One thing we all have in common as humans is that we are all engaged in the same marathon, the race, the human race. We all want to cross the finish line and we all want to make something of ourselves along the way. I love that about people. It’s just that, no matter how well intended we might be, if we pick the wrong path we end up at the wrong finish line. If we pick the right path we end up at the intended finish line—the one meant for us individually.
But how do we make sure we are in our intended life and on the right road? The answer seems pretty simple to me. It is all in who we identify with. If we chose to identify with our self and our authenticity, we are on our intended authentic path; if we try to identify with everyone else and mirror them, we choose the harder path that might not get us where we want to go. It certainly will create more obstacles along the way.
When we choose the road marked authenticity, we still have trials and struggles, but we finish the race with more traits and a stronger, organized, and healthy self. Using our authenticity to navigate the struggle of the race grows our ability to support our self and most importantly like, and even love, our self for who we are and what we have been able to accomplish. It moves us forward.
If we choose the road that is manufactured it is much harder because we have to create a path or a road before we can even run the race. It is organized through fear and is escalated with the bulldozer of control instead of curiosity; it twists us and turns us and winds us chaotically through the race and leaves us exhausted and confused as to where we really are and what our finish line even looks like. We still put our time in the race, we just wind up in a completely different spot than we wanted and leaves us disappointed and alone.
I remember years ago sitting in a lecture with world renowned Dr. Stanton Samenow who wrote the book, “Inside The Criminal Mind.” He was contrasting people who I understood to be authentic and those who had created such a manufactured and egoic self that they had completely lost any ability to have empathy. He also described some who were so ego driven that they lost any sense of self regulation and observing ego. He said something that has stuck with me for years. This is how I remember it: “Self-esteem is the product of a process.”
He went on to describe that ego driven individuals have little or no ability to stick with a process. They want a quick fix, or instant gratification. I sat and absorbed that for a minute. He went on to describe that it is in the process, and the effort that is required for that process, where we gain or self-esteem. He used the analogy of a race and said if he picked us up at the starting line and drove us to the finish line to ensure that we finished first then the trophy would mean nothing to us. It would be meaningless because we didn’t put our own effort into the process. That made so much sense to me. I had been working at this point for many years as a personality profiler and I had witnessed this dynamic so many times. To me, the people I had profiled that really took the time to understand themselves and use their authenticity to push through the human race one step at a time, patiently learning to love and support themselves, had reasonable amounts of self-love and self-esteem. Those who just wanted to be liked or admired right then and there, doing whatever they had to do to be accepted by others (outsourcing their acceptance) seemed to be plagued with self-doubt and loathing.
That is why at Human Art we have been focusing on authentic self vs manufactured self. We have talked about how each design works in this dynamic. Now I just wanted to punctuate how important it is to stay in your lane of life; run the race through your authentic personality and design, and let others run the race in theirs. Using your authenticity, you will find yourself ahead of others at one point and behind others at another. But you will also see that it doesn’t matter because running at your pace and in your way is the very process that is going to bring you optimal results. It is your time that you run it in, it is your story that makes the finish so wonderful, and it is what you see and discover along the way that will have meaning to you in a way that no one else will understand. It is literally between you and your maker. It is all about what you make of it.
I encourage you to jump in and find the authentic path for you. Some of the adventure in life is walking up to the starting line and pondering what lies ahead on your authentic road and then run! Keep running, sometimes fast sometimes slow, but just keep moving ahead. Take in the process and be curious. Love yourself along the way, and love others as well. Don’t judge your time and don’t judge others’ time. Just accept the journey and the distance of the race–the human race. And while you are running, remember, everyone is a masterpiece.
Brook
RELATED POSTS:
Manufactured Self vs. Authentic Self: What’s the Difference? (includes a description of the Saturated design)
Manufactured Self vs. Authentic Self: The Whitened Difference
Manufactured Self vs. Authentic Self: The Grayed Connection
Manufactured Self vs. Authentic Self: The Blackened Fix