Are you wearing a mask? I don’t mean for Halloween. I mean on every other day of the year? If you do, you’re not alone. If you’re like I was, you wear it so well that you even forget that it’s on. It becomes part of you. And you start to identify with the mask as who you are. Perhaps even being overly protective of it.
If your first reaction to the question of wearing a mask is denial, I feel you! But I am also here to challenge you. Just like I was challenged many years ago. You see, I so identified with my mask that I claimed it as part of me. I guess it’s a natural thing to do. In fact, I was told that almost everyone has a mask that they wear, or at least that they have worn at some point.
Of course, that leads to the question, “Why?” Why do we feel the need to wear a mask? For each of us, I think the answer is our own. Perhaps we don’t want to be vulnerable. Vulnerable to bullying or ridicule. Vulnerable to not fitting in or simply being different. Perhaps we’re worried that without the mask, we’re not good enough. Or maybe we feel the weight of expectations on our shoulder. We have to live up to someone else’s ideal and not our own.
In 2009, I had a life-changing encounter with a Body-Talk practitioner in New Zealand. After my session, she shared her vision of me. According to her, I not only wore a mask, I had a whole body suit that I zipped into every single day. The thought of it was both humorous and disturbing – and completely understandable with more scrutiny on my part.
I had spent the better part of my life, for lots of reasons, striving to be the perfect son, student, husband, father and businessperson. That’s not to say that I was successful, for I certainly fell short of the ideal in all categories. But I very much did what was expected of me. In many ways, I wanted nothing more than to make my parents and others proud of me. Truth be told, I also did it to massage my own ego and overcome my own insecurities.
I was the classic overachiever, a striving perfectionist and in desperate need of pleasing others and validating my own self-worth. Some may argue that I’m still that person. There are still threads of that in who I am, but the reasons are all different. My motivation, process and the way I live is different. I’m different on the inside.
I realized after my body-talk session and lots of soul searching that I was covering up my authentic self. Not 100% of the time, but consistently enough that I vowed to make a change. In my adult working life, I had been very careful to construct and project my professional image and felt the need to be, in some respects, what others expected of me, as well as what I had mistakenly projected as my own expectations.
Let’s just say that I’m more comfortable in my own skin now – warts and all. While being professional is still important to me, I project it in a more authentic way. I am also more conscious to make sure that my joyful, spontaneous and more vulnerable side is given more light to breathe and flourish.
So what about you? Are you living a life with a mask? Projecting what you think is expected instead of what is true to you? To be authentic, we have to let go of our fears, embrace all of who we are and know that that’s enough. The analogy, albeit a scary one, is that we are able to stand naked in front of others and be okay with who we are. Revealed. Vulnerable. And flawed.
Once you get over the unsettling feeling, it’s quite liberating. Each of us is more than enough. And certainly much better than any old mask that is covering up our uniqueness.
So are you with me? Let’s ditch the masks…except on Halloween.
