When you exaggerate others and put them on pedestals, you will tend to minimize yourself in turn through comparison.

Rather than being your authentic self, at various moments in your life, I’m sure you have met individuals that you looked up to, admired, were drawn to, maybe infatuated with and who you might even have tried to imitate.

The moment you did that – the moment you put them above you and saw them as greater than you, or more skilled in some capacity, possibly more intelligent, more successful in business, more wealthy or more stable in relationships, maybe even more socially connected and networked, possibly more physically fit and attractive, or even more spiritually aware – that is when you are most likely to have exaggerated them and minimized your authentic self.

In other words, when you infatuate with or over value others, you tend to devalue your authentic self.

When you exaggerate others, you are actually minimizing or unconscious of their downsides.

When you look up to somebody and think they are greater than you, you tend to exaggerate what you perceive to be their “good” qualities and downplay any of their perceived downsides, depreciable or “bad” activities or qualities.  In other words, you tend to exaggerate how great they are.

In doing so, you tend to become conscious of their upsides and unconscious of their downsides, while in turn becoming conscious of your downsides and unconscious of your upsides.

What is likely to occur as a result of this subjectively distorted assessment is that you become too humble to admit that what you see in them is also inside of you to the same degree. This is what often leads to intimidation, difficulty speaking, and low self-confidence.  If you prefer to watch the video on Expressing Your Authentic Self, click below. ↓

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The moment you look up to somebody and minimize your authentic self, you can devalue yourself. You tend to become deflective and disown their admired traits in yourself so that you play small. It’s also when you are likely to inject their values into your life, and even envy or try to imitate them. 

When you exaggerate them and minimize you, you are not being your authentic self.

No human being can endure living in other people’s values. It's not sustainable. Every individual lives by a set of priorities, a set of values that is unique to you. Whatever is highest on your list of values, you spontaneously are inspired to do. And whenever you have injected the values of others, those values compete with your own highest values and create an internal conflict that results in uncertainties and often repression. In stead of living as you truly are you are attempting to live as you think you should be due to the comparison.

It is wise to recognize the uncertainty that you will feel when you minimize yourself, as normal biological feedback to let you know that you are attempting to not be your authentic self. Any time you hear yourself internally dialogue to yourself imperatives inside your head -  ‘I should', 'I ought to', ''I have to', or 'I must', it would be wise to see them as feedback that you might be trying to live in other admired people's values instead of your own.

When you exaggerate them and minimize you, you are likely to diminish yourself and play smaller than you are.

This can result in a form of dysmorphia. Just like people have body dysmorphia and they might be unable to see the magnificence of their body when they compare themselves to those that they exaggerate around them, so too can you have dysmorphia in your intellectual pursuits, your business, your finances, your family, relationships, your social life, your physical health and wellbeing, and in your spiritual life.

You will not empower your authentic self by putting other people on pedestals. As Ralph Waldo, Emerson said, envy is ignorance and imitation is suicide.

We are not here to put people on pedestals; we are here to put them in our hearts. We are here to have reflective awareness - the highest level of awareness we can have. 

When you exaggerate yourself, you are likely to minimize others.

You are also likely to resent them, withdraw, and want to avoid them. In the process of exaggerating yourself and minimizing them, you tend to become conscious of your own upsides and unconscious of your downsides. As a result, you might go into pride and self-righteousness and look down on them.

When you exaggerate yourself, you are not being authentic.

When you are inflated and proud and arrogant, you are not being your authentic self. You are unlikely to see that the downsides you perceive in others are also in you. As a result, you tend to deny what you see in them and disown those parts of yourself, thereby skewing your perception of yourself.

When you exaggerate yourself, you are likely to project your values onto others.

Values in society tend to go or flow from those who have the most power, perceptually, to those that have least power. So when you exaggerate yourself, you are more likely to project your values onto others and expect them to live in your values.

For example, you might find yourself saying, 'you should', 'you ought to', 'you're supposed to', 'you got to', 'you have to', 'you must' or 'you need to'.

You might then find yourself feeling frustrated because they aren’t doing what you think they are ‘supposed to’, or ‘should’ do.

Your true self-worth occurs when you are objective and authentic.

Neither narcissism nor altruism by themselves are sustainable. True self-worth occurs when you are objective, when you have reflective awareness, and when you are not too proud or too humble to admit that what you see in others is inside your authentic self.

In other words, when you are in a state of objectivity and neutrality, where you don't fear the loss of that which you seek, and you don't fear the gain of that which you try to avoid, you are most authentic and empowered.

Striving for that which is unavailable and trying to avoid that which is unavoidable is the source of human suffering. So, any time you are inauthentic, you are likely to go into "suffering" mode, which is essentially feedback to let you know that you’re not being your authentic self.

Your physiology, psychology, sociology, and theologies are all designed to bring you back into authenticity. 

When you are reflective and can own the traits or behaviours you see in others equally – you are able to obtain your authentic and essential self.

This reflective state is where you are most objective and inspired, where you tend to live congruently by your highest values, and when you are the most spontaneously active. It’s also when you are most integrated embracing both your ‘hero’ and ‘villain’ sides and not trying to deny any of them because you have recognized there is nothing missing within you and nothing to get rid of. You don’t need to get rid of one half of yourself to love your authentic self. 

When you see someone displaying or demonstrating traits, actions, or inactions that you despise or resent, it is wise to introspect, self-reflect and identify where you have displayed or demonstrated those same traits, actions or inactions to the same degree.

Ask yourself what was the upsides, the benefits or the advantages of their behaviour. In doing so, you will help bring your mind into balance, and see both sides of each event.

All events are neutral until somebody judges them with a skewed, subjective bias.  It is wise to ask questions to equilibrate, liberate and balance your mind because you can't have a balanced physiology without a balanced psychology.

Your actions are a by-product of your perceptions. When you balance your perceptions, you are likely to have more moderate actions. If not, you might find yourself with extreme volatilities and perturbations in your perceptions and actions.

So, the moment you own the traits, actions, or inactions and neutralize them, and go to the moments where and when you have also displayed or demonstrated them, and then find the upsides or downsides of each of them and balanced them all out, you will in turn dissolve your inauthentic personas called pride and shame.

When you dissolve your pride, shame, infatuation and resentment, you are more able to access your authentic self.

You also dissolve the subjectively biased labels on your authentic self or others resulting from the rigidity of your misperceptions of your authentic self or others and allow you and them to be just human beings with your and their own unique set of values. You are then more likely to realize that there is no reason to judge them, and no reason to judge yourself in turn. 

You are not here to compare yourself to others - you are here to compare your daily actions to your own dreams, and to your own highest priority actions and values.

That is why I want people to come to the Breakthrough Experience- so you can learn the Demartini Method which can help them balance out all of their perceptual equations and experience a more inspired and authentic life.

I’d love you to know how to take whatever you have experienced in the world around you and in your perceptions and integrate them and balance them and liberate them so you can be more authentic, liberated and inspired.