When Self-Protection Damages Authenticity...
On any given day, our best is not great. Imperfect. Human. So let’s try to love one another well, in very practical ways, along the way!
“If you trade your authenticity for safety, you may experience the following: anxiety, depression, eating disorders, addiction, rage, blame, resentment, and inexplicable grief.”
Brene Brown
In today’s quote from Brown, she’s suggesting that leading from a defensive position of self-protection can be bad for our health. This is interesting, right? It seems to me that when I am concerned about my safety, it comes from a place of trying to escape or avoid harm. Notice that her alternative suggestion is not to take up skydiving or snake handling. This is an important contextual clue. If I understand her, I believe what she is saying is that when the cost of self-protection is authenticity, something is off.
In a world where we have so often assessed someone’s character by isolating a particular behavior and ignoring other information, authenticity does indeed feel less safe than riding a bicycle backwards on a mountain road with no helmet. Authenticity requires us to stick to our own stories. It requires some measure of vulnerability - you never really know who has your back until you expose your heart. Judgment has no place in the story because I just cannot figure out how anyone can even try to be authentic and vulnerable if they are sitting in judgment of anyone - including themselves.
Tomorrow, I will share a story about authenticity in the midst of conflict. For today, can you think of a time when you avoided authenticity in favor of playing it safe?
