Trusting The Deep Good Truth You Know About Yourself

My childhood was full of rivers. From the Columbia, to the Temperance, to the Baptism, to the Turtle, to the Cannon, to the Mississippi, and the St Croix, and the dozens of creeks and cascades whose names I cannot recall; rivers were the moving constant.

My siblings and I would take the old, heavy, beat-up aluminum canoe we had and paddle down the Cannon River in the summer, lazing about, getting into splashing fights, and enjoying the silence of the surrounding bluffs. Or we’d hike up into the Colorado Rockies and cool ourselves in icy, rushing cascades. Or we’d hunt for agates at the mouth of the Baptism River as it emptied in Lake Superior.

Occasionally we’d jump in. Other times we’d try to cross carefully, hoping to avoid a painful slip. When it comes to wading into rivers, getting exactly as wet as one wants to get is a key concern.

One learns how to keep their balance in the midst of moving water, or one learns what it is to fall hard into wetness they hoped to avoid. Walking, a thing that sounds simple to those who usually can, becomes suddenly impossible to do. Life is full of these types of simple, difficult tasks, that confound even the most experienced traveler.

An unsettling thing happens to leaders who begin to take seriously the advice to lead from their “authentic” selves; to simply “be themselves” as leaders. They realize what a simple, exceedingly difficult thing it is to do.

There are two main tasks of being one’s authentic self: 1) knowing who you are, and 2) resisting the forces that push against your desire to remain who you are. Each of these tasks is ongoing and more difficult that it sounds. Like crossing a rushing river, each step we take through the currents of life threaten the solid footing we had even moments ago.

How do we cross rivers that rage? We find solid footholds at the base of the river, and we recognize the direction from where the water comes.

Anyone who has tried to cross even a small stream has probably had the experience of planting their foot on a wobbly or slimy rock, and slipping into the water, ending up wetter than we wanted to be. But if we walk into the water without the fear of getting wet and place our feet on the solid ground beneath the water, we often cross without the fall.

And when we recognize the currents pushing on our legs, our bodies adjust in order to keep us upright and moving forward. As the depth and direction of the river changes, so too does our body’s strategy for keeping steady. The conditions of the same river require changing strategies depending on season, weather, and our own current capacities.

Being your authentic self does not happen by accident, nor is it a state you reach only once. Everyday, in changing conditions, the forces that push against us and the desire to skim the surface of life’s challenges require us to ford rivers that we successfully crossed just the day before, that now seem to threaten our lives.

But there is always a bottom to the river and a direction to its current. Finding the deep good truth about oneself can be the foothold that propels us from mirky waters of confusion that lap at our throats to the sandbars of centeredness where the chaos of the previous moment seems instantly resolved.

What do you know about yourself that feels solid and good? What is the thing that, even if you cannot say it in front of others, or that someone else might debate with you if you did, nonetheless remains true for you?