Are we making authentic connections in real life and on social media? Anthony Goulet explores our perception of connections.
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I think people inherently long for authentic connections. For twenty-four years a major part of my work is speaking, writing, and discussing my past mistakes, pain, and trauma. Yet, my past mistakes, pain, and trauma is not my platform, nor does it qualify me to speak and write – my recovery does. The miracles I experienced that pulled me from the depths of darkness are my platform and testimony. The tests of my testimony were only the first part. While I am grateful to be on the other side of those experiences, I am grateful for those experiences because instead of offering theoretical opinions about how to move from trauma to healing, addictions to recovery, violence to peace, I offer my experience.
I can have an opinion about anything. I have never flown a plane but I can share my opinions about flying a plane all day, yet that is not authentic nor beneficial. What is beneficial is our experience. I bring my mistakes with me and share them openly. Why? Because in a society where a mistake is perceived as a near death experience, we lose opportunities for authentic connections, growth, and transformation when we hide our mistakes, pain, and trauma. Those who the Creator of my understanding used to facilitate transformation and awakening in my life offered me a lifeline of an authentic connection. And it is my experience that authentic connections are what we all long for, not just to get through the pain, but to fully celebrate the victories, and remain whole throughout this life.
Below I offer some thoughts to you from my experience about authentic connections. I share these thoughts with the intention to help you save time, a lot of time, from running around attempting to get connections you think will get you where you want to be, while the most important connections you’ve always had within you are ignored and prevent you from being free.
Connection
Human beings are always looking for connections. We’ve been searching for connections to others since the beginning of time. Long before there were external wires or internet we were created to connect with one another.
Authentic Connections
What makes the healthy and normal need for connection to other human beings unhealthy and insatiable is when there isn’t a connection, only a perception of a connection. No different than when we use alcohol, drugs, or busyness to fill a void, as soon as the effects of these things wears off, the void is still there, the emptiness remains, and we remain longing for an authentic connection. Authentic connections fill the voids within us leaving us in peace not in pieces.
Signs of an Authentic Connection (No matter how long or brief the connection lasts)
- Authentic connections change our personal narrative for the better.
- Authentic connections have nothing to do with being right or wrong. They’re about appreciative inquiry and dialogue, not attack and arguments.
- Authentic connections encourage our true voice – we are allowed to talk, tell, and feel from our hearts without threats of conformity, judgment, or being ostracized.
- Authentic connections transform our internal voice and our self-talk from demeaning and critical back to loving and encouraging, as it was when we were children.
- Authentic connections facilitate inspired vision and creativity, urging us to contribute more to life, not recoil from life.
- Authentic connections remind us that the process of development has nothing to do with becoming but everything to do with being. We are reminded that we never had to become anything because we have always been and always will be a blessing, miracle, and gift.
- Authentic connections remind us of the beauty of our internal world, and inspire us to decorate the external world with the beauty within us.
- In an authentic connection you are not denied your experience and you don’t deny others their experience of momentary discomfort or pain. This way, you are both free to experience what is beyond the momentary discomfort or pain – freedom, relief, creativity, and healing.
- Authentic connections awaken us to love.
- Authentic connections fill us and make us whole. And because they do, they remind us that we will always recognize our highest callings by one key trait: That which fills us when we give it away.
Authentic Connections and Social Media
Today, with social media on full blast people are often gaining only a perception of connection with others. A follow, like, or share is not a connection, that’s a brief interaction, no different than passing your soul mate on a busy street, saying hello, and walking away in a hurry, never even glimpsing the possibilities of what was bestowed upon you in the hustle and bustle of busyness. Wow! Am I making social media out to be a possible platform for soul-to-soul interaction? No, yet I am saying that social media is a tool where we have the ability to send out messages that connect to hearts and souls and actualize this thing called humaneness. Like all forms of technology, social media holds no power in and of itself. We as human beings have creative power. We as human beings have the power to create or destroy. Social media only has the ability to carry our creative or destructive messages that we choose to share with internet land. In real life and on social media, people choose to use their power as either a healing force or a destructive force.
In real life this choice is evident in words and actions or it soon will be, because nothing remains hidden for long. On social media the choice of being a healing or destructive force is evident as others read the tweet, picture, or post that is sent out upon the waves of post, publish, or tweet. Sure, in real life or on social media anyone can interact with a false persona, but no one can authentically connect to others with a false persona. In real life or on social media, false personas are most easily revealed when they encounter authenticity, because those seeking superficial interactions will be repelled by authenticity. And the good news is that if you’re seeking authentic connections then this will attract others who are also seeking the same. Now, here is the great news, you already have all the authentic connections you need within this life, and if you stay true to those connections, all other authentic connections necessary for your journey will manifest, and the false personas will always be revealed and fall to the wayside. Consciously, passionately, and lovingly maintain and cultivate the connection you have with the Creator and your heart. This is the most important connection we have, and from here, all other authentic connections necessary for your journey will manifest.
Authentic Connection Test
Take the three rules that must be present in all unhealthy relationships and inauthentic connections:
Don’t Talk.
Don’t Tell.
Don’t Feel.
Next, break these rules in all your relationships.
If you find that you cannot Talk, Tell, and Feel from your heart without being ridiculed, condemned, disrespected, mocked, attacked, and marginalized then not only is there an inauthentic connection, there is no connection. As with all things including connections, if it isn’t with love, it holds no relationship to anything authentic.
Check out Anthony Goulet’s latest book: The Four, a short story about reclaiming the most significant pieces of our lives, and remembering our purpose, dreams, and vision.
Photo: MNSC/Flickr
Originally appeared at This Holy Instant.com