608. Being Genuine

Or how to create the space to be real in our interactions while also working through our initial reactions or experiences in order to expand ourselves in our relationships

This word ‘genuine’ emerged as a solution to live when seeing myself in situations or moments where I was being slightly worried about the way that others would see me/perceive me and in doing so, having certain fears about what could ‘go wrong’ if I would not make or cause the ‘right impression’ upon others. That becomes a point of self compromise where one manipulates one’s expression in order to –apparently – create a better image of ourselves or a better outcome at the eyes of others. Though that usually comes with compromise because I had to realize the fears or perceived ‘missing out’ points that I was trying to avoid by trying to be seen/perceived in a particular ‘favorable light’ so to speak.

These are points that have to do with not fully trusting myself in my expression, which is cool that came up so that I could then in real time let go of any attempt to ‘hold’ a particular idea or experience within me within having ‘others’ as a starting point in my mind and instead, realize that any point of compromise I create in my expression – no matter how ‘subtle’ it might be – it would then become an unsustainable point to manage, which is what happens when we create different ‘personas’ towards different people in our lives, and one has to go ‘managing’ them and remembering ‘who we are supposed to be’ towards this or that person, and of course that’s not living.

This is how being genuine in my expression becomes the solution, where I stop the chain reactions in social relationships where we don’t ask ourselves who we are in approaching someone? What are we trying to achieve? What is our aim? Or what are our intentions or fears behind it? So that I can first clear up my hidden agendas and genuinely be able to live the word ‘genuine’ in my expression towards/with others.

In my case, I had to move in real time from believing I had to cause/create certain impression upon others, to deciding to be genuine and in a way ‘stay true to myself’ – yet this doesn’t mean being ‘righteous’ about my expression and not considering others or ‘remain exactly the same as I’ve always been’ – nope, it’s the other way around I’d say, where being genuine means walking through and working with reactions that may occur at first when meeting certain people or individuals that I may have reacted to before in my past, where I have to genuinely take a moment to see what reactions came up, what memories or experiences were triggered within me, so that I can then decide who I want to be and express myself towards such people/person.  

I recently heard in this audio  Return to Innocence – The Future of Awareness – Part 92

the following bit:

“It can even be one of those simple things of looking at feelings that we so briefly feel toward one-another where we think we’re good people because we’re nice to other people. But instead we’re lashing out a fakeness toward another person, and we might not even realize that the other is doing it to us as well and we’re picking up that fakeness and it’s resonantly leaving a mark of untrustworthiness that is spreading out in this world into the fact that we cannot trust anything of each other. So we’re lashing out and we are creating a world of distrust, and that’s if you even feel what distrust feels like, it’s a horrible experience. We’re resonantly doing that to each other. So practice the world you want to create even in those two simple moments where if you smile, genuinely smile at someone”

And it is a cool cross-reference to the solution I saw towards this reaction or point of self-manipulation as in creating a certain façade in moments to create a particular outcome. It also becomes very uncomfortable for me to ‘put on a mask’ so to speak, therefore I already know how that feels and that’s how I get to know, oh oh I’m compromising myself and get back to the writing-board to establish who I decide to be in relation to people that I might have an initial judgment towards, so that I can first clear my own bias as in judgments, opinions, memories, prejudices that I may immediately attach to a person which are usually there as a result of unresolved judgments and issues towards a particular ‘type of person’ that I haven’t worked through within myself.

I had a situation where I faced this point and what I had to do is first sort myself out so that I could understand my own reaction and experience through writing, seeing directly what was I reacting to, what were the points of fears, comparisons, judgments, prejudices so that I could take responsibility for all of that and so for my experience. So in the next moment of interaction with that person, I knew what I exactly had to work through and stop recreating all of the things that were previously preventing me to actually interact with the other person from a clear starting point.

So to me, the word genuine came up as the solution here, so that I can embrace and trust myself in being me, without pretense and without hidden agendas, which include working through any backchat/negative reactions I may create upon simply looking at and hearing another person for the first time, which is quite a common experience we all have as human beings and that I’ve faced many times where, upon looking at the judgments, ideas, initial perceptions I had about a person, I decide to deliberately get to know them more, talk to them and slowly but surely build more of a relationship with the person and yep, it turns out all of my ‘first impressions’ were ‘all in my head’ of course! as in being merely associations from my past that I was imposing onto this new person. Though if I hadn’t done that self-work to really look at why I was reacting to the person, I would have missed out the opportunity to get to know them and genuinely ‘see’ the person for who they are, rather than how I was interpreting, assuming or perceiving them to be.

With this, the tricky aspect to watch out for comes when we define our ‘being genuine’ as being ‘who we are and how we are and that’s it’ without really pushing to expand and open up to – for example – get to know different kinds of people that one would probably not directly go out and seek to start a conversation with. These are actually the most supportive moments and situations to face, because we are by design ‘programmed’ to only relate to certain kinds of people that are somewhat ‘similar’ to us, and those people that we define through personalities/ways of being as ‘too different’ or ‘the opposite’ of ourselves are usually people we would not directly approach to ‘strike  a conversation with’ or establish any form of contact with them, however that’s a cool question to ask as well, why would I regularly say ‘no’ to getting to know certain kinds of people?

It can only do with my judgments, prejudices, perceptions and bias that I cultivated throughout many years in my life, mostly out of comparison within a sense of superiority or inferiority, leading myself to simply avoid certain ‘kinds of people’ so that I would not have to deal with these experiences of comparison, judgment and inferiority.

That’s how ‘being genuine’ also becomes a decision, it’s not simply showing ‘my true colors’ so to speak, because if that ‘me’ is still existing as a particular ‘type of person’ or personality that is disliking other ‘kinds of people’ or having certain ideas, beliefs, perceptions or opinions that stand in judgment or in conflict with others, then, that’s more like being righteous in one’s stance, which would not allow any openness towards actually getting to know another, and I have definitely been there, done that for most of my life, which is why I find this word so relevant for me.

So being genuine becomes a decision that I make in getting to know another with a clear mind so to speak, with a clear starting point, not loading my prejudices, ideas, perceptions and associations in the moment of interaction with another person and genuinely Create an interest in getting to know them, create the space to get to know them.

I emphasize the word ‘create’ there because that space or openness usually doesn’t exist when we are still walking in real time through reactions and the barriers of ‘getting along’ with people we initially ‘right off the bat’ judge – whereas deciding to create this space, deciding to interact with another and deciding to be genuine in that moment becomes a moment of expansion and acknowledgment, as well as making that decision of how we decide to express and interact, regardless of the other person’s expression or experience within themselves, which assists in not making our interactions all about ‘how we perceive others,’ but rather how I decide to genuinely express myself.

This doesn’t mean that one has to become entirely open and embracing to the other person, lol, not about extremes, but simply ensuring that one is ‘giving ourselves a chance’ to get to know the person, which is a phrase I got from Sunette in the latest public chat, where she mentioned how we can give certain actor ‘a chance’ to interpret Bruce Lee in a movie, instead of jumping into conclusions of how he is not like the real Bruce and disregarding his acting and expression altogether.

 That’s exactly how it is when deciding to be genuine – and not only to not compromise oneself as in wanting to portray ourselves in a particular ‘light’ towards others – but also being genuine in our approach to others, deciding to walk through any resistances to do so with ‘certain kinds of people’ to then realize, they are just ‘people,’ and the ‘kind’ or ‘type’ of person I thought them to be is all in my mind, my prejudice, so I take responsibility for that and proceed to be ‘empty’ within me while deciding to interact with another, and that means stopping comparing, judging, perceiving or assuming – and simply take in the words as they come, in the moment and also deciding to be genuine in my interaction in terms of how I decide to express, to be ok to maybe not show an ‘equal expression’ of say, excitement that I perceive the other person is portraying as their expression, because that can just be their way of expressing themselves, and that means me being genuine about whatever expression comes up – or doesn’t come up – during such moments.

This application of being genuine, authentic in a redefined manner as in expanding myself or making space for the new and the previously ‘unrelated’ situations in my life is what I want to continue building and creating, which comes with the trust that whatever else I may face or whatever else I may initially react to, I know that I can work through those reactions first within myself, understand my own bias, work on it to clear it up and then make that decision to be genuine and learn to interact and get to know people with this clear-head and starting point.

I recommend the above mentioned audio on Eqafe.com because this is just one point that stood out for me based on what I had been looking at when it comes to what it means to ‘expand’ myself as one of the goals that I see as part of living and this process of ‘birthing life from the physical’ which is to be genuine and creating such genuineness whenever it doesn’t exist yet within us towards others in order to learn to see, embrace, understand and acknowledge others as extensions of ourselves.

Thanks for reading.

 

 

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