One Day When Facades Are OK

Halloween is the one day of the year when it’s OK to pretend to be somebody else.

But these days, with the popularity of social media fueling the trend, it seems like more and more people would love to put up a facade on a day-to-day basis.

Hey, I’ve been guilty of it too, to a somewhat calculated degree.

As someone who started life painfully shy (and still often feel uncomfortable around strangers), I’ve always been a big proponent of the concept of “act as if” or “fake it till you make it

And in the public eye, I believe that’s fine. We all need some privacy, right?

But hiding ourselves completely doesn’t work anymore.

I like how social media expert Mari Smith put it to me in an interview. She said we have Business, Personal and Private aspects to our lives; we should feel free to share the Business and Personal, but keep the Private to ourselves.

Call it personal branding if you like; you choose the aspects you want to be known for, and focus on your strengths instead of your weaknesses.

It’s the same thing as not telling an acquaintance that a new outfit is unflattering. That’s not a lie, you’re just choosing not to blurt out the whole truth and nothin’ but the truth.

But with our closest relationships, obviously we need to be more authentic… more honest… and more expressive, which are things I’ve been working on tapping into in a deeper way lately.

One concept that has inspired me is asking the jnana yoga question, “What is my truth?”

“We can have no inner peace if we do not honor ourselves by speaking our truth and being our word,” explains Julia Tindall in 20 Questions for Enlightened Living. “So we feel what our truth is, speak it sensitively, ask for what we want, be our word, and honor our commitments.”

And if, once a year, your truth is that you want to be somebody completely different… today’s the day to do that.

Then tomorrow, commit to being your word, honoring yourself, and celebrating YOU.

Happy Halloween!

Keep Unwrapping the Mysteries of Life!