The Importance of Being True to Yourself

Being true to yourself is a life-long practice that requires commitment and re-commitment, moment to moment, as you grow and evolve. The answer to what is true for you always exists at the core of who you are, if you give yourself the space and time to listen.

When you are being true to yourself, you are completely honest with what you feel, deeply value, and desire. It also means communicating your feelings wholeheartedly both with yourself and others, allowing your truth to flow through you and into the world.

To know your truth fully and express it authentically, you first need to cultivate a deep and trusting relationship with yourself. Ultimately, this begins with awareness of your thoughts, as well as awareness of your whole-body experience and how you interact with the world each day.

You can expand your awareness and strengthen the connection with yourself through introspective practices such as meditation, yoga, and journal writing. These practices help you become more present and establish reference points to identify when you are (or are not) living in alignment with the deeper aspect of yourself. The more you practice, the easier it becomes to self-correct when you are out of alignment.

Understanding when you are in alignment or out of alignment may often be based on an intuitive feeling rather than a thought. Feelings of openness, expansion, inner joy and freedom are good signs that you are on the right path. Conversely, if you are not being true to yourself, it may show up through feelings of contraction and tension, unease, disconnection, resignation, emptiness, discontentment, or a lack of fulfillment.

By learning to pay attention to your deeper senses and feelings, and by cultivating greater awareness in your life, you can establish a strong connection to yourself and feel confident in knowing what is deeply true for you.