The Courage to be Yourself: Embracing Differentiation [Authentic Life – Part 2]

Breaking free from the Nice Guy syndrome is all about becoming authentic.

Authenticity is knowing that you are enough, and although sometimes uncomfortable, it also means accepting the parts of ourselves we would rather hide from others.

As children, we are taught to believe that we are somehow defective due to our parents’ expectations of who they believed we were supposed to become.

Our parents are by no means the instigators of our shame.

They only wanted the best for us in their own imperfect way.

They may have made us feel less than worthy of approval because we didn’t fit into the “perfect child” box they attempted to fit us into.

We grew into feeling ashamed of we are because oftentimes we are nothing like what our parents envisioned us into becoming, we grew to believe that we were fundamentally inadequate.

We forget how to serve our own needs trying to validate our parents’ “perfect child” vision.

All we want to do is feel like we are worthy of love & acceptance.

Unfortunately, we will NEVER receive the validation we truly desire from our parents.

We might feel like our parents are to blame for our insecurity, and if they validated us all of our insecurities would diminish & we would finally be enough.

We are the only ones who can do that for ourselves.

Authenticity is the stepping stone towards true confidence and letting go of our parents’ beliefs of who we “should be” is the first step towards building authenticity.

This week we will be exploring the concept of differentiation.

Differentiation is the ability to maintain a clear sense of who you are while still remaining close to the people who are important to you.

Join us this week at Integrated Men.

Date: April 16, 2024

Time: 5:45pm – 8:00pm (US Mountain Time)