‘Your authenticity is largely dictated by your level of self-acceptance.’
— B Wordsworth
A sense of self-separation begins to emerge in the first few years of life as we progress from infantile dependence to adult self-actualization. If fears invade that delicate transitioning time, the Self we become disguises our true essence, blocking our ability to show up with authenticity in later years.
Do you know how to determine who you really are as opposed to who you may have become?
Freud postulated that repeated, fear-based experiences draw heavily on the instinct to survive. While there is a healthy place for that instinct, but when a threat scenario is repeated enough times, it cuts deep and defensiveness becomes a default setting.
Unable, in time, to feel that our authentic self is safe, or even acceptable, the best of a person is lost in disintegration and dysregulation. In other words, the best of you becomes hidden or disguised, by the worst of you.
Whereas we literally flourish when we exist in any attribute of virtue, in the vices arena, we vacillate between deficiencies or even excesses where no flourishing can happen.
Aristotle proposed that virtues are the ‘golden mean’ between the deficiencies or excesses of our vices.
Here are some examples so you get the idea:
|
Deficiency Vices |
Virtue’s Golden Mean |
Excess Vices |
|
Cowardice / Timidity / Fear |
Courage / Confidence / Love |
Bravado / Foolhardy / Rash |
|
Addiction |
Moderation |
Asceticism |
|
Apathy |
Compassion |
Irritation |
|
Miserly |
Generosity |
Extravagance |
|
Self-depreciating |
Self-mastery |
Self-indulgence |
|
Detached/Inert |
Interdependent |
Co-dependent |
|
Negligence |
Prudence |
Inconstancy |
|
Insensibility |
Temperance |
Neediness |
|
Laziness |
Purposefulness |
Greed |
|
Callous |
Indignation |
Detached |
|
Hypocrital |
Sincere |
Cynical |
Listed attributes help us see where we may have lost touch with the trueness and authenticity we all have already inside us. Whereas negative thinking may dominate, awareness affords us the chance to redirect our thoughts and emotions.
Self-knowledge is key to the work of constant calibration toward higher levels of virtue at any given time.
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