The Navigation Codex champions your authenticity; it is inherent within the framework to live and experience life from an authentic perspective. The role of authenticity cannot be overstated; it allows you to align with your natural flow and prevent unnecessary resistances building up in your life.
Unfortunately, society often obstructs people from living an authentic life. Because when people make choices from genuine interest, it erodes the level of control society has over them.
What does it mean to be authentic? Why does it feel so difficult to navigate life authentically in modern society? I explain everything you need to know to embrace authenticity and live The Navigation Codex for a fulfilling and abundant life.
The Authenticity Trap
First, let’s start with what authenticity means. Most online gurus speak about authenticity and tell you to develop it in your daily life – but this advice often misses the mark because they make authenticity itself performative, or in short, another mask to don.
True authenticity isn’t a mask. It isn’t another role to play in your life, it is what you genuinely believe, feel, and most importantly what you want to do in life.
Why Just Be Yourself Falls Short
This goes beyond the tired expression “just be yourself” and expands on that concept completely. Most people have no idea what ‘yourself’ is in that equation, and authenticity isn’t something you might be able to switch on overnight.
Instead, The Navigation Codex treats authenticity as a journey of self-discovery, where you begin to align increasingly with your natural flow and discover who you are.
Don’t fall into the trap of thinking authenticity is expressing every single thought, belief or impulse you have in any given moment. That is not authentic, those thoughts can often come from conditioned resistance patterns, and it is a sign of emotional incontinence.
Authenticity as Natural Expression
True authenticity is a far more sophisticated perspective, and it requires discipline. It is the skill of understanding which impulses are born of resistance and which ones are your pure natural direction in life.
Authenticity is what happens when you put yourself first, your self-interest, your goals and aspirations – your experiences in life.
It occurs naturally when you give up the performance you put on for others.
It is not about being the loudest person in the room or sharing your deepest dreams, secrets and wishes with every Tom, Dick, and Harry.
It is about alignment with your true centre. When all your actions, words and values are congruent to one another and reflect your true identity. If you think about the moments in your life when you felt truly yourself, you will realise in those moments you weren’t performing for others or trying to be anything particularly special.
Why Authenticity – Foundation from Truth and Sovereignty
The moral principles of The Navigation Codex, when lived in full, will always produce authenticity.
Truth – Living in truth means you stop lying to yourself, and others. It means you don’t put on pretences about what you want from life.
You stop pretending to enjoy things you don’t. You embrace experiences that are naturally rewarding and exciting to you as a person.
You stop agreeing with other people’s opinions that don’t align with you. This inner honesty becomes the very foundation of all authentic expression.
Sovereignty – When truth is coupled with sovereignty, authenticity flows naturally, and you become a powerhouse both from a moral standpoint but also from a self-aware perspective.
When you make choices, you take full responsibility for the outcomes they have in your life. And what’s more, those decisions are made without fear of disapproval from others. You create your own navigational compass and stop allowing others taking power over your life experiences.
The Courage Requirement
As you can imagine, authenticity is not an aspect of The Navigation Codex that will come easily to people. Especially if they have lived a life filled with fear resistance patterns such as the weight of other people’s expectations and fear of failure.
It takes courage to embrace truth and sovereignty and because those are core components of your authentic self, it takes discipline to develop authenticity.
It isn’t the heroic Hollywood courage, it is a deep resilience, an inner confidence that could take you a lot of time to develop. Or it might not, we are all different and alignment may be simpler for you than you realise.
Let’s look at some examples of what authenticity looks like in our lives.
Say No When Something Doesn’t Align With You
Peer pressure is a powerful societal resistance force, and it can often feel like others are coercing us into making choices that don’t align with the direction we want to go in life. Being able to say no is a powerful way of exercising sovereign integrity. Being authentic is the ability to say no with confidence, irrespective of if it hurts other people’s feelings.
The key here is that it only hurts their feelings because they were seeking to exert control over you.
Express Your Truth or Your Genuine Opinion
It can be really easy to slip into the mentality that expressing a contrary opinion will cause conflict. And sometimes it will. But expressing your opinion and disagreeing with others shouldn’t be brash.
Remember, you are not looking to control others or force them into your way of thinking. Simply stating a contrary opinion in a respectful and non-forceful manner is a demonstration of authenticity.
Be cautious to express your truth in a way that is sharing knowledge rather than trying to push someone else to your way of thinking. You want to express yourself in flow, not create resistance for others.
Make Choices for Your Priorities in Life
This is very similar to saying no when something doesn’t align with you. Social expectations from friends, family or society as a whole are control mechanisms. You may well upset people if you begin to navigate authentically because they are losing that coercive control they had.
Again, remember that you are not trying to hurt people, and if they are hurt by you making a choice, that is a ‘them’ problem rather than a ‘you’ problem. The pain is caused because their power over your choices has diminished.
Stop Surrendering Your Emotional Capacity to Performance
We all do it at some point; feign excitement for something we couldn’t give a rat’s ass about or pretending to be upset when we are ambivalent to the situation.
This type of performance is only ever for others, and it is never aligned with your authentic self. We put on this emotional mask for fear of being seen as cold or unreceptive to others, but the truth is most people can see right through the performance.
Surrendering emotions to performance makes you a disingenuous and fickle cretin of a person. Stop doing it. Have some self-respect and others will come to accept your emotional capacity for what it is.
Embrace Being Seen for Who You Really Are
Again, pretty scary, especially if it makes us feel vulnerable. That vulnerability is born of resistance though, other people’s expectations and opinions about how we should present ourselves.
There is paradoxically, a great power in vulnerability. It shows we have the strength of character to be authentic in situations where everyone else is in a pantomime.
Why Authenticity Transforms How People Treat You
Finally, across all aspects, the idea initially might seem like being authentic is cold or harsh, perhaps inconsiderate. These guilt feelings are exactly the conditioned resistance response society wants you to have.
Contrary to popular belief, people actually respond much better to authentic people. Someone authentic has boundaries others respect, and they trust you to be who you are and do what you say you will do. People who perform are often treated poorly by others because there are no boundaries to respect and your opinion doesn’t matter; you simply become a vessel that others can manipulate.
The Energy Test
There is a simple and practical way you can gauge your authentic self from one moment to the next.
Pay attention to your energy when you are around other people. Authenticity is energising whereas performance is draining. This is because there is no effort when you’re naturally aligned with your authentic self, but performance requires you to constantly work to maintain an image.
During interactions ask yourself:
- Are you constantly concerned about how you are coming across and self-editing?
- Do you feel tired after social interactions?
- Are you saying things you don’t mean or agreeing to things you don’t agree with?
- Are you switching from one personality to another in different social settings?
If you answer yes to any of these, you have strayed away from your authentic life experience.
Living an Authentic Life
Living authentically isn’t about radical honesty or confessing your innermost desires and thoughts with everyone you meet.
It is about navigating through life with a ground sense of inner alignment.
As discussed, authenticity may come easily or may be tricky, it may require development over time. This is especially the case if you have built up a lot of resistance patterns in your interactions with others or convinced yourself of a false narrative (which is sadly all too common).
Start with Yourself
Before you can adopt authenticity with other people you have to work on understanding what is your authentic centre. Be honest with yourself about your feelings, emotions and motivations in life. You may need to sit with some uncomfortable truths along the way, it is easy to realise just how much of yourself you have given away when you reflect on who you are and what you want from life.
Progress to Small Moments of Authenticity
There is no need to radically shift your position around self-identity overnight. In fact, doing so can be jarring and create internal confusion about who you are and what you want. Start small, perhaps an interaction where you express your genuine opinion rather than dressing up an answer to conform to what someone else wants to hear.
Don’t Apologise for Who You Are
You like what you like, you value what you value and your experiences in your life are yours and yours alone. Don’t feel the need to justify your natural self and certainly don’t approach authenticity with a sense of shame or guilt. There is never a need to apologise for acting in a way that is naturally aligned with who you are.
People Might Be Disappointed, Develop Grace
Most of our performances comes from a deep rooted fear of disappointing others. This disappointment is their issue, because they had expectations of you to conform to their wishes, and you are no longer playing ball. If you want to live true to your authentic self, it is inevitable you will disappoint others in your journey, the key is to disappoint from a place of genuine kindness but without apology.
Always Respect Everyone Else’s Sovereignty
When people are disappointed or when people take actions that upset you, step back and respect the fact they are living their life authentically. If you are upset by someone’s decision, ask yourself why? Was it because you had placed expectations on them? Were you hoping to control an outcome?
There may be times when people genuinely cause you grief with their decisions, and it is absolutely okay for you to process that pain internally. You may even realise you need to correct your navigation in life and make more naturally aligned decisions for yourself going forward. But what you must never do is punish someone for their own sovereign decision. It is their life, their experience and we are all individuals with different purposes, beliefs and goals – respect that.
The Relationship Revolution
Now the really important stuff. What can you expect when you operate from an authentic centre?
Well, first and foremost, your relationships will change and become healthier. You may find some relationships deepen as people appreciate you for who you are. They value the real you.
Other people may begin to fade from your life because who you are is who they don’t want you to be.
It might be unsettling having people distance themselves from you and reassuring to have others drawn more to you. The process may be difficult as you realise the people you thought were close were only close to the masked you – they were never invested in the real you or connected to you in a meaningful way.
Finally, when you’re authentic and comfortable expressing yourself from this natural place, it allows others the space to feel comfortable and be themselves around you. When you are genuine, you attract genuine people, and it has a contagious effect.
Authenticity and Success
There is a common fallacy that being authentic will damage your career prospects and social standing.
In some contexts, this may be true short-term, especially as people adapt to you expressing your genuine opinions. But over the mid to long-term, authentic people are more successful because:
- They make choices that are aligned with their personal strengths rather than forcing themselves into tasks they are uncomfortable with to please others.
- They build genuine relationships with people and are viewed by others as having integrity which they can trust.
- They are consistent, their genuine values are inflexible which again allows others to trust them and respect them for who they are.
- They don’t waste energy on false personas, fake drama etc. Instead, their energy is directed naturally toward natural abundance and achievement.
Essentially, success is generated because you are able to sustainably navigate toward what aligns with you. And simply doing so is far more rewarding and fulfilling than forever complying with other people’s expectations.
Authenticity as a Life Experience
While I have spoken with authority on authenticity and shared knowledge about how it can improve your life, as with anything I discuss with The Navigation Codex, it is entirely up to you if you want to embrace it or disregard it.
My job is not to push you into a decision, in fact, I would rather you continue your sovereign journey without applying the principles if acting authentically doesn’t align with you.
Ultimately, I am saying, here is the knowledge, do with it as you please.
If you want to discover more about The Navigation Codex there are now plenty of core articles uploaded and there will be hundreds, if not thousands of articles to come. All free, and accessible to everyone. You can check back here by bookmarking this page or by subscribing to our newsletter for future updates.
I wish you all the best in whatever navigational choices seem natural for you to follow!