When I die, I want people to remember me for living a life that made me happy. I want my eulogy to be about the authentic way I lived instead of the things I amassed during my time. I want to be remembered by my son, for doing things my way, for following the path less taken. For being exactly who I am, who I was, who I was meant to be. Not a carbon copy of what the world expected me to be. I want to be remembered for being unapologetic about the choices I made towards living my true life. I want to live every day, being at peace with my choices.

Living authentically is about embracing who we are and the things that really matter to us. It’s about following your own path instead of living in a way that is expected of you or the way you think you should be living. Living authentically is about being you, being yourself, living for you and being unapologetic for it. When you live in an authentic way, the pressures that are put on us start to fall away because there is no way to fail at being ourselves, except to not be so.

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”  ― Steve Jobs

The authentic way isn’t always the easiest choice

What no one tells you is that it can be a hard journey following your own path. Along the way you will encounter numerous nay-sayers who don’t believe that this kind of life is possible. They will laugh at you for your “silly goals” and doubt that your definition of success matters. You will constantly have to question if you’re on the right path, if you’re following your own dreams or the dreams of others.  You will no doubt, doubt yourself many times along the way. Others will make you question your choices and you will feel miserable but in the end, it’s worth it. It is worth defining what success means for yourself so that you are constantly aware of what really matters to you and what baggage you can let go of.

The truth is though, you don’t have to be Oprah, you don’t have to be Michael Jackson, you don’t have to be Gandhi, all you have to do, is be yourself! The best possible version of who you are.

Your only job is to be as good at being you as you can be

“To be nobody-but-yourself — in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else — means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.” – E. E. Cummings

“If you could be the person of your dreams, who would you be? You need to ask yourself these questions in the times when you are happy with yourself. Unfortunately, most of the time we only ask ourselves the questions that matter when we are in a position of weakness. When we have been inspired to make changes to our lives because of something tragic or devastating. But we need to make these changes when we are stable and thinking from a place of stability.”

And when you know the answer to that question, have the balls to follow your dreams and pursue the path you are meant to walk. It won’t necessarily be easy but it will always be worth it. When we are authentic, we turn off other people’s voices that often play inside our heads.

Have the balls to follow your dreams

“Is this it? All my life I trained to be like everybody else but really, I wanted to break out – my parents believed I was ruining my life but I was stripping away the expectations of my parents, my community and even myself. If you do the things you love, it inspires others to do the same.”

Dianna David quit her secure life in engineering to pursue her dream as a performer and only in making that sacrifice did she find her happiness. Living your authentic life is about doing what you love and what makes you happy, instead of doing the things you think and believe you should be doing. Sometimes following this path takes a huge amount of strength and you really do need balls to make the sacrifices but in the long run, it’s usually worth it.

[bctt tweet=”Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Steve Jobs ” username=”tyrannyofpink”]

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