Authenticity. What exactly is authenticity? What does it mean to show up authentically? What does it mean to be present and vulnerable? Are authenticity and vulnerability the same thing, or are they different?
Many people think that in order to be authentic they need to share details of their life, be real, be approachable, and ultimately be vulnerable. Now, yes, in showing up authentically there are absolutely aspects of these, but authenticity starts from within. It starts in this place of owning it for yourself and then vulnerably choosing to share what and how much you feel is necessary and that you are comfortable with, to the world.
Here is an example from my own life. I am a serial entrepreneur and prior to coaching, one of my former businesses was a massage and spa supply outlet which we had built up to a seven-figure business. Great, right? Now here is the thing. When I first started coaching, I had a huge resistance to letting people know about that business because I also bankrupted it.
When coaching, I did not feel that I had the right to claim and own the fact that that I had built a seven-figure business. Which is kind of crazy because when it comes to marketing, as a business coach teaching business mindset, saying that I have built a seven-figure business is pretty powerful, right? But I was not at ease with it, so I always came across kind of wonky. I would get accused of being arrogant, too full of myself, and too egotistical. To be fair, that was true because I was not coming from a place of authenticity, and my story was not integrated.
In order to integrate that story into my coaching practice, I had to do some inner work first, starting with really looking at why I was unwilling to share that I built a seven-figure business. Of course, my answer was, “The business went bankrupt.” I perceived myself as having failed, and that failure was still stuck in my system. But as I dug further I uncovered the cause. While running the business I had compartmentalized my life. On the one hand, I was a dominatrix and on the other hand, I was running this big business. I was so good at making sure that all of my dominatrix stuff was kept quiet and silent because it was a bit of a conflict in the massage world. But once the business went bankrupt, I was able to recognize the incongruency– my business was missing the inner dominatrix energy!
The inner work enabled me to fully own there was no wrongness in having failed. I was able to acknowledge that the failure was a gift. When I was able to own that at a cellular level, I was then able to use this terminology in a way that is authentic and integrated without all of my judgments and bugaboos coming up.
This is the thing, in order for you to show up with authenticity, you have to energetically bring who you to the table. You have to be congruent with what you are talking about. Otherwise, people pick up on the other little cloudy bit, and like what they did with me, they may say that you got too much ego! When ultimately, the opposite is actually true.
So to me, authenticity is more about being congruent with what is coming out of your mouth, how you are showing up and the message that you are delivering. When those pieces align, when you are actually walking your talk when it comes to the message that you are sharing, that is authenticity. It feels genuine and people respond to it. As a result, The energy of being authentic becomes much more valuable than having the perfect message because that authenticity becomes magnetic. And that is what becomes the compelling force for people to lean in and say, “I really like what you are doing! Tell me more! I think I want to work with you!”
I have had people say to me, “I am not sure what you do, but I really feel like I need to work with you next.” Though they do not even know about my process or what I do, they can feel the magnetic residence. They are pulled in to what it is that I am doing because I am showing up authentically. I am showing up as me and creating an invitation for people to come and get what I am offering.
By stepping into your own authenticity, your inner dominatrix energy, you gain this quiet kind of confidence which gives you a willingness to stand, be seen, be judged, be heard, and command the fees that are appropriate for what you offer. But to get to this place, you must first get congruent, aligned, and authentic in what you are doing. So keep doing the inner work and keep following me for more tech tips and tricks. Head over to danapharant.com, there are loads of goodies and freebies to help you uplevel your business with ease, integrate and get you stepped into your inner dominatrix energy.
