind that we are not this or not that. Our ego suggests that we are not perfect in our own imperfect way. We need to quiet down our ego mind. Without the ego taking centre stage, we move towards self-acceptance, self-compassion, self-love, and feeling that we are just being enough as we are.

Sharing with you my own experience:

Authenticity has not always been easy for me. I always valued politeness, kindness, and keeping others happy growing up. Carrying on this way into adulthood resulted in holding back my own truth, holding back my own feelings, and holding back my own words. There was always this sense of holding back. I knew it and I could feel it. It wasn’t until coaching made me aware of the health risks of not living authentically. Holding back my own authentic truth resulted in stuck energy which led to body symptoms. I took on other people’s blame, other people’s version of their truth as my truth, and other people’s well-intentioned expectations. I would say ‘yes’ to everyone, even though inside, I knew I didn’t want to say ‘yes’. All of it stemmed from my childhood of being happy if others were happy, as if my own happiness stemmed from an external source. I had it backwards.

In my adult years, I discovered that by saying my own truth without making someone else’s truth wrong, doing my own thing without needing others to do it too, or following my own path based on my own choosing, I created an inner happiness that projected outwards to make others happy. My happiness was not a RESULT of others being happy but a REASON for others being happy. By living true to myself, I discovered many more dimensions of who I am that were unknown and unexplored. Time and life experiences became my classroom to learn of more authentic aspects of myself. Being more authentic required me to step into the discomfort of voicing my own opinions while respecting the space for someone else to voice theirs so I could empathize where the open person was coming from. Being more authentic allowed others to get a clearer idea of who I am, what I stood for, what I care about and what I value.

Turning it over to you:

If you were given the space to be truly YOU, how would you show up?

What holds you back from your most authentic being?

What would authenticity release for you?

How can you step into your most authentic self?

Tips and tools to hopefully help you:

1. Notice any feeling of holding back – that becomes your clue to step forward into your authentic self.
2. Feel the discomfort and lean into it.
3. Imagine an imaginary line between you and another. Express your authentic truth up the line and give space for the other to also express. Honour their space and yours.
4. Thank the other person for telling you their truth and acknowledge that you have heard them with an empathetic ear.
5. Just as you have given the other a non-judgmental space to speak, ask for the same in return before you speak.
6. Honour thyself in the same way you honour others.

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