Live Your Best Self

I want to live from my real true identity, don’t you? Living from our true selves is grounding, authentic, liberating, healthy, life-giving, stable, abundant and joyful.

This morning over coffee a dear friend and I engaged in lively chatter about women in the church and what it would look like if more women lived into their true identities. Unfortunately, many women do not live into their true identities, but live scattered, anxious, depressed, chaotic, stressed out and overwhelmed.

But…..that can change with us (you and me) right here, right now, we can start a change revolution that spreads around the world, we can be women who choose to live into our true selves, into our joy, love, strengths and gifts. We can be women who work hard to live from the best self Jesus gives us, from our true identity, from the place deep within that resonates with our soul, smiles more and sees negative less.

Life either happens to us and we we become victim to our circumstances or we work hard to transform our inner selves to live more and more fully alive each and every day. Yes, I said work hard twice! Living into our true selves requires work (see Romans 12:2 and II Cor 10:3-6).

I have lived both sides of this life….as a victim to my circumstances (and I’ve had some real bad ones) and I have worked hard to transform my miserable self to look more like the heart and abundant life that Jesus gave me.  I believe that we get to choose how we live..happy or miserable each of those states is a choice. Not easy, but a choice none-the-less.

When I told my friend I work really hard not to think negative thoughts any more, she said “isn’t that kind of in inauthentic?” (She has known me for over 20 years so she knows how important it is to me to live authentically.)  My reply went something like this, “No, I’ve actually come to believe that allowing negative thoughts to fester is actually living inauthentically because as long as we nurse those negative thoughts there is not room for good things to happen.”  The truth is that whatever you think about gets bigger. 

Whatever we choose to focus on eventually becomes our life.  If I am constantly focusing on the yuck I see then my life will become a cesspool that stinks real bad, but if I shift my mind to think about whatever is good, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely about the situation at hand then I have changed my perspective to think from my true best self and she never stinks. Right? Your true best self is kind, compassionate, gentle, smart, funny, honest, wise….and so much more.

I believe that thinking, speaking and acting negatively is actually our broken selfs announcing the need for healing. You reveal what is broken about your world to everyone around you when you think, act and speak negatively but that is not your true authentic self because she is not broken. A negative thought is not problem as long as you can quickly see it and learn how turn those thoughts over in your mind towards something that brings life and abundance and helps you live your true best self. 

Check it out for your self just today experiment with your own thoughts. Watch them without judging them just see if you can change a negative one to a positive one and see how it feels.  Here’s how I did it yesterday.  I was at the airport and the plane was late and I was tired but instead of focusing on how irritated I was (I actually felt real irritated) that the plane was late and I may miss a dinner date, I focused on how happy I was that I got to travel, how blessed I was to live in an era of airplanes that take me to see the beautiful world and how thankful I was that even though many times I’ve had a late arrival I have always arrived safely. Now that is just a small annoyance but I work hard to do this whenever I feel an emotion of displeasure. 

Once I change my thoughts then I can go on living my true best authentic self. The one that wanted to give into complaining was not my true self but the broken one wanting to be healed. Give it a try and let me know how it goes!  Living authentically is a life worth living!