The dark side of being "authentic"

are you struggling to be your authentic
self there's a bunch of people online
telling us to be ourselves to be our
authentic selves at all times but then
there's a group of people who tell us to
basically dump who you are at the
currently at the current moment and
become someone
else who to listen to right this is a
very complicated subject and I want to
dig into this today so that we can help
each other understand and grow so why
should you even listen to me what do we
do here on this channel so basically I
want to become as articulate as humanly
possible and bring you along on the ride
so as as a good um input in your life I
want to be good exposure for you to
increase your articulacy as well
increase your vocabulary level so
basically we do a word of the week it's
like word of the day for grown-ups and
we drill down into a concept and this
week's concept is
authenticity and I I think authen
authenticity is a hugely important
concept when it comes to articulacy and
in Daily life in general so yeah where I
come from I come from a trailer park in
Louisiana and I've dropped out of school
multiple times not some silver spoon
brat and right now I have two kids um a
wife basically the life that I've always
wanted and I make more money than I
could ever imagine in my normal job so
I'm just making these videos not only
for you but for my kids in the future so
let's get on with it we uh today we're
gonna be talking about why I mean how
you know how you would know if you
should be authentic or not and um what
you can do about it in uh going
forward
so all right oh yeah I don't do any Cuts
edits or anything so yeah just Buckle in
and we're going to have a conversation
about this why should you I mean how do
you know if you're being authentic to
yourself and if that's a good thing or
not so I have a story about this
whenever I was whenever I I got out of
High School I got into college I failed
all my classes not I mean I didn't fail
all my classes I failed the very
difficult ones like calculus and stuff
like that because I wasn't going to
school and in the end I would blame my
teachers um ultimately I had to drop out
of school because I didn't have enough
money to keep going and who do you think
I blamed did I blame myself no I blame
my
parents um later on I'm working a shitty
Sushi job um working at a restaurant I
kept having to go in every single every
day working 50 hours a week 6 days a
week um it wasn't fun and who did I
blame then did I blame myself no I was
blaming Society but then in uh whenever
I was 25 I came across an ideology that
had a very powerful concept it was a
concept that is um that you are the
driver of your own life and this might
seem like a really simple concept for
someone at 25 to understand but I didn't
have a strong father figure I mean I'm
not trying to blame anyone here but also
these kind of like I guess wise things
just they went over my head as a as a
young
man and at this point I was like oh okay
so it kind of like came all came
crashing down that everything that bad
everything bad that had happened in my
life was because of
me I had done I had Cho I chose not to
go to school uh well to enroll and then
not go to class I chose to not
study um and then ultimately all these
other things that that happened were my
own fault so should I have been I mean I
was being what I thought was my
authentic self as what Society was
saying but if you like dig even deeper I
was just trying to impress peers that
really didn't have my
interest in mind maybe they did
but I I didn't know what they wanted for
me anyway and who cares what other
people want for you you should know what
you want in your own life and Chase that
I didn't have that I didn't know what I
wanted in in really precise detail so
because I didn't have a Clear Vision for
the future I didn't have um any track
record of doing things for myself in the
past my current moment was was a blur so
I didn't really I I wouldn't really know
what my authentic authentic self even
would look like if I asked myself really
deeply like what what do you want right
now who are you those are questions that
I just I guess did not ask myself and I
just um numb myself with video games um
drugs and other things
so yes so how do we find our authentic
selves and
it's not that difficult so I mean I I
say that but it is pretty difficult to
understand what you want in life because
there's so many different options and
different choices that you eventually
need to um be real with yourself right A
lot of people just say like Chase your
passions but that's not going to get you
to uh to what you want to do right away
it's a long grueling process so first uh
the first step for my experience
is to assess your past
so just as an example my past was I had
dropped out of a computer science
program and I did have some computer
some programming
knowledge and I had the internet so I
could I felt like I could learn pretty
much
anything so I that's what I did in my
spare time I just learned how to program
more and basically grifted my way into
Tech uh first like getting a local job
and then moving on to uh bigger
companies getting more credentials for
example I didn't go to college again but
I went to went to an apprenticeship so
like certifications and stuff can also
help in this area so basically more
moral of the story is that in order to
be your authentic self you need to First
have a goal so a goal State So Clear
Vision of the future and then you need
to begin building
a track record of things or experiences
and skills that you can call your own
and then at that point in each moment
you can guide yourself with your values
and how like how you actually think um
at that point and and just try not to be
influenced by external forces because
you basically have to take on this main
character uh main character like kind of
delusion
I mean obviously there's other people in
the world but from your perspective and
for your Future's sake like who is the
most important here and who should you
love the most
yourself so I mean that might sound
selfish but I mean that's how you
achieve great things in my
opinion so yeah I'm using the word so a
lot and I'm noticing that and I'm going
to have to do some reverse engineering
here to to get to get that out of my
vocabulary so yeah all right I'll see
you next time