You Are a Badass: Unlock Your Most Authentic Self in 4 Proven Steps

0:00Hey, it's your friend Mel and welcome to the Mel Robbins podcast.

0:07I am really looking forward to this conversation with you today. I'm so glad you're taking the time to be with me. We're going to dig into a topic that I know you are going to love, and that is how can you become the most authentic version of yourself? And what the hell does that even mean, right? That's a big mouthful of a sentence, the most authentic version of yourself. And I have a story about authenticity that I want to tell you. Earlier this week, I was in Nashville because I was giving a speech to executives in the supply chain industry. Well, when I go to Nashville, I have to go to Cane Prime.

0:47I love Cane Prime for a number of reasons. First of all, they have an appetizer that is bacon, that is sous vide for like 72 hours, and then they finish it off on a cast iron grill and you want to hear what they top it off with? Cotton candy. You heard that right. So that's order number one. Order number two, they make this insanely delicious purple kale salad with currants and almonds and it is just so freaking delicious. And then finally, their steaks. They're just fantastic. So after the tech rehearsal, I went to Cane Prime and we walk in and we're seated by this really wonderful gentleman.

1:28He's clearly the manager of the restaurant. He's dressed to the nines. Just, you know, one of these people that you can tell they love, love, love taking care of people. Takes a lot of pride in that. So we have this fabulous meal. We've paid the bill and he comes back and he asks us how the meal was. And I, of course, I'm so effusive. I mean, even more so than I was with you describing this meal. And he's nodding and smiling. And then he leans in and says, you know, I'm a really big fan of yours. And I just love your podcast. And I looked at him. And I, I, I, I, of course, got the thank you out and I gave him a huge hug.

2:09But between you and me, I just am constantly floored at how wide of a range of people listen to and are part of this community. So he then says, Mel, you know what I like about you? You're just so real. You're so authentic. How did you become so comfortable being yourself? And the truth is, for a long time, I went through life being the least authentic version of myself. And it made me miserable. Spending decades hating myself? That was fun. No, it wasn't. Spending decades trying to please everybody else, assuming that there was something wrong with me? It made me miserable. And I think it was the pain of trying so hard to be somebody else that finally led me to this breakthrough.

3:05It's so liberating. And it's so much easier if you can accept yourself for who you are and for who you're not. It's an important part of it. And be that authentic version of yourself out in the world to have your opinions, to wear the things that you want to wear, to dance when you want to dance, to opt out of something if you want to opt out of something, to not hang out with people that don't feel great for you. That's what it means for me to be the most authentic version of myself. I allow myself the grace and the support and the encouragement of just showing up as I am. And since I really don't know how to teach you to do that for yourself, I thought, why don't we track down an expert?

3:53Because I'm getting more and more and more questions in the inbox. How do I become the most authentic version of myself? Here's the other question that I get a lot. I don't even feel like myself anymore. I don't even know who I am anymore. Well, what I do know when you're saying that is you're not the most authentic version of yourself for sure, because you're not connected to yourself. And so I tracked down a profoundly respected expert on the topic of authenticity and belonging. Ritu Basin has been researching these two topics. She has written a bestselling book about them. She is teaching these topics of authenticity on stages and with the biggest brands around the world.

4:37And today she is going to teach you and me a three-part framework for developing the most authentic version of yourself. And more importantly, what to do to support yourself as you start showing up more and more as your full authentic self out in the world. And some people don't like it. You're going to get a lot of insight and more importantly, tools about reconnecting with the most authentic, relatable, and real version of yourself. All right, let's do this. Rithu, I'm so excited that you're here. Thank you so much for having me, Mel. I'm excited to be here too. And I also wanted to thank you for something very specific.

5:20Tell me. I am genuinely grateful that you created a YouTube video that demonstrated the proper pronunciation of your name, including tips for how to get the second part of your name done correctly. Why did you do that? Well, it was born out of necessity, Mel, because with a name like Ritu Basin, which by the way, let me take a step back. So my parents are from India. We're Indian by culture. They immigrated now over 50 years ago to Canada, which is where I live. I'm Canadian. And after decades and decades of having people anglicize my name and pronounce my name as Ritu. At the age of 30, I decided that I'm going to stand in my power, claim my belonging as it relates to my name, and have people pronounce it the proper way, which is Ritu.

6:25And my last name is pronounced the scene. I grew up with the last name Schneeberger. And when people would look at those 12 letters and the mouthful that that was, they would completely turn it into word salad. Like there's something that feels off when through your whole life, people are saying your name, Ritu. Okay. Yes. I was practicing. I live with the anxiety that I'm going to mispronounce somebody's name. Now that I'm a professional speaker and I'm on stages and podcasting and blah, blah, blah. what I was noticing is that it actually causes people anxiety to say my name incorrectly. And I thought, you know what, I should just help people out.

7:13And let me create this video. And so that people can learn to practice. And it alleviates stress and tension for them. And it helps me as well, because part of me standing in my power and being who I am claiming my identity is having people say it correctly. I don't need people to say it 100 % correctly. I just need to know that you're signaling that you care because this is what empathy is about. It's the, do you see me? Do you care? Are you paying attention to what's important to me? So people don't need to nail it and say it the Brown way. I just need to know that people are trying. You know what I mean?

7:51Well, there's so much in what you just said, which is why I wanted to start here. So you are an expert in belonging and in authenticity and the courage that it takes to realize that it bothers you that people are saying your first name incorrectly and standing in your power to do something about it. You graciously creating a video so that in your professional life, in your personal life, you've explained and helped people in having you feel this sense of belonging and being seen. This is so difficult for people. I know so many people and you listening to us, maybe one of them, that if you order coffee at a coffee shop and they get your order wrong, you don't say something.

8:50because you don't want to make waves. You don't want people to not like you. You don't want the person behind the counter to feel bad. You don't want to hold up the line. And there's an element of being able to stand in your power and ask for what you need. That is part of being your truest, authentic self. Correct? A thousand percent. And in fact, I have struggled. I struggled for decades to embrace who I am and be who I am. But as I learned to do my healing work and stand more in my power, what I realized is that every action, every micro behavior that I engage in is one step forward to me fully embracing who I am and claiming belonging for myself.

9:39And whether that is the barista at the coffee shop or the customer service person at the airport or the person on the phone or family members or my leader or my team members or my clients or my customers. There's a low stakes, big stakes. Every single act, every behavior I engage in is a chain reaction for me claiming my authenticity and belonging. But it took me like Mel, it took me years to finally make this happen for myself. How did you know that you weren't your authentic self? Because I asked that question, it may seem kind of dumb, but when we use the words authenticity and belonging, what is the difference between authenticity and belonging?

10:27Authenticity and belonging go hand in hand. I define belonging as being the profound feeling that we hold within ourselves of being honored and accepted for who we are. First and foremost, with our own selves. and this is what then enables us to claim belonging with others and so belonging is about being who we are embracing who we are first and foremost with our own selves we belong to ourselves first really what I'm saying here is that belonging is about authenticity belonging can only happen because we are being authentic and so they're intertwined they go hand in hand. The more authentic we are in our interactions, the more we experience belonging.

11:17And to experience belonging, we must be authentic. And so they literally go hand in hand. And in fact, belonging is the outcome of being authentic. I want to help the person listening understand what you're talking about and how you even know if you're your authentic self or not? Yeah, it's such an important question. I'm going to tell you a really quick story because it's a powerful example of how these moments can happen for us where we can clock the behavior. And I think being intentional and mindful and tuned in is critical, like self-reflection, self-awareness, huge. So just in a nutshell, so I'm the child of immigrants from a very young age, I experienced relentless bullying, childhood bullying, and it was racist in particular.

12:14Plus, I had cultural confusion based on how my parents were like, how white should we make her? How Indian should we push them to be? And so between the cultural confusion and the shielding myself from the hate her coming my way as a kid because of being bullied, I learned to put on multiple masks and I've learned to push down my identities and I learned to curate what I call a performing self. And when I say performing self, I don't mean like high performance. I mean like life is a stage where actors on the stage performing who we are as opposed to being who we are. What are examples of performing?

12:50There are so many ways in which we end up performing because we feel the pressure to change who we are because others are judging us or we feel like they're judging us. And so I can't tell you how many people have shared things with me. Like I changed the way I pronounce my name. I don't talk about my lived experience with anxiety, depression. I don't talk about being gay or trans. I literally changed my accent. I don't talk about growing up in an immigrant household upbringing. I change how I dress. I don't wear my hair natural. I laugh differently. I literally will change the words that I use at work and so much more.

13:31There are so many examples that people share with me, but those are just a few. Ritu, thank you for those examples. We need to take a quick break and hear a word from our sponsors. But when we come back, I would love for you to share an example of a moment in your life when you felt like you couldn't be yourself and instead you started to perform. All right, stay with us. We'll be right back.

14:03Welcome back. We're talking about the science and research around becoming your most authentic self with bestselling author Ritthou Basin. You were just sharing some examples in your work of where people were performing instead of being their authentic selves. I would love for you to share with us an example from your own life where you felt like you couldn't be your authentic self. I became a lawyer. I entered the legal profession. And as a young woman of color navigating the corporate world, I noticed that the messages around conformity were never direct like being bullied as a kid, but they were always there subtly.

14:43And so I became a master at shifting codes and, and hiding, curating what I'll talk about at work and what I'll mask on and taking on the hobbies of like the corporate world that were like really popular. And, but I hated, I did all of this to fit in and I'm using air quotes for those listening and all not watching like fit in because I can tell you now that changing who we are will never be the same as actual belonging. Like, yes, some doors to acceptance will open, but it's not the same as actually belonging. I want to stop right there. Because I think that's part of the confusion for most of us.

15:19Yes. Where innately, we seek to fit in. And there are varying degrees to which we compromise our true selves. You're talking about something I've never had to personally deal with as a white woman. I've never had to do that code switching because of environments where it was all white because I blended into that area. I understand what you're talking about when it comes to the subconscious cues, because as dumb as it sounds, I do remember being a corporate lawyer at a time where women didn't wear pants. And that is a very superficial example of fitting in somewhere because I think I have to fit in in order to succeed.

16:12And so everybody, regardless of your background, you have some example, whether it is deep around your identity, your race, your religion, your sexuality, your gender, or you have examples that are very superficial. Right. But what I really want you to explain for everybody right now is what's the difference between fitting into a group or a culture at work versus belonging to that group of friends or belonging to that team and that culture at work? It is entirely rooted in how you feel now. You know, oftentimes we think that the mind goes first, but it's actually the body. Our body will signal to us how we're doing our how we're experiencing a situation or a person before our mind even catches up and so we want to after today start using our body as a guidepost an anchor for how we're feeling and so I define belonging really quickly as the profound feeling so again something in our body that says to us I'm being honored and accepted for who I am when we are experiencing belonging, we feel in flow.

17:31Like we feel at ease. We feel safe. It feels good. It feels nice. Even when it feels vulnerable, like even when we're feeling a bit nervous and activated because it's like, oh my gosh, I'm worried. What are you going to think and say, but I'm still going to share me and do me. It feels good. Whereas fitting in is activating. When we feel the pressure to put on our performing self mask and change the way we speak or hide aspects of our identity. For example, I experienced a lot of inequities and hate and hurt coming my way tied back to my race and intersectionality with being a girl, a smart girl or a woman and coming from a immigrant child family upbringing.

18:17But people experience all kinds of judgment and bias tied back to, for example, mental health, like look at people's experiences with anxiety, depression, or you grew up poor, or you're the first person in your family to go to college or university, or some people feel like they're so short, tall, they're bigger. Like we are being judged. The fear of judgment and bias, like people actually judging us based on who we are, that's what strikes at our ability to belong. Based on my work and research, I can tell you When we worry that you're going to judge me, you're going to take your love away from me, you're going to take opportunities away from me.

18:56That's what causes us to suppress our authenticity and it strikes at our belonging. And so that's what pushes us to feel like I got to put this performing self mask on, curate who I am, change the way I speak, change what I talk about, change the way I dress, not tell you about my anxiety, depression, or who I really want to love, or how I view my gender, or how unwell my parents were, or the really crappy neighborhood I grew up in. Whatever the fear is, it's what causes us to curate and sanitize. And so we hide our emotions, we hide our behaviors. And we do this not because we're evil human beings trying to deceive others.

19:39We do this to shield and protect ourselves from judgment. That makes a lot of sense. And I want to take a moment and just turn to you listening to us. It's almost like I'm going to pass you the mic because you've just heard this definition of belonging as feeling safe to be yourself. And I want you to apply this definition to your own life right now. And here's the question I want to ask you. Where in your life are you not being your authentic self? where you feel this pressure that Ritu is talking about to fit in. Maybe you've got friendships where you feel like it's not okay just to be you. Or perhaps you're working somewhere where you feel the need to hide aspects of who you are.

20:27Which is one of the reasons, Mel, why I don't use the word inauthentic ever. The term inauthentic or inauthenticity, in my view, has a lot of negative connotations to it. It's like you're deliberately trying to mislead people about who you are. My work in research has shown me that when we put on our performing self masks, we don't do it because we're trying to mislead people. We do it because of hurt and woundedness. We do it because of pain. We do it because we're afraid others will take their love away. And you know what? It's not a figment of our imagination. it's because people in the past have taken their love away from us and we worry it'll happen again but as we do our healing work and we stand in our power we start to realize a life that is created and rooted in belonging where i feel in flow because i get to be who i am around you even if you'll judge me i'm going to do it anyway is so much more rich and beautiful than a life of literally walking around with that mask on all the time.

21:37And I can tell you, I'm not even joking because I did it for decades. This life that I'm leading, it's harder to live because it's more intentional and mindful, but it is so much more beautiful and worth it. Rithu, so I have a particular question. If you're listening to this conversation right now and you've never considered the possibility of becoming more authentic and what it might be like to experience true belonging instead of this pressure to fit in. How the heck do you even know if you're faking it right now or you're just kind of performing on the surface in order to fit in? So you'll know you're performing because you'll feel heaviness in your chest.

22:21You'll feel queasiness in your stomach. You'll start to sweat. You'll feel heat on your face, in your chest. You'll hear in your mind all kinds of negative narratives, the comments like, I'm not good enough. You don't like me. I'm such a loser. You'll feel tension in your neck and shoulders. These are just a few examples of things that can happen in our body when we feel the pressure to perform. There is so much wisdom and beauty that you just dropped on all of us. And I want to try to unpack it. And it is so important to me that as you're listening to us, that you're able to grasp these concepts and start to see where this is applicable in your own life.

23:10And the word I keep thinking about that you used is activated. So you said when you feel like you belong, you have this state of flow. Their minds are not racing ahead, that there is nothing in the moment that you need to manage. Yeah. And that there is this peace and freedom. Like you're calm, you're anchored. Yep. The absence of the panic or anxiousness or activation. You use the word activation. Could you explain that word so that we can all understand it? Because I certainly don't. So when I'm talking about becoming activated or feeling activation in the body, what I'm referring to is that things happen in the environment that cause us to feel uncomfortable, that cause us to feel stress or tension in the body, that something that's happening around us triggers us and pushes our body into a place of feeling stress tension throughout ourselves.

24:14And it can look like tension in the chest, queasiness in the stomach, stress in our neck and shoulders. It can feel like anxiety, panic inside of us. We can hear negative thoughts swirling in our minds. It's basically a triggering of the body because of something that's happened around us that doesn't feel good. Yes. And the activation is an interesting word because certain friend groups that I was a part of or certain people I was dating or certain classes, for example, that I was taking in college or certain jobs that I hated where the moment I was walking into the classroom or into work or I was sitting at a table with my supposed friends and air quotes, I was not anchored and at peace.

25:06I was so active in my mind and thinking about other things and worried about something and not able to feel anchored or at peace in those experiences. And I personally believe based on the number of people that write in and the size of the audience on our social channels and the podcast that most people have a day-to-day, hour-to-hour, minute-to-minute experience of being activated and not belonging. Yes. How does somebody know, and I want you listening to us, I want you to think about where is the easiest place for somebody to spot this for themselves so that they can recognize a place in their life where they're not able to be their authentic self and where they get into this particular part of their life.

26:02And it's very activating. So I love, love, love, love, love this question for so many reasons. And in fact, Mel, if you said to me, Ritu, tell everyone today, what is the number one thing that you did to bring more belonging and authenticity into your life, to bring more ease and joy and flow and peace into your life? What was that? Ritu, tell us the number one thing that you did to bring more joy and peace into your life. I can pick up what you're putting down, woman. So tell us, because I want to know. I am always anchored to who I am. Like I often will say, here I am anchored, the good swirls around me, the bad, the ugly, everything is swirling around me, and I am anchored.

26:50And why? The number one thing that I did to bring more authenticity, belonging and joy into my life is cultivate what I call my core wisdom. What the hell is that? Yeah, right, right. Good question. So our core wisdom is the inner knowing that pushes us to tune into ourselves and say to ourselves, in any situation, any interaction, any moment we're in, whether it's a moment of joy or a moment of feeling stressed or a moment of deep pain, whatever it is, we tune in and we say to ourselves, what's my mind saying right now? and in a moment of joy, we'll be saying, oh, I feel so good. This feels really good.

27:33Or I really like her. Like for example, right now, I'm really enjoying this, but in a stressful moment, it'll say, oh my God, I'm such a loser. See, I'm always a loser. And I can tell he's judging me. And this is why I shouldn't speak and no, don't speak. And I knew you didn't like me. So we hear the narratives in the head. We hear the voice. Our core wisdom also pushes us to say, what am I feeling in my body. So let's go back to what I was sharing earlier. Belonging is a feeling. A lack of belonging is a feeling. What is the difference between fitting in and actually being who we are? You'll know the difference based on what your body is telling you.

28:15So our core wisdom says in this moment, in this experience, what is my body feeling and sensing? And we start to tune and we feel the stress in our chest and we'll feel that we're starting to sweat and we'll feel the heat on our face. And then coupled with the negative narratives in our head, like you're a loser, you suck, see, don't speak, don't be who you are, they're gonna judge you. We hear all of this and feel all of this happening. And in that moment, we leap into using our core wisdom strategies. Ritu, before you teach us the core strategies, I just wanna be sure that everybody listening got those two very important steps.

28:55That number one, you tune into your mind and you ask yourself, okay, what is my mind saying to me right now? And if your mind is saying something positive about you and how you're showing up, that's probably a really good sense that you're being authentic. But if your mind is negative, you can then take step two, which is tune into your body. Because you measure belonging based on how you feel. And if you feel like you aren't able to be yourself or that you don't really belong here without performing, now we're gonna turn to the strategies that you've researched in your work. We need to take a quick break and hear a word from our sponsors.

29:38And when we come back, I want you to walk us through those strategies and what self-coaching sounds like. Stay with us.

29:54Welcome back. I'm here with bestselling author and researcher Rithu Basin, and we're talking about the science of authenticity and belonging. And I want to jump right back into one of your core strategies, which is self-coaching. Can you give us an example of what that self-coaching sounds like? Oh no, inner saboteur. I'm not going to let you talk to me that way. And we have our affirmations or our mantras, our self-coaching ready to go because we're like, no way rithubasin stand in your power rithubasin speak or my favorite thing rithubasin you've got this if you don't speak who will so then my app my affirmations and mantra start going but then my body is still activated yeah so then i start doing my deep breathing work in that moment and i start this deep deep breathing i take my hands i rub it on my thighs or put it on my chest rub my fingers i feel the tears coming up and i say cry let it out let it out oh you don't want to do it right here because they're watching you don't feel comfortable that's okay come back to this later it's called emotional release or emotional discharge when we feel like we're being judged what's actually happening in the body is that as human beings we're animals and we're governed by our nervous systems all day long our nervous systems are clocking for harmful things in the environment back in the day although for some people i i think maybe you um mel given how your early morning hikes, we're clocking for bears and forests.