Authenticity vs. Attachment: The Key to Living Your Truth

I’ve been reflecting deeply on a concept that has profoundly shifted the way I approach life and work: the balance between authenticity and attachment.

Let’s be honest—most of us grow up sacrificing pieces of ourselves to fit in, be accepted, or avoid conflict. As kids, this was our survival strategy. We needed the support and love of our caregivers to make it through, and sometimes, that meant suppressing parts of who we were. Maybe you were the kid who loved to sing, but your parents were stressed and didn’t want to hear it. Or maybe you were naturally curious, always asking questions, and you were told to stop being “annoying.”

These moments might seem small, but over time, they teach us to silence our authentic selves. We trade our truth for the security of attachment, and this pattern often follows us into adulthood.

A Powerful Realization

I first encountered this idea through Dr. Gabor Maté’s work, particularly his perspective on the tension between authenticity and attachment. As humans, we’re unique in the animal kingdom. Unlike a snake or even a horse—whose young can survive independently much sooner—we depend on our caregivers for years. This biological need for attachment is hardwired into us.

But here’s the catch: while attachment ensures survival, authenticity is what brings meaning, peace, and growth into our lives. And as we grow older, that need for authenticity doesn’t go away. It becomes even more critical.

My Own Journey

I see this tension in my own life, especially as a parent. My two daughters are incredibly different. My eldest has always been a smiley, joyful spirit. From day one, she’d light up any room without much prompting. My youngest, on the other hand, came into this world with a serious, intense demeanor. Even now, she’ll stare you down before cracking a smile.

Watching them grow, I’ve realized how easy it is—without meaning to—for parents to suppress their children’s unique traits. Maybe you’re stressed after a long day, and their singing feels like noise. Or you want to protect them, so you tell them not to speak up or ask too many questions. It’s not malicious; it’s just life. But these seemingly small moments can have lasting impacts.

How This Shows Up in Our Lives

Fast forward to adulthood, and these patterns stick with us. You might hesitate to speak your mind in a meeting, fearing judgment. Or maybe you avoid taking risks in your business because you’re afraid of rejection.

What’s really happening? You’ve been conditioned to prioritize attachment—pleasing others, fitting in—over being true to yourself. This conditioning can make us feel stuck, disconnected, and even resentful.

Here’s the truth: you cannot experience lasting peace or fulfillment if you’re disconnected from your authentic self.

Breaking Free

The good news is, as adults, we have the power to rewire these patterns. But it takes awareness and courage. Start by noticing where you feel resistance. Is it when you try to express love to your partner? When you want to network or share your ideas, but fear holds you back?

That resistance is a clue. It’s your authentic self pushing against the walls you’ve built to stay “safe.” The work is to lean into that discomfort, piece by piece, and reconnect with who you are beneath the layers of conditioning.

Why This Matters

Whether you’re building a business, leading a team, or simply trying to live a more meaningful life, this work is essential. People are drawn to authenticity. It’s what inspires trust, connection, and innovation.

And it’s not just about you. As a leader, parent, or community member, your awareness can impact others. If you can recognize when someone else is struggling to show up authentically—maybe a colleague who seems “lazy” or a child who’s acting out—you can approach them with understanding rather than judgment.

A Challenge for You

This week, I challenge you to reflect:

• Where do you feel resistance when trying to show up authentically?
• What parts of yourself have you been hiding or suppressing?
• What small step can you take to reconnect with your truth?

Pay attention to the moments where you hold back—and ask yourself, what would it look like to choose authenticity instead?

If you want to take this training further download the Unlock Your Legacy Life Power Pack that will guide you through a self-reflection exercise to help you gain clarity, purpose, and intentionality.

TRANSCRIPTION

Your system gives you feedback that you better shut that down because you need your parents more than you need that trait of yours. Most parents have no idea what's going on in here. They will just come home and get mad if a kid is trying to sing and they're trying to play or show an art and all of a sudden that gets pushed down.

You actually cannot be happy and at peace if you're not connected to that authentic part of you. You have been conditioned to hide a part of yourself. And this is where you say you don't know what your potential is. Nobody else does either. This week is all around authenticity. And we're going to define that a little bit today too.

And on Thursday's session, which is on the human drive for creative expression, it's called the creative expression, but it's basically. The human drive for authenticity. Today's topic is around authenticity versus attachment, and it's probably one of the most powerful and important concepts that I've ever heard when it comes to showing up authentically.

And it's not just a concept we're talking about human needs and I'll go into it. Where does authenticity come from? Because it's become like a pop culture term nowadays, but actually the need for authenticity has always been there for human beings. And the other side of it is the need for attachment that has always been there for human beings as well.

And this idea comes from Dr. Gabor Mate. If you haven't looked into his stuff, definitely do. This recent book is, I think, the myth of normal. You definitely will look into that. Or if he's on a podcast, definitely listen to his stuff. I've been contemplating this over the past year. A year and a half. Uh, and we've talked shortly about, but it is a very important idea for us to understand.

Uh, the way he describes it, and I'll then bring it in our day to day life as well, how this shows up. But the way Dr. Gabor Maté describes is if you look at all the species in the world, and we understand that part of our brain is a reptilian brain. If you understand evolution, how it operates, if you're a reptilian, for example, if you're a reptile, you're So, for example, if you are a snake, once the egg is hatched and the babies are born, Left to fend for themselves.

That's just the nature of that species. But as soon as you go into the mammalian realm, things change a little bit, quite a bit actually. Mammals tend to take care of their young and they spend quite a bit of time showing them how to survive out in the world and mammals can range in different levels.

And then you come to the human type of mammals. Humans are the one species that spend the longest amount of time with their offspring. And this is where, um, interesting things happen. And also our Children tend to be the most dependent on us because our brains are the least developed as we're born. So he gave an example of that is if you compare human beings and Horses are mammals as well.

A horse's child born on the first day can walk and even run around. A human child for the first few months, it's fully dependent on human beings. Specifically, it's their parents or primary caregivers. In most cases, parents, mother and father, and the greater community that they're born in. So a human child is fully dependent, not just for some things, but almost everything.

If you've had a child or you've been around child that are born, they cannot do anything as they're like a lump of meat and bones. And you're basically feeding it, taking care of it, going to sleep, waking up, feeding it. You're taking care of every need for the next few months. And in about a few months, it starts to move around a little bit.

And then after a few months after that, it starts moving around. Even then still fully dependent on you, because if you let them go on its own, the child will likely die. And that continues on probably over the course of the next 16, 18, 20 years, depending on which culture you're from. But within the mammal world, that's the longest period of time any mammal takes care of their children.

And even after that, we continue to be within a type of community or we have contact with them. We enjoy social interactions for the rest of our life. So our relationships are lifelong in a sense. So the reason why I'm describing this whole process because it's one of those things that's easy to overlook.

So because we're fully dependent on our caregivers in the beginning, biologically, there's an internal need for attachment. And that's what we call the need for attachment. What does that mean? That need means that in our psychology, in our brain, in our biology, If our parents, uh, are not attached to us, it means that they're not attached enough that they can take care of us no matter how hard it is.

We're gonna die. Literally, it's just as simple as us. We're gonna die. And it's programmed into our biology, whether you believe God programmed it or nature did, it doesn't actually matter, but it's programmed into. Our brain cells into our nervous system that if our parents don't take care of us, we're gonna die.

We don't have to learn how to speak for that. We don't have to know concepts or ideologies. Our body knows that our parents need to be there for us. This is why if you actually pay attention to kids, they have an annoying level of anxiety. Screaming and crying, because that's the primary way of communicating, and you cannot ignore it.

That's actually one of the primary ways they communicate with you, whether they're hungry, they need to eat, they need to sleep, they will cry. In fact, if you're a parent, if you have been, you know that different cries and different screams and sounds mean different things for kids. In fact, after a little while, you get used to which one means what.

It's very intuitive. Once you spend a little bit of time with children, you're present to it. Over time, in about a couple of years, they learn how to use language, and this is where the higher functioning comes in. They begin to start to regulate emotions a little bit differently, and this is why even at two, three years old, most kids throw tantrums because they haven't learned how to regulate emotions.

By the time they hit five years old, they get much better at that. They can verbalize what they can do. This is where a lot of the cognitive higher functions for human beings around language come in. But, I know I'm going into the technical pieces of it, but this is really important for you to understand because It highlights what happens to us and throughout our life.

Knowing that we're fully dependent on our parents as children and our children are fully dependent on us, there's this very powerful need for attachment. It means that no matter what, we need to survive. Because if we don't survive, it doesn't matter how amazing you want to be, how many experiences you have, or how great you want to be out in the world.

The body and the brain is not concerned with how happy you will be. It's just concerned with to help you survive long enough for you to start having experiences out in the world. Now, as soon as you survive long enough, then the need for authenticity kicks in. This is the thing that actually becomes more and more important as you grow older.

The need for authenticity, and it's also actually a survival mechanism, too. If you take it back to our ancestors who were out there in the forest hunting and protecting themselves from other humans, other animals, they actually had the need for authenticity as well once they were allowed to go on their own.

What was that need? What that looked like in the day to day life was that they needed to trust their own body, their own intuition. They needed to be attuned enough to their own body and emotions and so many things. So if they got the hint or they got the instinct that somebody's about to come from behind you and attack you, they trust that instinct enough.

If they feel a certain way that there's danger around, they would express that to the tribe members or they would act on that in some way. If they felt like somebody was not trustful, they had these needs. They were attuned to their own system enough and they would express themselves enough to the extent that they would survive and grow.

And then the other side of it is the authenticity part. also helps us grow as human beings. So our unique side shows up as well. Every human being has a very unique side to themselves. Again, I will take it back to kids. Like for example, if I compare my older daughter to younger daughter, my older daughter, as soon as she was born, she was like the smiley kind, she would smile.

I didn't have to much do much for her to smile. And she's had the same disposition throughout her life. Up until now, she's eight years old. Like she would keep that for herself because that's What she was born with. Now, you might say that she was impacted by the way her mother was in the womb. Yes, there's a lot of data around that, but we don't know any of that, how that operates, whether her disposition was formed by the way she was in the womb, or that was a big factor, and how she grew up, and her genetics, and whatever, if you want to go to the spiritual world, that her soul was a certain way.

But she came into that this world that way. Now, my younger daughter is very different. When she came into this world, she didn't smile at all. To be honest, most of the time, she will just stare at you. She would stare you down. And to this day, when she sees Anybody she does exactly the same way. That's just one aspect to her and she was like that from the first day And that's one aspect of her authenticity the way she just was from the beginning now What happens there's this trade off that happens with human beings between authenticity and attachment Because attachment is a primary need you have the need for caregivers to take care of you You will override a lot of your authenticity.

So how does that show up in our day to day life? So for example, if you have a part of you that feels authentic to you or a certain way, but your parents don't like it and they shut it down, what happens? Your system gives you feedback that you better shut that down because you need your parents more than you need that trait of yours, whatever that is.

If that trait is that you love singing and your parents hate singing and they cannot stand listening to you singing in that moment or you're too loud, you will push that down because you need their support more than the singing right now to survive. You might need the singing later, but you don't need that in the moment to survive.

Let's say as you're growing up as a child, or if you have The need to question things. You have a certain type of mind that you need to learn things in your environment where you're questioning a lot. Most children do question, but maybe some have more of a need for that than others do. I know I was like that when I was growing up.

I used to ask a lot of questions and I would annoy the hell out of people. Uh, and a lot of times I would get a backlash on that, and then I would keep it to myself because I, I felt like, oh, that was danger territory. I couldn't. Startle the people around me and none of this stuff is conscious. It's subconsciously at a biological and psychological level happens now Think about an average human being growing up in an environment.

I want to clarify one thing now None of this means that parents are going out there to harm their kids Most parents love their kids and they want them to grow up to be healthy, happy, and those kind of things. So we're not blaming parents. This stuff happens even if you don't intend it to. I'm trying to be aware of it, but because we also have our own patterns and most of the time what happens is however we're trained to think and feel, we're going to pass down to the next generation.

Now if we're conscious of it, we can minimize the negative damage. We can maximize the positive effects of being a parent. But more than likely, I've probably, uh, negatively impacted my kids authenticity, and we'll talk about why that's important, how it shows up in their day to day life, even though I'm aware of it.

Now, most parents have no idea what's going on in here. They will just come home and get mad if a kid is trying to sing, and they're trying to play or show an art, and all of a sudden that gets pushed down, and then that kid who had an incredible talent and something gets suppressed. Or if a kid is really expressive and it stands up for herself or himself and the parents really don't like that and it gets pushed down by the parents because they're just trying to survive their day to day and often that that kid suppresses that aspect of themselves and eventually they become these people pleasers but inside they're dying.

And this is what I'm trying to get you to understand that before I go into that, my theory is that the ideal environment for human beings, based on what I've learned is that, uh, any environment we're born into, it amplifies the parts of ourselves. It amplifies the good parts of ourselves within that environment.

For example, if we have the ability to, to speak well, to sing or to be better with our hands or to whatever ability we have, that environment supports that. If we are creative in a certain way, the environment supports that. And so the job of every environment, every parent, every society is to help that kid develop into the best version of themselves as they came into this world.

That's my frame as a starting frame. But what ends up happening is that None of us have the ideal situation, even if you wanted to. Like, we all grew up in a world where some parts of us were allowed to develop, other parts of us weren't. Not because somebody was being malicious, but just, they didn't know, or they just passed on whatever they were taught.

That's just how it works. And then, we lived through, uh, uh, younger. childhood and young adulthood. And we went through a life where we develop certain traits. Some of those traits might be certain fears that we might have that's not inherent to us as human beings, but we've been trained to think like that.

For example, a lot of people will call themselves as people pleasers. All they say, they do things to avoid hurting other people, or they do things to please other people. Some people have a challenge in setting boundaries. Some people cannot do anything because They might get a pushback from their environment.

In fact, this is one of the major reasons why somebody might not be able to start a business or put themselves out there or start something new because they think that they will be ridiculed or made fun of, or they'll be looked at in a judgmental way, but the primary judgment is from themselves. And it's not necessarily themselves.

It's the thoughts and emotions that have been developed over the years when it has been reinforced over and over in their environment. Not because somebody was being malicious or evil, but because that's just the environment you grew up in. And I think As we get to a certain point in our 30s, 40s, 50s, we start to realize the significance of this because you actually cannot be happy and at peace if you're not connected to that authentic part of you, which means that there are certain parts of you that you need to connect with for you to show up at peace out in the world.

For example, if you need to speak up your mind, you need to be able to do that. And if you don't have the ability because it's been conditioned out, then that's going to hurt you. Nobody else might even know what's going on on the outside. This is why we get shocked when we see a comedian who commits suicide.

that comedian had a need themselves to be happy. So they've spent their whole life trying to make everybody else happy, but they're miserable internally because there's a part of them that they don't know how to deal with because it's been conditioned out or something has gone wrong in the environment.

So why is this important for you to understand? It's important for you to understand for yourself, what are the parts of you that has resistance, especially when you're trying to show up. Um, as somebody who wants to connect with people, whether that shows up in networking or being a certain way with your family members, friends, but you cannot be, there's a resistance because you feel like you'll be either judged or you'll feel like you'll be punished or something is happening internally, even though externally it's just fine, or you're trying to put yourself out into the world with it.

And you can't get yourself to go network with people or talk to people because you think in your mind you're an introverted person. But the reality might not be that. The reality might be that you have been conditioned to hide a part of yourself. And you cannot get yourself to, you have resistance internally.

And this is where we say, you don't know what your potential is. Nobody else does either. As soon as you box yourself inside a personality and say that, I'm just introverted, I just don't know how to be around other people. First of all, that's like pop psychology. That doesn't mean anything in the way introverts, extroverts operate.

Because if you're an introverted, it just means that you process information differently than others. If you're a more creative person, you process information differently than another person. If you're an analytical person, it doesn't mean that you have less potential than the next person doesn't mean that you can't do certain things that another person can do.

You might not be able to do as well as an extrovert who has more of a disposition to be around more people. But you can also do it just as well. Same thing on the extroverted side. You might say that I'm extroverted. I don't know if I can go deeper or I don't know if I can spend a lot of time alone to self reflect.

That might not be true either. Like again, these are boundaries we put on ourselves because we look at the evidence, but we don't know how to interpret the evidence. The evidence is simply that you've just been conditioned to meet the need for attachment at the cost of authenticity. Now you're trying to develop your authenticity because that's the only thing that's going to take you to the next level of growth.

As a human being, that's the only thing that's going to take you to the towards your potential. And unfortunately, most people have sacrificed so much of their authenticity for the need for attachment that they don't even know who they are. Their head is filled up with everybody else's thoughts, everybody else's emotions, and they're left in a world when you ask him, How do you feel?

I don't even how I feel. because most of my life I've been told how I feel about things, how I should feel about things. If you ask somebody, what matters to you in the future, they have no idea. And this is why we do so much work in trying to figure out our purpose, our vision, why it's important to us.

What is our identity in the picture? Because we've been trained to not look at that as a primary thing. And by the way, This differs in different cultures. For example, when you go to collectivistic cultures out in the eastern world, this is even worse. Most people have no idea because they're so collectively driven.

The one positive thing of the western world is that the idea of individuality, even though it has its downsides, it has allowed people to slowly start to express themselves. But they still don't know how much of themselves they're suppressing at the cost of their authenticity, because most of their life they still have had to live in communities and families that required them to act a certain way, and they didn't know how to do anything else.

But now, as a conscious adult, if you're trying to build a business, if you're trying to build a path by design, if you're trying to go towards your potential, One of your responsibility is to find out what are the things that creates resistance internally for you. And if something does create resistance for you, don't put it in a category of this is just my personality.

Investigate, become curious, understand why you behave a certain way. And more than likely for most of us, it goes back to some kind of incident in our early life. Could be in the early childhood, later on. which means it has a tangible impact on the way that you build relationships out in the world, in the way that you build a business, because it requires so many things.

If you're attached to just other people's opinions, there's no way you're going to build a business or take it to the next level. Most people who are at the next level, they actually learn to develop a higher level of awareness around what truly matters to them. And they go towards that and they ignore everybody else around them.

Not because They were taught to do. They had to learn the resilience as they went along. The ones who were successful, the ones who weren't successful, they just couldn't build that resilience. They couldn't develop that courage because they were so stuck in their, uh, need for attachment. I want you to think about it this whole week.

Where are the areas where I have resistance when I'm showing up in my day to day life? Is it when I'm trying to be expressive to my wife or husband? When I want to be loving, but there's a part of me that can't do it because my parents showed me a different model, or I never saw a model for it? Is it when I'm trying to reach out to people or putting myself out in the world and I'm afraid that others are going to judge me?

Is it that when I'm having conversations in my business as an investor, as a business owner, I fear rejection. These are all signs of you being too attached to your own patterns. It doesn't mean that you're introverted or extroverted or any of those personality things. It just means that you need to deal with your pattern in person.

process it and develop a better frame and train yourself and your mind to work better out in the world so you can go closer to your potential. If anything, notice your body throughout the week and notice what's happening. How much of you is showing up out in your own life or do you suppress most parts of yourself for the sake of other people and then tell people that I'm sacrificing everything for my family, community, and this and that and the other.

And then convincing yourself that because of them you couldn't move forward. No, you made a choice. In fact, I wouldn't even call it a choice. You've been trained to make that choice. When you become aware, you make choices, no matter how uncomfortable they are, you go closer to what matters to you and what delivers the most amount of contribution in your own community, in your own family, in your own organization, regardless of what the challenges are with it.

And that's what we call courage anyway. And courage is one of the highest forms of values for most cultures. Why? Because if you can be uncomfortable and uneasy to do something that's very hard for you to do, and you do it anyway, because you have a conscious mind and you can interrupt old patterns and you can live with your authentic self, despite the fact that there's a part of you that not allowing you That you're scared.

That's the kind of person that was inspired by. So are you showing up with courage despite your internal limitation and external feedback that might be negative? And again, you being aware of this and, uh, serving this on a consistent basis and checking in with yourself and asking for feedback will help you determine that.

And the, the one thing that I didn't highlight enough there is that this is also, you're also a leader in your community. You could be a fa father, a, a parent, a, um, a guardian of somebody. You could be the head of an organization. You will notice that this pattern shows up with other people too. So this is also for you to notice this with other people, how it's showing up with them.

And if you're not aware of this, you're more than likely. You do a blanket statement. This person is lazy. This person is that, but you're not understanding why this person is behaving this way. So you don't know how to lead them. If you can exercise your ability to be a conscious adult, we still have the need for attachment because we work with other people.

We live with family. That's important, but there's a balance in there for everybody. It'll be different. But the more you decide that, Hey, you know what? This is my non negotiable. This is how I need to show up as a human being. So for example, for me, the non negotiable is I need to be able to do the things that matter to me.

If I can't do that in my relationship with my wife, with my greater family, that's non negotiable. I don't care what relationships are there because I've tried that most of my life and I've been miserable. So they need to accept that. And I also need to be able to support my family and friends, others.

What are they, what is their need for authenticity here? And I'm looking for that consistently. So it also develops a higher awareness as a leader that you're looking for what it. People need before they even anticipated themselves when they're not showing up authentically notice it because they're miserable.

Most of the time they're hurt, they're angry, and usually that's an effect of them not being able to deal with their own truth, not being able to express and live their own truth. A lot of depression. Is that we've come to a world? No, it's just a chemical imbalance. But where does it come from? It's usually because people are living somebody else's version of life.

And over time, you're going to get miserable. And I've gone through that. I know what that feels like. It feels like hell. A lot of times you don't feel a lot. You're just surviving. When you're in extreme situations, people just Say that, well, that's just how your makeup is, but there are causes behind it.

Have you explored it? We have the ability to train our mind or our thought processes, our emotions, our behavior differently. That's freedom, I think. That's the freedom of choice that we have. It's just that most people don't think that's what it is because most people are taught that you're a victim to your genetics, you're a victim to your environment, you're a victim to your day to day, uh, instincts that you have.

But to be honest, if you look at what makes human beings human is their ability to make choices despite stimulus. We can choose to, for example, fast. Our instinct is to eat, but we choose to fast because it does something for us. Take that as a rule of thumb that usually the decisions that feel authentic in the beginning, if you're training your mind differently, it doesn't feel comfortable.

They're not the kind of decisions that feel good. But people get the wrong impression. They think that the decisions that are connected to my authentic side is the ones that feel good. And this is the pop culture we live in that everything needs to feel good. Actually, the decisions that that don't feel good in the short term, but feel good in the long term are the best decisions.

that food that's going to take you towards the kind of body that you don't want. That means that not spend on something that doesn't matter to you, not spend time with somebody that doesn't matter to you, not waste your energy on things that don't matter. For example, if somebody says something on social media, you will feel better by responding in the moment, but that's going to stay with you the rest of the day.

That's a bad decision. But then, you know, It's paradoxical because the decisions that feel good in the moment usually feel the worst in the long term. And we don't have a frame of reference because we haven't seen it enough until you train yourself to see this. This is the complete opposite of what my instincts would tell me.

And because our instincts have been reverse trained, we don't know how to deal with it. And over time you do this, you start to get connected to your intuition, your creative side. You start to see that there's a part of you that knows what to do most of the time. You're just convincing yourself another way.

And that part, once you get connected to that's where people say you're connected to your soul, your intuition, your creative side that helps you navigate the world a lot better than you if you thought about it logically in the moment, logical thinking has its place. It's the use of the mind, but it doesn't have all the data.

in front of you until you get connected to intuition. And that's part of what we're going to talk about on Thursday. In fact, I'm going to go through a whole process to get you to survey your whole life, to see what's happening in your day to day life, which part of your life you're bringing your own authenticity and creativity, which part of your life is not showing up.

What can you do differently and make sure you observe what's happening in your day to day life until our session. Hope you all have an incredible week and we'll see you on Thursday.