Cheat Sheet to Your Most Authentic Self
Four words and a list of rituals that will always bring you home
🎙️ New episode of In Alignment is live - The Invisible Factors Driving Your Health Are in Your Home with Ben Parens, Founder of Nestwell ✨ Listen now on Spotify or Apple Podcasts
Life has been fast lately.
A hum of anxiety, an edge in my voice. Moving too quickly. I literally broke a glass last night racing to my computer for a late night call. My mom saying “you never have time to get coffee anymore” and realizing she was right.
And then my body made it impossible to ignore — a painful period this month, the first one I’ve had in over a year and a few waves of insomnia over the past month.
My body is a very honest reporter. When I’m in alignment I feel it physically. Deep sleep, energized mornings, high energy, ease. When I’ve drifted — even slightly — it tells me. Insomnia. Painful cycles. A low hum of anxiety. Irritability over small things. A physical feeling of always being in a rush.
I’m building a company, traveling, staying busy with friends. In so many ways I’m the happiest I’ve ever been. But somewhere in the fullness of it I stopped doing the little things that make me feel most like myself. And my body always seems to notice before I consciously do.
So the other night I pulled up my notes app and found something I wrote this fall. At Shift we call it your True Self Code — four words that capture who you are at your core, at your most authentic self.
Not who you are at your most productive or most impressive. But who you are when you feel at home in yourself. The feelings, rituals, and ways of being that make you feel nurtured, held, safe, alive, and full.
Most of us know when something is off. We feel it — in our sleep, our bodies, our patience, the quality of our presence.
But we don’t always know what to do with that feeling. Often we optimize harder or add something new — when what we actually need is to return to ourselves through simple, enjoyable, nurturing practices.
Your True Self Code is your guide and the fastest path back to yourself. A set of words with rituals inside them that help you quickly return to who you are when you feel most like yourself.
My four words are Connection, Cozy, Creative, and Glow.
Connection is deep, loyal love and friendship. Intimacy, trust, belonging. The kind of connection where you feel so seen, so held, so entirely yourself. The rituals inside connection are laughing until it hurts, deep vulnerable conversations, dinner parties that linger for hours.
Cozy is ease and softness. Warmth, routines, comfort. The feeling of being home — in your space, with your people, and in yourself. The rituals inside cozy are baking cookies on a Sunday and cooking my favorite dinner. Taking the long way to my favorite coffee shop. Snuggling and staying up late, laughing and talking with someone you really love. Chocolate on the couch with a candle, blanket and my favorite show.
Creative is building and creating. Bringing an inner vision into form. Writing, ideating, making something that comes from the deepest and most honest part of me. It is expansive. Creativity is the vehicle through which I execute my purpose. The rituals inside it are building my business, connecting with other female founders, podcasts, events, hours long walks with my co-founder ideating on the vision for Shift.
Glow is health, beauty, and vitality. Fresh air, the sun, hot yoga, swimming in the ocean. Cooking healthy nourishing meals. Farmers markets and long walks in the woods. Lifting weights, lemon water in the morning and baking healthy treats.
When my days include the essence of these four words — even in small doses — I feel regulated, grounded, most alive and most like myself.
When I drift away from them, my body starts sending signals.
And when it does, I read my list and ask myself which words, or parts of myself, I have been neglecting most.
These past few months, cozy was the obvious answer. So I closed my laptop, turned on a podcast I love, lit a candle, and started making cookies.
I’m writing this Substack with the cookies cooling on the counter. And I feel, for the first time in a while, completely like myself again.
That’s what your True Self Code is for. It isn’t a productivity tool or an optimization hack. It’s a compass. A set of words with rituals inside them that you can return to when you need to return to yourself.
How to find yours.
Your True Self Code is not something you think your way into. It’s something you feel your way toward. The goal is to find three or four words that — when you read them — make something in your chest say yes, that’s me.
Today I’m going to guide you through this practice. It’s one of my favorite exercises and you’ll be left with a guide you can always return to when you need to find your way back to yourself.
Before you answer the questions below, I want you to know there are no right answers. This isn’t about who you want to be or who you think you should be. It’s about who you already are when you feel like yourself. Write the first thing that comes and don’t overthink it.
