What if today, 10 Oct, was World Authenticity Day?

Our language around ourselves and our optimal wellbeing has to change. Forget the terms mental health for a moment- instead let’s talk about what’s “right” with you …

We are all suffering, of that there is no question. We are trying to survive a world that puts the un-natural before the natural, as we're bombarded with images and narratives of who we should be or become, instead of recognising that our innateness is enough, and we were born to do average and great things equally, as the beautufil unique human we are born to be.

Are we doomed to live apart from ourselves and exist in an image of what society expects of us, evicting our intrinsic nature to make more place for inauthenticity?

When I discovered the “language of Strengths” more than a decade ago, something deep within me was aware of a resonance, an awareness was illuminated, a realisation that my whole life had been one of society looking at was was “wrong” with me.

Yet here was my awakening - a language that defined my innate value, not via false worldly metrics of where I was raised, the unacceptable accent I imposed, the school or university degree I did not carry, but rather the contributions I was naturally endowed to bring and gift to my fellow communities - and not just me, but all of us.

Yet when I looked around I saw many unhappy individuals who had walked the mainstream road, leading them to a life of mediocrity and unfulfillment. Like something out of 'Black Mirror' - individuals were becoming quite the opposite of unique, replaced with the extremities of modernity,  intersecting with a dark side of their human nature which society at large are terming "mental illness/health" - quite simply because they didn’t match their natural language of contributions to how they were participating in the world.

Instead their own voices were rendered mute, deafened in a sea of fear and doubt, imposed via the "big guys" who, like the Wizard of Oz, screamed down megaphones ampliflying a message that blasted to a different tune, one of “you’ll never be good enough” or “you don’t fit the description” or better still “you have  bills to pay” - conditioned to believe we can never exist in the world as our natural selves.

Additionally, we're isolated from each other because we do not know each others “language” - a way of being that comes from the people and environments that have shaped us, and the natural talents we embody and do our best to embrace - and as such we do not, and cannot, communicate effectively with each other - we choose not to see one another, those intrinsic ways of thinking; feeling; and behaving; that define our talent patterns, and how we inhabit ourselves and our environments: differently uniquely, and in ways that belong and are connected to only one particular person or thing - ourselves.

We embrace each other across an abyss of incomprehension. No matter how much we try, and the many times we don't, there's conflict, conflict that is hurting our bodies and brains that we're choosing to call 'mental illness' - yet is actually lack of authentic human "being" and connection, manifesting within. It's a conflict that is possible to eliminate if we choose to "enter into our daily situations with love and trust and committment, to an understanding that we're all wired differently and have unique traits, for a reason. The sum of the parts making up a beautiful whole" Sam McDonald

Some of us have similarities to others, yet very often, we might have none. These traits are readily available to learn; to understand; to accept without judgement; and yet the effort required is seemingly not worth the relational blessings that will be gifted to us as a consequence.

So it should come as no surprise that this feels like an oxymoron, does it not?

We are bringing doom upon ourselves, when you consider the alternative situations we find ourselves "gifted" with instead: divorce; dysfunctional families; addictions… it seems like utter madness - so is it any surprise to believe ourselves to have ‘gone mad’?

The domino explosion of our innate physiology and biology is not mental illness - it's an expression of our body's loving protection

Our bodies and brains are designed to protect us. Our immune system will switch us down, upending and dysregulating our microbiombe and viromes to calm the storms rising within our central nervous systems. It will send signals of anxieties to warn us, depressions to calm us the f*%k down. These elements were designed to protect us from danger, yet the greatest danger today has become our distrust of each other and our lack of trust in ourselves to become authentic.

We have our own unique ‘wave lengths’ - what I like to term “getting into our jet stream”

When we’re there, in the resonance of places and with the people that match who and how we are - "in our jet stream" - we're able to unlock our intrinsic motivation, our unique contributions, desires, wishes and interdependence on and with others, cultivating well-being, growth, and outstanding performance, optimisation of the person we were born to be and contribute, our "human being" - a concept so deeply understood by the late Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in his research on "the flow," "where people lose all sense of time when engaged in activities aligned with their natural tendencies".

"WITH on its own is just a word, the moment you add other words to it, it can become something more; a sentence perhaps or a paragraph. This is the same with people. Alone we are nothing, and yet when we intentionally choose collaboration and interdependence, we can create strong, united relationships"

“I am interdependent WITH myself; my Family; my Community; my Peers; my Colleagues ... "

Yet because no (wo)man is an island, we need to recognise our responsibility to utilise our unique wave lengths and our intrinsic selves, defined by our natural talents, to connect to the energy forces of self and others, to belong and to contribute towards both the self and the collective, interdependently. Nature operates interdependently, yet the falsities of our current world shun this way of being, as we turn away from our natural tendencies to fit into the current neoliberalism out-of-control capitalistic systems created by man. Many people today suffer with 'suppression' because they have NOTHING to wake up for, their contributions spat upon by those who hold an invisible power threat meaning dynamic threatening our unique place in the world, holding us hostage - what today the western world terms 'mental illness'.

Adam Smith understood the importance of us bringing our unique selves, with his belief that division of labor and distributing "contribution" between all [8 billion] of us, was a key factor in prosperity and increased productivity. He defined it as" evaluating a production process and assigning tasks to individuals" based on each individual's intrinsic talents, to "improve efficiency and enable mass-scale human cooperation and understanding". Yet today, the world is suffering from mass [active] disengagement, because no one is aligned with their authenticity. We are all out of kilter.

We need to go back to the natural order of things and become our naturally endowed selves, bringing this in service of our unique and beautiful contributions and purposes

We each have a unique consciousness that informs how we enter the world - resonance that emanates from within. When this is out of kilter, we sense it. The western world calls this 'out of kilterness' mental illness - yet in reality this is our common disequilibrium, our dissatisfaction and disordered state of our natural selves. This explains a whole host of unsolved mysteries around who and how we are, and the ‘Language of Strengths’ gives voice to this unique identity that brings voice to our place in the world.

The greatest gift we can bring to ourselves and others is to be who we are. Our journey in life is to find our way back to our authenticity. Yet the greatest challenge comes from what to do after we ‘find’ ourselves. Why? Because we need to find who we are, then forget who we are in service of others.

This is by design because we gain our deepest pleasures from helping others. Yet we need to help from a stance of interdependence. This means putting your own needs on hold and ‘active listening’ to properly “see” another individual as they are, not as you would have them be.

We need to learn to trust both ourselves and others again and find our way home to our authenticity

Our identity has been in question from the moment we were born, as we're sent off to institutions to conform our being, and fit into man-made boxes. The natural world has been replaced in favour of, and in opposition to, the "glitz and glamour" of everything egostically man-made, an alienating effect of neoliberalism & unbridled western capitalism, making us lose our ability to belong. In the words of Jon Day "people have forgotten how to feel at home in the world".

We need to become "self" and learn to trust both ourselves and others again, and recogninse our journey in life is to find our way home, back to our authenticity 🙏🙏🏿🙏🏻🙏🏾🙏🏽

p.s. if like me, you're ready for change, i'd like you to consider ordering these books: Drop the Disorder and Do something and The Power Threat Meaning Framework and to join or create a global online book club to discuss Activism To Change The Culture Of Mental Health

Sam McDonald has been married for 30 years and has four children. They are a Strength-based family, using the CliftonStrengths® along with an understanding of 'Attachment Styles, to enhance marriage & family life. Her heart is split between the beauty of the Derbyshire countryside, UK, and the FalseBay Coast, Cape, SA. She is a Futurist and Chief Visionary Officer for WITH-HUMANITY, a change-maker with a dream to disrupt our current meritocracy by "Unlocking the Intrinsic-Identity© of all Individuals in service of greater human engagement" creating an all inclusive value metric and social system which views the value of each individual through how they are beautifully and naturally wired, allowing each person to optimise and flourish.

She is a Normative Visionary, Systems Thinker, Disruptor, Change-Maker & Activist. Graduating Cum Laude with an MPhil in Futures Studies from the University of Stellenbosch, after failing matric, she believes matching one's intrinsic wiring to how we learn yields exponential results, leap-frogging our current education system. She influences thinking in order to create futures-led enquiry & change towards a future we all want to be part of - linking strategic leadership and management with futures thinking. Her use of Interdependent Rules of Engagement© and the CliftonStrength® Assessment, as well as various Foresight Methodologies, are tools of choice to influence mindset change, and help people understand each other's unique world views, which are coloured by what she terms our Strengths Language.

She moved to South Africa in 1983 from Nottingham, UK and has straddled both dysfunction and functional environments. She views this as her "cross to bear is your gift to share" - serving as a bridge in understanding how to create function out of chaos. Read her Professional Bio or discover her personal story here.

Sam and her fellow Coaches, work with motivated clients using the CliftonStrength® Assessment as a power tool for:

• Understanding your (neuro)diversity

• Strength Based Interviewing & Recruitment

• Assisting motivated individuals to fall in love with their careers and find the work they were born to do.

• Working with high achievers to discover their value and purpose

• Working with Start-ups to gain momentum, motivation & self-awareness of the Entrepreneur

• Assisting Students to gain a greater self-awareness, expediting their career path, building confidence and self-esteem.

• Working with individuals to re-engage in their work environments & leveraging their strengths

• Working with marriage relationships to help you love again and understand the toxicity, reduce negative experiences, create understanding and, in turn, assist with long-term strategies for lasting transformation

• Finding your true Purpose, Passion and Value in Life

• Falling in love with your life and work again

• She teaches the 'Interdependent Rules of Engagement© & Vulnerability' to focus on living 'Interdependence' as the key to healthier environments - choosing this as 'rules of engagement' over 'Dependence', 'Co-Dependence' & 'Independence'.

Follow the link if you would like to take the Strengths Assessment and here to read more about how to discover who you are at your core.