After more than a decade of coaching, speaking, and empowering others to live their most authentic life, I’ve found that contrary to what society believes. It’s the most successful people around us who struggle with authenticity.
Look at successful founders and business leaders. While it may appear from the outside that they have it all, there is often a lot going on internally that doesn’t meet the eye.
In fact, their success is sometimes the very thing that constrains them from more fully expressing themselves authentically in how they live their life. Indeed, many successful people have lost the ability to access joy and play in their lives due to overwhelming responsibilities.
When overworking is disguised as overcompensating to distract from the lack of fulfillment that they experience, people will eventually feel a loss of self– it can even ultimately lead to breakdowns.
Are you on a pathway to success but on the verge of burnout? I’ve developed a philosophy to regain authenticity that I call Artist Power. Here’s how you can balance success in business while being authentic to your true self.
5 Steps to Rediscover Authenticity
As a coach, I’ve hosted retreats and 1-on-1 consulting sessions with founders just like you. Many of them look in the mirror and don’t recognize who they are. It’s understandable.
Starting a business from scratch takes your whole self, but it shouldn’t remove your identity. So, here are 5 steps to remind you of what made your business a success in the first place.
Step 1: Identify Burnout
You can’t change a problem you haven’t identified. Allow yourself to feel it and label those feelings so that you can release negative energies that do not belong inside of you.
Step 2: Understand Your Fears
We all have struggled with fears of being accepted, loved, and having a feeling of belonging. That is why we overcompensate with money, ambition, and success. It is critical for founders to recognize this pattern in order for them to break free of those constraints and live a genuine, authentically expressed life–that can unlock a whole new level of success.
Read more: Scooter Braun Opens Up About Burnout and Discovering Big Talent
Step 3: Connect with Your Inner Child
At the heart of Artist Power is the ability to return to that state that lies in all of us. The power to return to your inner child that you likely have forgotten about. Once you tap into your inner child, it creates a massive capacity to create, lead, and access your highest potential.
Artist Power is the raw authentic power that every little kid is born with before they are tainted by a society that forces us to conform. Artist Power is embodied by the child who is unafraid, creative, and has endless amounts of energy. It’s the child who is not afraid to be themselves because that’s all they know. Far too many adults crave childlike wonder but lack this feeling in their existence.
Step 4: Be Yourself First
Once you have experienced the feeling of reconnecting to your inner child– your Artist Power – you’ll know the feeling of connection to your true self. Going forward, notice when you are feeling like you are losing that alignment and make a conscious effort to rebalance. Choosing your authentic self and inner child every day is a continuous process.
A Practical Authenticity Exercise
You may already be thinking about how you can express more authenticity within your own life. You may even be thinking about the child you once were who is still inside of you– and how you can embrace a little more of that in your current life. Here is one of the exercises that I encourage you to try: create a weekly Artist Power day in your own life.
- Schedule 1-2 hours every week that will be specifically dedicated to self-expression.
- Allow yourself to do anything that you feel led to do.
- Think about how you would spend your time as a child.
- Have no constraints or obligations.
- Reflect on what you did and how it made you feel (Write it in a journal, a notes app, or an audio recording).
- Repeat.
It might be painting, dancing, singing, or even rolling around in the dirt or playing in the rain. There are no boundaries.
Remember that there is a child inside of each and every one of us who is craving love and attention. When you give this to yourself by allocating time to fully express, it opens a gateway to endless amounts of energy, creativity, joy, laughter, and community like you’ve never experienced.
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