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How to Build an Authentic Life

Alaa Jerbi

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Warning: This is an 11-minute read article. So grab a coffee, tea, or whatever you fancy and sit down 😉 If you don’t have time, you can bookmark it for later. With that aside, let’s begin!

Four years ago, I was stuck.

I was living like shit. Eating, sleeping, studying, and repeating. I barely had a life outside of high school.

I was lazy, unhealthy, and a little overweight. I had Moobs (short for man boobs — add that to your dictionary) and felt anxious in my body.

I was also very lonely. Despite knowing a lot of people thanks to my extroverted nature, I barely had any real friends.

I would go out sometimes but with people I didn’t really like nor trust, hating every moment of it because I knew I deserved better. I blamed luck for not bringing me the perfect friends with whom I could share my highs and lows.

Being a person who enjoys social interactions, I never had problems making friends. However, I didn’t know how to build real connections with the “friends” that I made. And that left me surrounded by people yet alone.

I also suffered from a poor self-image. I envied those who achieved great things in their lives and wished if I can be like them.

I knew there was something wrong. I knew I needed to do something because loneliness was eating me alive and my weight was decreasing my lifespan.

Saying goodbye to my old people and entering a whole new world called college was not helping me in any way too.

Someday while browsing the net, I came across Mark Manson’s blog (before he became a best-selling author). That was when everything changed.

Mark empathizes that the way to live an authentic life and build meaningful relationships is through this special quality called “vulnerability”.

He defines vulnerability as the act of expressing oneself with its imperfection openly and unapologetically. It’s the state of being your true self and living according to what is right to you, without shame or fear of being judged.

That’s when I became interested in this vulnerability thing. I decided that I need to give it a try. I had nothing to lose anyway.

Fast forward to today, I can confidently say that vulnerability has completely changed my life:

  • My confidence has increased tremendously. I’m no longer afraid to be myself and stand for what I believe in.
  • I’m no longer in a rush to prove myself to others. I’m taking my time achieving my own goals at my own pace.
  • I’m more active than ever. I lost weight, built some muscle and feel much more confident in my body.
  • I have made some cool friends who believe in me, keep me company, and constantly push me outside my comfort zone.
  • I can openly express myself without feeling ashamed of anything (the fact that I’m writing this article is proof). I no longer hide from my emotions and weaknesses. I learned to embrace them and accept them as a part of being a human.
  • I learned to go after what I want boldly and unapologetically.
  • I’m actively experimenting with myself and trying everything that sparks my interest.

In a nutshell, I’m living an honest and authentic life that is according to what I think is right. Not to other people’s definition of what is right.

A lot of things have happened in the last 3 years. There was a lot of struggles and painful periods, but I pushed through them and grew stronger as a result.

But enough talking about me, there is something more important we need to discuss.

The Life We Didn’t Choose

Most of us go through our lives taking the road of safety and convention. Doing exactly as what we are told by figures we consider to be superior like parents, teachers, society…etc.

We play the safe game and never question whether we really like it or not.

If I give you a ball and tell you to shoot it as far as you can. Then pick it up, go back to the starting position and shoot it again. You’ll do it a few times, maybe you’ll spend an hour on it if you’re persistent (and have no life). Eventually, you’ll grow bored and go home.

If, however, I give you a ball and ask you to come up with a game on your own. You create the rules. Go ahead and be creative and make your own ball game. Then invite your friends for a match.

I bet all my savings that even if your friends disliked this game, you will never grow bored of it because it’s a game you created with your own rules. Your own authentic creation.

That’s exactly the same thing with life. If we live a life that was handed to us by others and which we didn’t choose, we will never feel fulfilled and we’ll start hating ourselves for it.

We’ll start to think we’re failures because we don’t win at the game we were given. We’ll try hard to succeed, only to realize that we don’t even want to.

For instance, I used to think that success is all about achieving academic excellence. Being brought up by parents who finished their education and worked hard to bring food to our table has influenced their thinking about success and mine as a consequence.

It was until I finally decided to question my old life that I really did see the fault in this thinking. I respect everyone’s view and I believe that education is important for the development of a well-balanced individual. But I dare say that after high school, it becomes merely a way to get a job and doesn’t offer much growth.

Anyways, the point is if we still measure ourselves to a life we didn’t choose, we’ll never feel like we can be successful. And even if we do succeed, it will be a short-lived dopamine high before we start questioning if that was even worth it in the first place.

It’s time we turn the tables on the game we were handed and decide to create our own game rules instead.

And that is only possible through vulnerability.

On Being Vulnerable

Photo by Josiah Gardner on Unsplash

According to Google, vulnerability is the quality or state of being exposed to the possibility of being attacked or harmed, either physically or emotionally.

Since we no longer live in caves, we are interested in the “being exposed to emotional attack” part here.

You see, questioning the safe way and deciding to create your own is hard. It’s so hard actually that you’ll suffer a lot from criticism, rejection, judgment and even self-doubt.

Being vulnerable means that you understand this and are willing to pay the price to get to where you want.

Let me repeat that again, vulnerability is being okay with getting rejected, ridiculed, judged, and in some cases, accused of madness.

Anything in life that is worth doing involves being exposed to emotional pain.

Standing up for yourself leaves you exposed to ridicule and judgment.

Asking your crush out leaves you exposed to rejection and heartbreak.

Sharing your secrets and feelings with your friends leaves you exposed to envy and disloyalty.

All those are painful emotions. But the acts are worth it.

If you don’t stand up for what you believe, you’ll be a doormat and will never get the respect you want.

If you don’t ask your crush out, you’ll waste a lot of time fantasizing about someone who may or may not reciprocate your feelings.

If you don’t share yourself with your friends, they’ll never trust you enough to become your real buddies (a secret I learned the hard way).

All those are vulnerable acts because you are ‘exposed’ to emotional pain every time you do them.

The more worthwhile the act is, the more vulnerable it will leave you, thus the greater the exposed pain and potential for growth.

More worthwhile = More vulnerable = Greater pain = Greater growth

So, how can vulnerability help you create an authentic life?

Any authentic life involves around doing activities that are authentic to the person involved. By their nature, authentic acts are vulnerable acts because they require that you risk embarrassing yourself and looking stupid to others every time you do them.

To put it in a simple framework, an authentic life consists of 3 main areas:

Authentic Lifestyle

Authentic Action

Authentic Communication

Let’s go through each one of them in more details.

Authentic Lifestyle

It’s literally anything that makes you unique and differentiates you from the masses.

Your hobbies, the clothes you wear, the food you eat, your music taste, whether you watch Game of Thrones or Chernobyl, your favorite sport, your job/study field, your ambitions and dreams, your opinions about the world, your philosophy, the friends you hang out with, the books you read, your volunteering experience, …etc.

If you have little to no care for the above things (apart from the GOT or Chernobyl thing which you don’t need to care about — I don’t), then you really got some work to do.

What are your hobbies? Photography? Guitar? Maybe rock climbing? How about camping? Take your time to explore various activities. The possibilities are endless.

If you think there is some area that needs improvement in your lifestyle, start searching for ways to improve it. Use the internet to your advantage (Quick fact: do you know that you can use the internet to browse websites other than FB/Instagram/Youtube? Trust me, a lot of people don’t know that).

Remember that those things are vulnerable because you’re challenging yourself to grow and learn more about the world around you. You’re cultivating new opinions, challenging your own limiting beliefs and replacing them with healthy alternatives.

Authentic Action

This is where you’ll actually build your vulnerability muscle (aka courage).

This area includes activities that get you out of your comfort zone and expose you to great emotional pain.

It may include:

  • Asking your crush out (and accepting her/his response graciously and moving on rather than wasting time in fantasy).
  • Cutting off bad relationships and toxic people
  • Forcing yourself to socialize more and meet new people
  • Joining a gym and embarrassing your way out of the badly-designed machines (currently happening to me)
  • Taking leadership roles within your club/organization/job…etc
  • Exploring a new career/study field
  • Starting a business (if that’s what you’re into)
  • Talking in front of a group of people

Basically, it’s about going boldly after what you want.

Remember that your vulnerability/courage muscle is just like a real muscle. The more you use it, the stronger it becomes. So start small and keep gradually challenging yourself and exploring your limits.

I promise you, by regularly training your courage muscle, things that once felt impossible to do will slowly start to become less and less intimidating.

Authentic Communication

Here comes the hardest part of all the three.

What do I mean by Authentic Communication?

Have you ever felt so self-conscious when talking to someone that you start to stutter or in an attempt to not embarrass yourself by saying something stupid, you don’t say anything at all?

It sucks. We all have experienced that. Especially when talking to a person we admire or secretly crush on, it can intensify and become real torture! You start to question where has your personality been when you needed it the most or why are you such a failure you can’t talk properly to the person in front of you?

On the other hand, have you ever experienced having a spontaneous conversation with someone that words just flew out naturally without you caring about a thing? You know, when you felt completely present and your head was minding its own business and not nagging at you in the background? You joked, teased, played, and expressed yourself authentically when you were in this state.

What is the difference between the two scenarios? It’s how you think about the situation.

In the first scenario, you were putting the other person on a pedestal and you worried if you can’t impress him/her. You started to see the conversation in a logical way using your brain to tell you what’s the next best thing to say/do in order to come closer to your goal of making a good impression and avoid getting rejected.

In the second scenario, you let your creative side take care of everything. You didn’t worry about “conquering the conversation” or “scoring points” because you didn’t see it in a logical way. You didn’t worry about getting rejected or saying something weird. You were just being yourself, saying what’s on your mind even if it may expose you to getting rejected (again, being vulnerable).

Ironically, this would actually make you leave a far better impression than you would if you take it logically.

You see, human relationships are based on emotions. How you make people feel is far more important than ‘what you bring to the table’. There is a reason why a comedian has more followers and fans than, say, a scientist.

Emotions aren’t logical. They are to be felt and not to be processed. Thus it doesn’t make any sense to try to build real life-long relationships through braining your way to people’s hearts.

The only way to attract new relationships and nurture existing ones is through emotions.

You elicit emotions in other people by truly expressing yourself, openly, unashamedly.

By becoming spontaneous and uninhibited, you open doors to amazing conversations that would never occur if you tried to plan your words.

Showing who you are, exposed, uninhibited, is the only way to truly change your relationships and life in general.

By becoming good at expressing your emotions, you learn how to elicit emotions in the people of your life and strengthen your relationships as a result. That’s Authentic Communication.

Now, how do you express yourself authentically?

Again, by accepting that rejection, ridicule, and judgment are inevitable.

You know the classic truth “Not everyone will like you”. I’d like to take it further and add “And that’s okay!” to it.

Transitioning from a people-pleaser who is always agreeable to someone who is unpretentious and says what’s on his mind is hard at first. Because you’ve got to give up on the need to be liked by everyone. No one, apart from little cute babies, is adored by everyone. You got to shove this fact into your damn skull and learn to live with it.

But it’s not bad, really. When you express yourself fully and without inhibitions, you indirectly say to the world “I’m an amazing person, as unique as a unicorn. Take me or leave me, I’m fine anyways.” This will result in one of these two scenarios:

  1. Some people will dislike you (inevitable)
  2. A lot of people will love you so damn much

Instead of being a people pleaser and end up on a third scenario where “no one loves you nor dislikes you”, you’re setting yourself to meet your own people, those who are proud to be with you and enjoy your company to the fullest.

I am glad I made the effort to find my people. I made some enemies along the way but again, the result is worth the price.

So be a unique guy/girl, say weird things, ask stupid questions, ask deep questions, tease and be playful with others. You’ll filter those who are so boring to appreciate your uniqueness and keep those who will love you until the end.

Final thoughts

If you’re reading this, that means that you made it through this long text, Thank you very much!!

As we’ve seen, the path towards building an authentic life is through putting yourself into situations that leave you vulnerable to emotional pain.

Living an authentic life requires that you work on the three major areas: Authentic Lifestyle, Authentic Action, and Authentic Communications.

Keep in mind that the point here is not to to be perfect in all the three, but to strike a balance between them.

In the end, choosing to go against the current and design your own game rules is difficult. Not everybody is ready for it.

Nevertheless, I hope I encouraged you to take a deeper look at your current life and see if it lacks your personal touch. If that’s the case, boy, you got some work to do!

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Learning about Myself and the World one experience at a time ♥ Read more from me at www.alaajerbi.com

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Chapter 3 : Odysseus, The Fever of war.

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The heavy wooden door slowly opened to a vast candlelit hall. My gaze slowly adjusted to the dancing lights as they shimmered and burned on the tall onyx walls. The lack of a throne and the absence of courtsmen were the only things that shifted the thought of it being a room of royalty, yet everything else pointed to such. The hall seemed to go on for miles and nothing indicated an end to it, and what seemed to be a hundred tapestries hung down on either side of me. Their presence was mighty, as the colours of every tapestry were highlighted by the flame of the massive sconces that adorned the walls. They radiated life and I half thought they could speak, until they did.

 

All tapestries were knit with a scene of a heroic story, and as the door closed behind me, the eyes on every character of each story shifted towards me. The silence of the hall broke as they all started to whisper in unison. I must return to Ithaca, shrieked a man on every tapestry that seemed to be a part of all of them. The scene made me jolt with shock, but eventually my ears were accustomed to the murmur of the pictures and I made myself walk to see what secrets they hold.

 

The first tapestry on my right depicted a young man in his early twenties standing beneath a tall olive tree. His long auburn hair draped broad muscular shoulders that portrayed a life of labour and his beard framed a distinctive square jaw. His crimson tunic was tied to his waist with a golden belt and his black hooded cape brushed the hill he stood on as he looked down on a great field filled with cattle.On his back hung a mighty oaken bow with gilded tips and a quiver full of arrows. His eyes flamed with a sense of wits and cunning, and as locked his eyes with mine, he seemed to read into my soul. He smiled amicably as he started to speak.

“Greetings, friend. Do you require guidance?”

“Guidance is the only thing I require. But first, may I ask you who you are? I must admit your appearance is quite puzzling.” I answered, looking forward to his response.

“My apologies.” laughed the man, “I am not the shepherd you might think I am, if only that were true. I am Odysseus, Son of Laertes and Prince of Ithaca.”

“And why does someone of royalty need to tend to goats and sheep?” I asked as my intrigue grew.

“If you spoke to a prince of Mycenae in this manner, they would have your tongue in pieces before the end of your sentence.” replied Odysseus smiling, “But this is not Mycenae. My father taught me to know my land in order for me to rule it. Besides, I grew fond of these fields, the peace helps me think.”

“And what trouble do you have on your mind?” I asked.

“The war, my dear friend. A great war is coming and I am to be asked to hold a vow I took nigh on ten years ago. To be truthful, I am not keen on fighting. I am accustomed to the dull life of Ithaca and I do not wish to die only for bards to sing about me to kings I do not know. Heroic deeds are for the foolish and the mad.” sighed the prince as he answered.

 

But you are dead, I thought as I smiled sadly to the young hopeful soul of Odysseus. I decided not to broach the subject and I started walking down the hall to see the rest of the tapestries. The whispers grew louder as I slowly strolled and looked at the marvels of Odysseus’ life. One portrayed the prince wrestling with a boar that had his tusk thrusted deep into his leg. His first taste of battle, I thought bitterly. Another showed Odysseus with his great bow in his arms and an arrow piercing the eye of a wolf sixty yards away. Quite a man, I remarked and my eyes darted to a tapestry showing two men that looked like nothing but the highest of kings, puzzled at the look of Odysseus as he seemed to feign madness. What war can be so dreadful to make a prince act like a fool? I pondered, then I saw the one right next to it, with the picture of the prince ending his charade as he looked at his young children standing in front of a running carriage.

 

And so Odysseus took up arms and armour and sailed to war. My heart broke bit by bit as I saw the once Shepherd Prince of Ithaca grow wearier and warier as the years turned. His auburn hair started to whiten little by little as new scars marked his body on every new tapestry, each with its own story, and the whispers grew into screams with every step of my walk. I saw him wrestling heroes thrice his size and locked in arms with a dozen warriors. He appeared calm when other kings were in fits of rage and he looked stern when disciplining his men. As the war made other kings into heroes, it made Odysseus into a soldier.

 

I walked further down, witnessing the atrocities of a war that never seemed to end. Visions of dismembered bodies and rotten flesh made my skin crawl as I saw what the gods have inflicted upon the greek. I saw plagues turn kings into hollow corpses and bring the youth to their deathbeds before they saw the world. Dreams shattered and hopes crumbled and Odysseus stood vigil, and slowly his soul kept on fading. 

 

Then I stood staring at the mighty Trojan Horse, standing high on the ruins of Troy. the city burned and Odysseus’ eyes burned with it. The Best of the Greeks, he was named after the death of Achilles, and he wore the title like a badge of honour. The war went on for ten bitter years and what would become of the Shepherd Prince was a matter I was aching to discover.

 

My feet began to pick up pace as I made my way down the hall. I must return to Ithaca, rang like bells in my head, half driving me to madness, and the fires started to dim as Odysseus set sail and embarked on his journey home. I could see a thousand dreams in his broad smile and the laughter of his men, but his eyes betrayed a sense of sadness that I could not understand. Unease pushed me closer to the tapestry and words I did not think to say slipped through my lips.

“Congratulations on a war well fought, Prince Odysseus.” I initiated. 

“I haven’t been a prince for ten years.” he replied, smiling, as his eyes locked with mine. “A decade listening to the barking of Menelaus and Agamemnon and you forget you are royalty. But now all is done and soon, if the gods are good, I once again will be the prince of goats and rocks.”

“May the winds be fair to you and your own.” I sincerely wished, as the thrill of his story made me forget my death and his.

“If they are not, my dear wife Penelope would fight Zeus himself for a fast voyage. God I miss her, and little Telemachus would be a grown man by now.” He daydreamed, and as I saw that the tapestries did not end, sadness pushed me from answering and I walked away from the tapestry. 

 

The whispers started to ebb as I watched his journey through seas that did not seem to end. The tapestries put forth a story that was a harsher hell for Odysseus than the underworld could ever be. His men kept on dying one by one as they fought with cannibals and Cyclopes. Hunger withered their strength and the storms of the Mediterranean Sea sealed their fate. They landed on a hundred islands and none of them Ithaca, as the winds disoriented them like they were toys for the gods. They found kindness in witches and slavery in Nymphs. Sleep was scarce, for Odysseus no longer trusted his own soldiers. A soldier who never left the war, I thought sourly. 

 

As I watched Odysseus turn grey with age and hardship, the black walls of the cave seemed to shake with the sound of pounding heartbeats. I felt like the hall almost came to an end, for the fires almost turned to cinders. Near the end, I was met with a tapestry that would have broken my heart to pieces if I had one. The fates made it so Odysseus was to see the Underworld before his own demise. I saw the Prince of Ithaca on the edge of this hideous realm, surrounded by the souls of all the soldiers that fought beside him. He saw Ajax, Achilles, Patroclus and every warrior lost in the battles of Troy, and all looked more alive than Odysseus. The pounding heart thundered mightily and I knew that the Best of the Greeks carried their memory on his shoulders every way he went.

 

The fires died out on my long march down the hall and I knew he reached the end. Feelings of both grief and thrill rose through me, for I desperately wanted to know if the poor soldier returned to his home. The last tapestry hanging down the walls of Odysseus’ shrine was the biggest, and with it the heartbeats sounded like drums of war. The prince that dreamed of being a shepherd was once again standing on the hills of Ithaca. His hair was bleached with the horrors he endured and his back was bent with decades of loss and sorrow. His battle scars were covered in armour and he could not keep still as he paced around with his rusty sword in hand. Tears streamed down my cheeks as I reluctantly approached the King of Ithaca.

I must return to Ithaca!” yelled Odysseus with the harshest of voices.

“But you made it, King Odysseus, you made it to your home.” I replied gravely.

“No, no, no, not this barren island. This is not my home. The hills, they do not feel the same. I cannot find peace beneath these trees and so this must not be Ithaca. Wherever I run, I hear them. A thousand hearts beating like hammers in my head and I cannot stop them. I cannot stay in these lands any longer. Athena has not called upon me in years and I long for her callings. I prayed and I prayed for peace, yet no god has blessed me, why didn’t they? I was the Best of the Greeks and I must return to Ithaca, Ithaca, Ithaca…” there was madness in his words as he spoke, and I knew Odysseus was no longer.

I jumped away from the tapestry, as my mind can no longer handle the cruel stream of thought that haunts Odysseus through every moment of his death. The war ended in Troy but it lived on in Odysseus, and who were unlucky enough to survive it. He was shaped by battle and broken by grief, and I closed my eyes and prayed long for this soldier to finally find his peace.

 

 

Written by : Hachem Saihi.

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