Escape Competition Through Authenticity.

विद्या विवादाय धनं मदाय

शक्तिः परेषां परिपीडनाय।

खलस्य साधोर् विपरीतमेतद्

ज्ञानाय दानाय च रक्षणाय॥

Good things should be imitated - lessons which our elders keep on giving. How good is this to follow in life is always debatable. Every individual is unique so how can one individual's good is the best for other individuals also. What if legendary Shri Bhagat Singh and national hero Shri Subhash Chandra Bose has blindly imitated Mahatma Gandhi ji. Hence, it's true that everyone's individuality and uniqueness are crucial to consider and respect. To be more precise, let's consider a situation if everyone around us is a great artist, so we want to be an artist. If everyone around us is a great businessperson, we would like to be a businessperson. If everybody around us is a social activist, then we want to be a social activist. That’s where our self-esteem will come from. But we have to be careful when we are getting caught up in status games. We end up competing over things that aren’t worth competing over. 

What exactly is being authentic?

In current span, we live in a world that respects flatterings, false appreciation and staunch faith that Instead of behaving in a genuine way, we say to people what we assume they want to hear, and act in ways that go against our true nature. In short, we're living inauthentically. 

Acting as per others way and living and working according to others is tiring, dispiriting, and confining. It resist us from reaching out our true potential. The opposite of this is to live and work authentically. Which is fruitful in meeting our self esteem. When we give ourselves permission to be ourselves, we can live free from others' ideas and expectations, and we can choose our own course in life.

A precise definition is that being authentic is living your life according to your own values and goals, rather than those of other people. 

Simply, authenticity states that individuals are true to their own personality, values, and spirit, despite of the thrust that they are under to act otherwise. People must be honest with themselves and with others, real critisim and genuine appreciation are always valued and people can take responsibility for their mistakes. An individual's values, ideals, and actions aligns with their true identity. As a result, people come across as genuine, and they are willing to accept the consequences of being true to what they consider to be right.

No one can compete with you on being you :- 

We can share with others that we are surplus with. So, rewarding ourselves and appreciating ourselves makes you rich of giving same to others too. To live an authentic life is more of rewarding ourselves than hiding our true self. Recognising our own attributes and gracefully presenting them. When you live authentically, you don't have to worry about what we said (or didn't say), how have we acted, or whether we did the right thing. Living authentically means we can trust ourself and our motivations implicitly.

Authenticity is prowess and supreme way of self motivation, it elevates several much fruitful qualities, that are mentioned below:- 

#1 Trust and respect - Towards self and others, firm building of trust and respect forms that helps in weaving strong values and beliefs. Beyond judgement, strong decision making traits can be knitted. 

#2 Integrity - hesitation vanishes and confidence gains to do the right task, required at that moment.Who we are, what we do, and what we believe in – all of these align perfectly.

#3 Realizing potential and become solution orientor :- When you trust yourself and do what you know is right, we can realize your full potential in life. We focus on solutions more rather than problem. Instead of letting others dictate what's best for us, we take control of your life.

#5 Less stress and relish our efforts and endeavours :- How would you feel if, every day, we say what we mean, stayed true to ourself, and behaved accordingly? We are the owner of our own problems and master of solving that problem on our own. Imagine the happiness and self-respect we'd feel! Being authentic to ourself is far less stressful than being someone we are not.

Conclusion :- Escape competition through authenticity can never be distressing as we can't ever lie to ourselves. We should be our first and last competitor. Our comparison should be from the previous day of myself. Knowing truly ourselves is another type of yog and it improves the self esteem to the maximum, in addition it brings spirituality to self that is another form of attaining bliss. 

Authenticity is the daily practice of letting go of who we think we’re supposed to be and embracing who we are.