Here’s something I wish I had understood earlier in my life…. every day that you are not being authentic to yourself is day of your life that you don’t get back. I know that’s probably a hard thing to hear, but since we’re doing difficult truths, let’s go with another…. Every day you are not being authentic to yourself makes it just that little bit harder to make the changes necessary to be authentic.
Such is the interest rate of time.
Turning 52 recently seems to have been some kind of a threshold for me. I’ve been doing a lot of soul searching as I realize that I haven’t yet lived the life, and more importantly made the impact, that I feel like I want to make. While I’ve come further than the circumstances of my birth would have suggested, I still have this stirring in my soul to do more. A lot more.
And a large part of that is to live my life more authentically.
Which can mean different things to different people. For me, I think it means having harder conversations, as well as learning to find my voice in a way that respects the desire of my heart to be kind, while also letting the stronger side of me come out to play occasionally. I've realized that in striving to be ‘good’, I've actually sacrificed some of what it means to be me.
And that’s kind of a difficult balance to achieve.
I’ve been learning lately that I've been out of balance with myself in my attempt to serve, and I've been neglecting my own needs, let alone my own wants. When you combine growing up in a country where ambition and thinking you had something worth saying were considered distasteful, finding my voice through this writing has been an incredible blessing.
But I still struggle with the concept of who this work is leading me to become.
Yet all of this is framed against the backdrop understanding that the clock for me is ticking. Time has this funny way of luring you in with a ‘lower interest rate’… the idea that you’ve got years ahead of you. Then all of a sudden there’s a balloon payment when you realize that tomorrow is not promised, and even the rest of this day could be up for debate.
I’ve discovered that the longer you play with time, the more it charges you.
Which means that the longer you hold back finding your own voice, and your own pathway, you’re paying a greater interest rate in terms of pain and suffering. Please don’t misunderstand me, making the changes in your life to respect who you are, and to find your authentic voice, is not easy, and it’s not without bumps along the pathway.
It’s just that the sooner you get going on your work, the easier that journey is, and the greater the payoff is when you get there.
Because life doesn’t play far when it comes to the interest of time. You don’t get extra credit by sacrificing your voice on the altar of someone else’s feelings. You sure as hell don’t get a ‘get out of struggles free’ card by not living in a way that makes your heart sing. Every single day that I haven’t been 100% myself is a day I’ll live to regret if I don’t become who it is I want to be.
And like I've written before, regret is a poison you never want to taste if you can avoid it.
Some of you this week have reached out to explain how you feel lost, and can’t seem to find a sense of authenticity, much less an idea of who you really are. To those of you, I would implore you to begin the struggle of finding out who you are, and living in a way that makes you feel alive in your soul. If you’re not sure how to do that, give me a little time, because I’m working on something that I think might help you.
More on that soon.
But for now, may I ask you to respect yourself enough to do something kind for yourself today. It doesn’t have to be much, but every little investment you make for your soul will help to offset the interest that life, and the passing of time, are charging up against you.
Every day that you don’t live in alignment with who you really are has a cost.
And I’d like to help you avoid paying it if you can.
— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings