How to Trick Your Authentic Self into Showing Up

When do you feel like your most authentic self and get your best ideas? When do you have a kick-ass mindset? For me, it’s when I’m out walking or running. The strength and power that I get from running outside transcends directly to my source energy and I feel wholehearted and confident. The trouble was, I didn’t know how to access that confident, authentic self in the rest of my life. This post is about how to take the strength you feel when you’re in a peak state and channel it anytime. I’ll show you how to use a motivation ritual to channel your authentic self when you need her. Also, don’t worry it does not have to be through exercise.

Last week, I shared with you guys the powerful realization that, “A belief is Just a Thought You Keep Thinking“, and how I used that breakthrough to beat a phobia that I had of the cold after having hypothermia, and how now I walk and run in the cold and I feel so strong, powerful, and instantly happy. I can’t stop smiling when I’m out on the trail, and what I find most fascinating is that I get ideas! I get ideas and the desire to show up more authentically in my life and in my writing. I’ll feel so strong that when I’m running, I picture writing and sharing about my past and my struggles with you guys.

Instead of thinking about my struggles as failures, my interpretation of the past morphs and makes sense when I feel strong. When I feel strong I can thank my past for making me into the badass that I am today, and I find myself wanting to share my truth and pain and I feel like I can conquer anything!

While my mindset was rock solid and I was full of ideas in a peak state like running, I couldn’t find the clarity and courage to communicate my ideas and authentic self when I was at my laptop. I wasn’t walking around all day feeling wildly inspired, that’s for sure. Most of the time, I felt stuck. I felt like I’d lost my joy. Specifically, I felt uninspired by blogging because I wasn’t sharing the real issues that were on my mind and happening in my life behind the photos. For years, I told my husband how I felt like my relationships and writing just didn’t have enough real meaning; I wanted to talk about the struggles that I was having and what was causing them.

Ok so you must be thinking that’s awesome, but how did you finally push yourself to share? How did you go from silence, writer’s block and feeling inauthentic to then finally putting yourself out there?

While I prayed, meditated, and read non-stop, in the end it was one thing that got me over the hurdle, to hit publish, and it’s so freaking simple you won’t believe it.

Writing that first post was a combination of something I learned from Tony Robbins and James Clear and kind of merged the two.

Tony Robbins’ breakthroughs are based around the idea that in order to change your life, you need to change your state. He uses a triangle to show the 3 ways you master your current state. One of the ways is with your physiology, which means in your body. He really shows you how your physical state affects your mental strength and that the physiology of our body and mind are linked. I had never really ever heard anything like this.

Tony gets you to work yourself and your energy into a heightened state to have breakthroughs and to change yourself by literally changing your body and its energy. He also makes you realize that you have control over the state and energy of your body. Ok so stay with me, he has you jump around like a crazy person and scream and do it constantly the whole time and what happens is that you get into this state where your endorphins are firing on all cylinders and you create confidence – big time confidence.

Tony Robbins has an awesome Netflix special called, I’m Not Your Guru, you should check it out…it’s awesome!

One way that we change our state is when we exercise. Have you ever had an experience like that? You’re running, walking, or working out and your whole mood and confidence shifts? Not only do you start to feel in a better mood, but do you get ideas for things? Like maybe ideas for your job? Or for ideas around your passion? This totally happens to me. I’ll have these larger than life ideas for lesson plans and assemblies around mindset and I just want to change the whole culture around anxiety at my school (I’m a high school teacher btw) and then right after, at home, you kind of return to your normal self and the wild ideas are gone….what happens to them, to your drive, where does it go, and most importantly, how can you get the ideas and the drive back whenever you want to? 

I needed to find a way to merge the peak state that I learned about from Tony Robbins and the clarity and confidence and pure joy that I experience when I’m out running and to use that brain when I’m writing, to infuse that mind and authentic self into my writing. 

The light bulb finally went off when I was reading Atomic Habits by James Clear. This is an unbelievable book. It’s about the idea that people don’t succeed from Herculean efforts but by small efforts daily. He really shows you how to change your identity. For example, people make a goal of running a marathon to get into shape, which is one big huge effort. He says it’s way more important to adopt the identity of a runner and just be a person who runs everyday. That person will have lifelong health and change their identity. The other person will have done something once. It’s so true – I ran a half marathon once and totally fell off track. Had I had a goal of run a half hour everyday for the rest of my life, I would be in killer shape, since it’s about consistent daily effort that gets results. He completely changes the way you think.

So, James Clear says that habits have a cue. A cue is like a trigger. It’s something that makes you start the behaviour. Let me explain this better. Like for me, what makes me actually run isn’t knowing I need to run, it’s once I get outside, I turn my music onto my playlist and it’s hearing my playlist that actually makes me run…so you need a cue to tap into that automatic behaviour. 

Clear says that athletes can be having an awful off-day but when they hear their familiar pump up music during their game warm up, it instantly cues up their peak state and gets them in the zone regardless of how they were feeling. He refers to this idea as a Motivation Ritual.

Ok whoa…the music brought them into the zone whether they were actually “in it” or not.

All of a sudden I saw a huge correlation- I get my best ideas and get snapped into feeling confident and in a great mindset running, working out, or in the car …I’m listening to music in all those cases and I can’t even do those things without listening to music- it’s literally impossible for me. The moment I had that realization was a week ago and the same day that I wrote my first post about my phobia of the cold and the understanding of the powerful truth that,  A belief is just a thought you keep thinking. (If you haven’t read that post, I’ll link it here!…A belief is just a thought you keep thinking, is such a powerful mantra that I would love to share with you!)

That day after reading James Clear’s ideas on habit cues and on the heels of learning about Tony Robbins’ Peak State, I thought, “screw it, why don’t I try simply playing the exact songs that I listen to when I run but sitting at my desk with my laptop!” The results went a little like this: Holy shit fuck…it’s working!! 

The songs triggered my authentic self and brought the confident ideas to the surface pretty instantly. Just hearing the music I listen to when I feel strong channelled that strength and the authentic voice showed up at last when I needed her, in front of this screen.

Can I Access My Peak State Without Exercise and Music? Yes!!

So you don’t have to have a playlist that you listen to or music at all- that was just my unlock. You can just jump up and down and scream real loud. I also learned from Tony Robbins that you can change your state just with your posture by standing like Superman. So you stand as tall as you can with your hands on your hips and chest out with shoulders back and breathe deeply for two minutes and you should feel much more capable and confident. I tried this posture during our national anthem today at school and I felt like a total boss!!

Maybe you’re thinking….nope exercise and crazy movement isn’t it for me. That’s ok! You can access a peak state in other ways too. It does not have to be exercise related!

Last year, I read Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear by Elizabeth Gilbert…(Gilbert is the author of Eat, Love, Pray). Big Magic is about creativity and where it comes from and how to harness it. Creativity and Peak State I’m sure are one and the same. When you’re feeling creative you’re feeling alive and full of ideas and possibility, right?

Gilbert talks about creativity like it’s a muse and a force that you actually have to attract to you! So one of her motivation rituals, for when she has writer’s block, is to get dressed up as a way to attract creativity to her. So to get into her peak state she can trick how she’s actually feeling and lure in creativity by having a shower, putting on her makeup and a great outfit (even if she’s not going anywhere!)

It totally makes sense, when you get dressed up in a great outfit you feel in a completely different state than when you’re not, so of course getting your appearance into peak state would totally work as a motivation ritual to channel your strong, confident, best self- your authentic self! 

So here’s the epiphany: my writer’s block and lack of confidence is actually just a block from being in my peak state. 

This doesn’t just relate to writing, it would relate to any of the big ideas and passions you have in your head when you’re in a peak state that disappear once you’re in your everyday life. If you can, pay attention to when you get into the zone of confidence and try to analyze the pattern of what you’re doing. Then see if you can be a trickster, and trigger it in another setting by purposefully creating a Motivation Ritual to serve you. 

Find out what it is that you do that triggers your confident higher authentic self and if it’s looking like a million bucks…well….look like a million bucks already…like all the damn time! No wonder super successful people workout in the morning and then dress super well…it’s all linked…how your body feels leads to you feeling confident enough to show your true authentic self.

So hotwire that damn peak state, already, with a motivation ritual!

In case you’re wondering what magic songs I listen to when I’m running and writing it’s a mix of Dierks Bentley, Brothers Osborne, Florida Georgia Line, and Eric Church. The first song which might be the most important is Burning Man. I freaking love that song… if I was a song that would be it!

How Do I Motivate Myself to Share My Passion on Social Media?

Just in case you’re reading this and you have a huge passion and have been thinking about sharing it in a blog or on instagram, I have a great post that I wrote about how to start sharing on social media and you can check it out, here. It’s called, Blog First or Instagram Account and Why? In this post, I share all my best advice for how not to get overwhelmed and to just start!

I also have a post about how to start a blog in case you have wanted to. It’s called, How to Start a Blog and Why You Should Start a Blog. In this post, I share exactly who I hired to create my blog and about some of the amazing experiences that have come my way as a result of it.

In case you haven’t read the first post in this series called, A Belief is Just a Thought You Keep Thinking, I’ll link it here. It’s about how parts of our identity can literally be just something that we made up and that we can change it!

When do you guys feel confident, get your best ideas, and feel most authentic? I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments!

Here are some links to the books that are inspiring me!