Don’t silence yourself.

Becoming an authentic person is a long journey, and it is never prescriptive. It is the discovery of one’s own capacity for good. The discovery of what your life has to offer. As you learn more, you will come to understand that people will approve of your authentic self, but only the people who are right for you. Authenticity acts as a filter for everything that is not compatible with your nature. Your self-expression shields you from the life which is not meant for you. You are allowed to walk freely on this earth and find meaning in all that is beautiful to you. You are free to ignore the things which give you no satisfaction. To release your grip on everything other people try to convince you to hold onto so dearly. You are free to play. Free to laugh. Free to enjoy your own company.

You are free to find happiness in the smallest details of your life, such as the way in which the morning light cascades onto your kitchen counter. You are free to let go of your expectations. To expect nothing from others in return for your gifts. To expect nothing from life. To embrace what the universe gives you now and forget about the future. To forget about your ambitions and leave your worries behind you. Taking yourself less seriously is an act of compassion. For what does it mean to take yourself seriously? To believe that you are uniquely important? Special in some way that makes you more deserving of respect and admiration?

Taking yourself seriously destroys all of your defenses. By defining yourself by the value others attribute to you, you place your heart in their indifferent hands. You give your life to them, and they will ruin it without realizing. You may be taking yourself seriously in an attempt to achieve your goals, and I cannot fault you for that. It does indeed help to have more confidence when chasing life’s pursuits. People are more likely to listen to you, to follow you, and in return, you become more capable as a leader through realizing your own capacity as one. However, there is one major flaw with this vision. Confidence does not come from taking yourself seriously.

Paradoxically, your low self-esteem was created by your serious expectations. You take away your own value because you think that you are not enough. You’re not living up to your own ideal. You don’t respect yourself because you believe that you are not worthy of respect, that if only other people knew how much you failed in meeting your own expectations, they would look down on you too. And the worst part about this delusion is that it’s all for nothing. If you didn’t spend so much time judging yourself, your focus on the task at hand would improve.

Living presently is the greatest productivity hack in the world. You become immersed in the activity. Your mental clarity allows for a degree of focus and simultaneous enjoyment that would not be possible if you were so serious about yourself. If you truly treated life as if it were a game, you would achieve all of your goals with a smile on your face and laughter in your heart. And the best part is that it wouldn’t matter either way. When living such a life, the outcomes are only as relevant as what they offer you in the moment. You may have all of the money you could ever dream of, but that would do nothing to affect the satisfaction you feel when watching in silence as the winter sun sinks slowly toward the horizon, leaving the last of its fading warmth on your skin before it slips below,

returning you to the cold.