okay before we jump into this episode I want you to listen to the previous episode if you haven't when I talk about click baity content because today we're going to talk about the exact opposite which is how to show up authentically as yourself there's this word it's called authentic or authenticity that gets thrown around a lot on social media and I think everyone thinks they're way more authentic than they really are and I've been thinking about this topic for for a little bit here and I have some thoughts on it number one is what does
it really mean to be authentic and the best way I could describe this is who are you when no one's watching like in every essence like what are you eating what do you look like what does your home look like what do you look like how do you speak and then we all in some way to be accepted in society show up slightly different there's this thing that I think most people describe as a Persona where we've learned through socialization that we need to act and behave a specific way to be accepted in society and
the difference between who you are when no one's watching and how you show up that Gap is how inauthentic you are that's my belief I'm guilty of this myself everyone is because when I'm at home I don't got all my jewelry on I don't I'm not with my cap on I'm just greasy and dirty looking and cuz I'm comfortable and if you ever saw me from the waist down when we're doing a normal shoot it'd be sweatpants joggers cuz I'm comfortable in that and I want Mobility right and that's who I am authentically when no
one's watching but maybe there is some kind of social decorum that we need to show up so that we can be accepted like I'll shower I'll brush my teeth I I will wash my face and be presentable for me as a public person I need to be sure that I look and behave a specific way that's consistent with how I see myself and how others see me because the last thing I want people to do is to bump into me somewhere I'm like oh you're kind of a scrub today huh what's going on there chriso
what is up with the the drip game not today and it's hilarious because in in LA and Pasadena more specifically when I go out like at a Trader Joe's I'll run into two people who know me before I even walk into the Trader Joe's so I told my wife there I cannot have bad days I cannot have days where I'm I'm grumpy I'm agitated because going out there and if that's the one moment in which somebody actually comes in contact with me it's going to be a problem now recently I was in Toronto I just
finished doing a talk and I was exhausted and it was a very Rush trip I was in one night and flying out the next day I was trying to make my way through the crowd just to answer as many questions as possible and the gentleman came up to me he goes Chris I'm a really big fan great and then he goes on to tell me a very long story and I'm already getting agitated because you know me get to the question I don't need to know your whole life story friend and eventually I'm like you
got to question he goes yes yes and he goes on with the story so now I'm like I Defcon four I think there's only one more Defcon and I'm like can you just ask your question he finally asked the question and the question is the one of the most basic questions that I've answered a thousand times Chris uh you know I can't charge a lot of money and I I can't remember what he said I said you know you say you're a fan and you're watching the content I just literally got off stage and told
you how to sell for more money is anything getting through your ears and I'm starting to get agitated and D's there with his camera I'm like oh no I think this is going to be one of those episodes where it's not going to turn out well for one of us and So eventually I'm like I've lost it I'm like you know hey I'm going to lose my cool I think we just need to move on and he seemed to be okay with it but then I think later on I saw on a YouTube channel it's
like be careful of your Heroes when you meet them they're not who they say they are and Chris is a jerk and I guess in that one interaction I was a jerk I was a jerk and I chose to be a jerk in that moment cuz I'm like I can't believe you you cannot come up to me and tell me you're a fan and and basically say I've ignored every piece of content you've ever put out I've not listened I've tuned you out on stage and I'm going to ask you this basic question that I
know you have such a strong opinion about but I still need to ask it to me I guess I I needed to grow in patience in that moment but I didn't and I responded in a very specific way I was being authentic and true to my true angry self I was like enough of this friend but in that moment I kind of I I regretted it because later on I was like man that sucks cuz if he was really my biggest fan I just created a really bad impression a bad taste in mouth and I
prefer not to do that let's get back into this idea of authenticity what does it mean because we we're always struggling with this concept right I wish I could remember her name right now but she's a co-founder of Maven and I was talking to her about personal branding and she goes our job is to be the meest me I can be that's job number one or to be the usest you you can be and I want you to think about that because all of us are trying to strip away all the OS syncratic things about
us the things that make us weird and different and to kind of scrub ourselves of that to show up as the way we think people want us to be I think one of the most fascinating things right now with the way that social media is going is it's giving all of us relatively equal access to our audience and it's allowing for a lot of diverse voices people of all different shape sizes and preferences to be able to be themselves and you notice something the people who cut through the noise are the people who are different
the people who might have no hair or lots of hair great eyebrows or no eyebrows at all who have a deep voice or a high pitch voice and they just learn to embrace this and I think it's a gift when we see someone where we stand back it's like gosh they're very charismatic there's something about them that is so attractive what is it that compels us to be them my theory is this is number one we get a sense that they're so comfortable in their own skin that they moved Beyond caring about what you think
about them and there's something that's so alluring about people that are like that that achieved the level of self-awareness self-acceptance and self-confidence that we want to scrape some of that magic dust off them so that we can inhale it and become more acting of ourselves now the opposite is what we usually attribute to people who are very charismatic we think of the loud extroverted people who walk into the room and suck all the oxygen in the room and it seems like they they ask everyone to turn off the lights and just put one Spotlight on
them that we think those are the people that are most attractive because everybody's looking at them I just find them to be exhausting there are other words I can use but I'll just stay with a safe word the ones who I'm drawn to create space for others they're filled in such a way that they don't need more people to fill them up and so they're quiet they're asking questions and they wind up being to me the most interesting people so if you're struggling to figure out how you can find your authentic self check in the
first part is about self-awareness make a list of who you think you are and some Clues were planted a long time ago those seeds were planted like when you're 5 years old and you're into comic books or skateboarding I'm speaking about myself of course here and into video games and you awkward around girls and you you weren't accepted socially in circles that your friends and your enemies and you start to see who you are and if you can remember who you are and tap into that I think as a powerful place to reemerge as your
true self to get in an alignment and connection with your true authentic self you know on a different conversation I was having with my buddy Omar he was asking me like what's the best thing I can do if I want to develop my personal brand and I think I said something that got a lot of people to sit up and I said go to therapy and that's an unusual answer because you think oh learn this framework or work on something external but really if we're talking about self-awareness and self-acceptance who else better to have this
conversation with which is a trained professional to help you unlock what it is that's in your mind so all of us walk around having certain thoughts assumptions and beliefs that we never even check right what I get to do as a coach is when somebody says oh I'm not making enough progress in my business I get to ask them well what is enough progress and what evidence do you have that this is where you're supposed to be given your amount of experience or your talent and a lot of times that'll just stop them right there
and what I've done is I've asked them a question that allows them to reframe their situation instead of beating themselves up or the fact that they're not as accomplished or as successful as they thought they should be based on nothing maybe an old story that they told themselves from a parent that wanted them to be an overachiever a therapist can do that for you a therapist can look at how you're thinking about things and just ask where does that thought come from where do we learn this from and how far back can we Trace that
idea when it was the Inception in your brain that that's normal and we could start to unpack that and it's really wild because it's like the craziest Adventure you've ever been on that you and your therapist a guided professional or a professional can guide you through this can travel back in time and look at your younger self as you describe yourself looking from the third person that's pretty powerful and if you're thinking that sounds a little crazy or maybe that sounds a lot like meditation cuz that's what meditation is it's to be able to witness
yourself from a neutral Observer point of view so you can travel back in time look at that moment and start to understand like gosh I run around with this belief 20 30 40 years later and it was a dumb incident that someone who didn't have enough patience education or just meant well but just didn't deliver on it put a idea in my brain that I still carry along today and I repeat it over and over to myself I'll share something personal here many years ago I went to see my therapist her name is Joan Lightfoot
amazing person no longer working and I asked her I struggle with conflict I'm conflict averse and I'm sometimes like not happy with myself because I become passive aggressive so she asked me to explain myself what do what do I mean so well some people who know me well who are working for me know that I don't want conflict in my life so when they want something that they know I won't approve they'll just go ahead with it and see that I won't do anything about it and this is wild cuz you know you're like who
would do that people who don't want to work for me for very long so I've had people in my company when they know like I didn't want to participate in a certain program I didn't want to spend money against it and it wasn't good use of our resources they knew that they went ahead and booked it anyways and said hey I just booked that thing let me know if you want me to cancel it so now they went against my wishes and I said well if you've already spent the money it's fine but you know
what don't do that again talk to me before do these things well you know what happens inside of me resentment builds because I don't know how to talk to this person and I don't want to get into a fight we've all been there and you could say like I don't run a company well you might have you might be dating someone you might have a parent who's like do this and you don't say anything cuz we don't really want to get into a fight with everybody that's in our lives but what I was doing was
there was a well of resentment that was building up and it was going to explode and eventually it does cuz we can only take so much So eventually I help the person find another job outside of our company and this happens over and over and I I become aware of this and I think something is wrong why don't I just say it so I'm talking to Joan and Joan says you know based on your family history cuz she was a family therapist I'm the middle child of an immigrant family and she goes you're a caretaker
I'm like I am not a caretaker what are you talking about in the house in the company I'm King I come home everything's done for me everybody's like be quiet Dad's sleeping dad's resting dad needs to do this you know that's the way it is around the house I said there's no way I can be a caraker Joan she goes well let me ask you a couple of questions she's like when you're a kid who mowed the lawn like me and who who helped uh your parents out with like cleaning a house me who would
help uh mom or dad with laundry me oh my God you're right what was I doing Joan middle child syndrome that's what middle children do they have to do something to feel like they're seen they prove themselves to others so that they can feel accepted and I didn't know this is what I was doing so what Joan helped me realized that those patterns of behavior that exhibit as a child carried on into adulthood and now what I was doing was I was looking after the emot welfare well-being of others before myself this happened in all
kinds of relationships cuz there's this expression and I really believe in this expression which is how you do one thing is how you do everything so you might think no it's isolated it was just with this cooworker this employee of mine that I did this no cuz when I went to the restaurant and I ordered something and they made it wrong I would just eat it because I don't want to create a fuss I don't want to create any kind of hassle for anybody I don't want to be so self-important which is a powerful thing
once you become aware of where your patterns of behavior come from you now have a Choice every time you exhibit this reaction or emotion you ask yourself is this truly who I am or am I repeating the sins of the past so I make small practice I take small steps right when I'm at a restaurant and the food comes back super salty I will actually just raise my hand and said you know I'm so sorry I don't want to be a pain but this is way over season it's like it's almost all saltier is it
possible that there's another dish that you can make that is not as salty and I'll just do that and so that feels okay for me to say I don't want to say it in an entitled bratty way way that a lot of people in LA are usually doing I try to say with kindness and it teaches me something it teaches me like you know what it's okay for me to take care of myself and so I'm still working on this it's a work in progress because there are still situations where it feels like I'm creating
trouble for other people but I'm not taking care of myself and those are the kinds of things that therapy can do for you you can go revisit your past understand how certain decisions were made and you can realize the foolishness of that moment that has then now been hard encoded within your operating system that you continue to repeat that that cycle over and over again so I don't know if you're paying attention none of what I said was about when to Poe how often jump Cuts transition smash Cuts titles caption software AI related no fonts
no colors no lighting setup no three camera nothing it was not about that it was really about this journey that we all should be on which is a journey of self-discovery who am I what makes me me and many of us will go to our grave like in our deathbed quite literally asking this question like who am I what has my life meant and still not know the answer to that I think I think you have to be in a certain season in your life I'm not saying an age but a certain season in your
life where most of what you thought you wanted you were either able to achieve or realize it's no longer important to you so that you're in a more reflective State and many of you guys know this I'm 52 years old of course I'm thinking about these things as I'm way closer to death than I am to life and every day I want to think about who I am and who I want to be so those of you that are very young cuz I know there's some young people listening to this or watching this is start
that Journey now don't wait until until you're in your mid-40s to say like who am I and I think this generation specifically is so much more in tune with their own thoughts and beliefs because they're raised in such a way that they have access to so much information that they're having these conversations right now so if you're watching this on YouTube please leave a comment below let me know what you think of these types of episodes if you like them we'll do more if you're listening to this on a podcast feel free to send me
a DM wherever you're on social and let me know what your thoughts are and I'd love to have a conversation with you [Music]
