What does it mean to live authentically? From concept to action.

“Be authentic!” “Be yourself!” “Be more you!”

We see those prompts everywhere and there are coaches promising to help you find yourself, be more of yourself, and to live your best life.

It all sounds so good, but what does it really mean?

If at the end of the day you reflected on things and thought, “you know what? I was more ME today," how would you know?

As an activator, I love to help get people into action. One of the biggest roadblocks to action taking is not being able to break bigger ideas down into the very next steps. Ideas need a concrete place to START - the action can get lost in the concept, the feeling, the wide angle.

Phrases like "be more you," and "live your authentic life," sound pretty but mean nothing until they can be broken down into parts that make sense, that we can do something about.

If your goal is to help your clients “live more authentically”, focus on helping them explore these four key elements:

• To truly be oneself, it's important to become aware of, accept, and intentionally apply one's strengths.

• To live authentically rests on a foundation of knowing, defining, and confidently living out one's values.

• Being more you looks like spending more time performing the tasks and skills that energize you and less time doing those things which burn you out.

• Staying true to who you are means expressing your interests and using what motivates and inspires you to do more of what you love.

Each of these four variables of "you" are made crystal clear through the YouMap® Profile. If helping your clients be more of their true selves is something you're committed to in your coaching practice, I encourage you to begin those partnerships with a YouMap® assessment and debrief so that you have very clear, intuitive, and actionable entry points into what makes your client so unique.