Something has been heavy on my heart lately.
One of my mottos is: “Behavior is a result, not a root”.
Lately, I’m thinking about “authenticity” and “integrity”…. and folks who struggle to be in both.
You cannot develop your voice, a brand…without them.
But this ain’t about that.
YOU CANNOT TRULY CREATE A LIFE YOU DREAM OF IF YOU HATE YOURSELF.
Nothing moves the way you want if you don’t know yourself and you don’t like yourself.
One of the things that has always kept me steady emotionally is that the I know that people who love me — ACTUALLY love me — because I am always completely myself. I don’t try to switch up who I am to get people to like me. They don’t like some version of me that I cooked up to manipulate them into loving me. Trying to perform a role is exhausting.
But getting to a place of receiving and having that kind of love came from the fact that I like me.
Everybody may not, but that’s cool…everybody ain’t supposed to. Folks get to choose and I stopped trying to get everybody to pick and choose me a LONG time ago. That shit is exhausting.
If you meet me...what-you-see-is-what-you-get.
I don’t have the energy to code switch, to be honest...and we shouldn’t because that shit is exhausting, too.
We divert so much energy trying to be palatable that we literally kill our voices and creativity and shrink ourselves until we are fucking unrecognizable.
For me, being grounded in self goes beyond authenticity. It’s actually integrity. And it’s layered — yeah? Because the whole goal in this mickey-fickey is to get Black people to hate ourselves. We literally get traumatized out of our authenticity and integrity.
I have never seen a people who hate themselves so much that they spend ALL of their energy trying to get US to hate OURSELVES. I promise you that the gig is up on that shit, y’all.
But here's why I say it’s a lack of integrity:
It’s a lack of integrity to walk around shape-shifting, manipulating, and trying to be what other people want you to be instead of being yourself.
It’s literally lying to everybody.
But it’s also self-abandonment.
It’s a betrayal.
…and YES, I KNOW that it was the way we thought we would be safe. But it actually doesn’t work. I’ve said this before and I’ll drop it again here:
NO AMOUNT OF SHRINKING, CONFORMING, OR SELF ABANDONMENT WILL TRULY KEEP YOU SAFE FROM FOLKS WHO WANT TO KEEP YOU ENSLAVED OR ERASE YOU ALTOGETHER.
I keep seeing this pattern —especially with folks who grew up under constant criticism.
Folks who never got affirmed, and who learned early that love was conditional and had to be “earned”.
Folks who were constantly told that being themselves wasn’t good enough.
So now they’re always shape-shifting.
Faking.
Cosplaying.
Trying to get it right.
But that’s ain't freedom.
That’s not identity.
And it ain’t self love.
…and they NEVER get the love and acceptance they’re looking for.
That’s heartbreaking to me.
I get the layers and nuance. But I’m telling you this —if you want to ever experience true love and acceptance, on every level - business and professional too — that all starts within.
No more code-switching and being a chameleon.
No more shrinking and hiding parts of yourself to be respectable, or palatable.
That doesn’t mean that your vulnerability and transparency are for everybody. There are ABSOLUTELY folks who I can’t, won’t and don’t share everything with. That has more to do with whether or not they can be trusted and whether they’re healthy, than with any fear of rejection.
This is why I always say: the real work is the inner work.
If you want to truly be happy, do the inner work.
If you want to truly feel at home with yourself, do the inner work.
If you want to be successful, do the inner work.
So you can have some real joy…and some ACTUAL PEACE.
Because there’s no real joy & peace if you never feel comfortable in your own body, in your own life, and you don’t feel worthy of love/acceptance/abundance AS IS, and you don’t like yourself.
