Total Authenticity

Hello!

How are you this morning?  I'm just sitting here in my sweats drinking coffee.  Sundays really encourage that behavior, don't they?  I like to think so.  Ammon's sleeping in the other room, the animals are all leaving well enough alone (a rare thing!), and I have time to just do the things I want to do for a bit.  That includes talking to you guys for a few minutes.

I went to a women's forum yesterday.  Since we are so new to the area, I'm trying to be brave and branch out.  Make new friends, have new experiences.  Do scary things.  I love women's conferences, because I'm a sucker for anything personal development.  I hate women's conferences, because usually you're there by yourself, and you have to meet and interact with new people.  I really have become very withdrawn from humanity since moving to California.  I miss my people, and it took me a really long time to build my solid tribe.  I don't want to make new friends, I just want all of my existing friends to pick up their lives and follow me out here.  Reasonable, yes?

Back to the forum.  It was actually fantastic.  Everyone was so nice and supportive.  Several people offered to give me information about different organizations that they are a part of that I might want to consider joining.  Another woman and I totally bonded, and we're going to have coffee together.  AND of course, there was the personal development part of it all.  There were 2 breakout sessions, and about a dozen different speakers to choose from.  I choose sessions on networking and leadership, because I felt like they were so darn applicable to where I am in my life right now.

The sessions had so many common elements in them, which was strange because the two speakers were very different, and came from different approaches.  But the common theme was that you have to know yourself, and you have to be authentic and sincere in everything you do.  All of the tips and tricks in the world, all of the work that you do will never be successful until you truly know yourself, and you can act from a place of total authenticity.

Moving stripped away a lot of the elements by which I identify myself.  My friends, my state, my job, all gone now.  I walked into that forum knowing that I was in the midst of a major identity crisis, and walked out with the realization that this identity crisis could be one of the very best things that could happen to me.  I am in the unique position right now to really figure out who I am as a person, beyond the life that I had previously built up around me.  I am able to create a life that supports and builds upon who I am.  I don't have to do things that don't serve me anymore, simply because they were things that I did in the past.  

In 2 years, this opportunity will be gone.  We will have built our life here, and I will be back in a space where it will be harder to really get clear about who I am amid the clutter of our life.  It's time to move forward, and put some real effort into finding out who Kristen is, and what she wants and needs out of life.