Self Mapping- Being true to yourself

Grant Leboff: Brian, one of the things that I loved about the self-mapping book is this idea about being true to oneself. I am interested in that because I think a lot of us carry perceptions of ourselves that have, perhaps, come from other people. So where is the line? How do you know when you’re being true to yourself – because I think, sometimes, people think that they’re being true to themselves but actually they’re not. So where is the line, how does that manifest itself, how does that come out?

Brian Mayne It is a strange thing. I had an experience in my life at about 30 when I hit a wall and I went from being very wealthy to not only poor, but owing a lot of money. My life crashed and it’s the difficult things in life that make you think deeply. In the good times we accept it and just keep going, but when you hit some difficult times you need to think deeply and question, as I did. So I saw that I had been wearing a mask, I had not been true to myself. This is really what coaching a person, development workshops are about for people; helping them to see beyond the mask that they often wear, because it has become a habit pattern.

A few years ago I was invited by Anthony Robbins to run a workshop for his senior people in New Orleans, and they arranged for us all to go on the Mardi Gras floats. Now it’s a city law that if you’re on a Mardi Gras float you must wear the full costume and a face mask and we all complained about it. It was a most uncomfortable thing, it made your face hot and sweaty, but after a couple of hours you forgot that you had it on, not because it fitted well but because you became desensitised to it. Life is the same thing. You put on a mask and they wear it gradually to protect themselves from difficult situations in work or life, but after a while they forget that they are wearing it. So it’s only when they get some deeper insight, either by life experience, or a coach, or a workshop that they realise that it’s there, and it’s when they take it off that they feel the relief because then they start to live for their true self rather than their full self.

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