Maybe it’s the planets. Maybe it’s the changing season. Do you feel it? Maybe it’s all the ways I’m not supporting myself even though I know how. Prolly, it’s all of those.
If I’m real right now, as if we just met at a party and you said to me, “How are you?” well, uh oh. I hope you genuinely want to know and are ok with it being something other than, “I’m good, how are you?”
Actually, I’m sad and frustrated. That’s how I am. I quit a job a year ago to start something new. A full year, a full year!, later I have no clients, no income, and no leads. I feel small. Self criticism comes fast and thick, rude and scathing. Ugh. It feels terrible. Do you want to hear that? How would you take it in? How would you respond? What about the difference between an ideal response and what ends up being yeeted out from the automatic sound bite collection?
The practice of Authentic Relating gives us a chance to be with each other, not in the rote ways that land us in akward exchanges like this might turn out to be, but letting be what actually is. You ask how I am from a place of genuine curiosity. I respond with some truth of my experience. You honestly respond with how hearing that impacts you. And so on. We end up caring for each other simply be being present and real, instead of attempts at caretaking or avoidance or laughing off the discomfort.
This doesn’t come naturally for most us because we’re not taught to how to do it. Authentic Relating encourages me to let myself be seen by you and to practice seeing you, whatever it is you choose to reveal. This is deeply, wonderfully fulfilling and satisfying, bringing us into connection. It feels good to give in and just be human.
Join me, and let’s just be messy little weirdo humans together. It’ll be akward and fun and goofy and sweet and beautiful and just as Real as we let it be.
-Ryan