When Your Personality Conflicts With Who You Are

Is your kindness authentic, or is it driven by fear?

People-pleasing. It’s so common, and it’s inauthentic.

I’ve heard it said that people-pleasing = lying.

It’s one thing to be committed to kindness. It’s another thing to be kind at the expense of our own well-being.

When someone is people-pleasing us and we’re paying attention, it can have a gross sort of feeling to it. It’s gross because it’s inauthentic.

People-pleasing isn’t the type of kindness that’s driven by an authentic commitment to being kind. People-pleasing is driven by fear.

Is your humor authentic, or is it driven by insecurity?

Most of us know someone who can’t stop cracking jokes. We just know they’re going to crack a joke no matter what the conversation is.

Back in college, my heart dropped and I felt so sad for a peer when he said to a few of us, “I’d do anything for a laugh.”

Humor is one of the ways we connect with the divine. It’s also a way to avoid discomfort and to get people to like us. 

My kids taught me a phrase for the type of personalities that are authentically nice or insecurely funny: “try hards.” 

We try hard when we think we’re not enough as we are.

We try hard when we lack faith that we have everything we need.

We try hard when our very survival is wrapped up in what someone else thinks of us.

When our personality conflicts with who we really are, the solution isn’t to try harder, and it isn’t to get people to like us. 

When our personality conflicts with who we really are, the solution we’re actually craving is the healing and integration of our deeper parts. It’s the healing and integration of our charged emotions, our fears, and our insecurities. 

The source of our discomfort with others is some insecure way of seeing ourselves. 

This past week, a former student of mine reached out and we spent a couple hours together. When we broke apart the insecurity beneath what he was dealing with, he experienced a new freedom in showing up authentically, lovingly, and powerfully for those things that matter to him. 

Not driven by fear. Not driven by insecurity. Driven by authentic inspiration.

Learn to not let your discomfort, fear, and insecurity drive you deeper into your personality to be liked - instead, allow your discomfort, fear, and insecurity to point you back to your deeper, true, and authentic self.

Your personality is about survival. Your authentic Self is about being fully alive.

If that’s something you’d like to master, message me and let’s connect.

Much Love. ❤️