On finding your authentic ‘thing’ (or things)

Inside each and every one of us is one true authentic swing. Something we were born with. Something that’s ours and ours alone. Something that can’t be taught to you or learned… something that’s got to be remembered. – The Legend of Bagger Vance

There’s something about writing or talking about authenticity and being true to yourself that feels really good to me. Like playing the perfect note, my note…. some people call it resonance… when your body vibrates at a different level – a synchronised level – and there is an inner knowing, an inner harmony, an inner ‘yes’.

Do you have a thing like that?

In ‘The Legend of Bagger Vance’, the story of a golfer finding his form again, the main character finds his ‘thing’ through the movement of his body, his golf swing, where everything falls into an effortless natural rhythm and he can strike the ball with ease.

I was reminded of this recently talking to a wonderful coach who also happens to be a musician… when he told me he was ‘trying out’ some new names for his brand by saying them out loud and listening for a resonance.

I found that fascinating – as it would never occur to me to say things out loud to sense if they were right. I would perhaps write some names down and feel for a resonance… but it wouldn’t make sense to say them out loud.

Occasionally I type words into a thesaurus and then look at the options until I see one that ‘feels’ right. I know when a word doesn’t feel quite right and I also know when it’s ‘landed’. It’s not something I’ve ever been taught how to do, it’s just something that happens quite naturally – so naturally in fact, that I wasn’t consciously aware of it until recently.

But my musician friend got me thinking – are there other things I could do to test out new ideas or content, like speaking them aloud? Is this something we could all explore and expand on and develop?

It makes sense for a writer to write, a musician to make a sound, or a sportsman to move. But we’re never ‘just’ a writer, musician or sportsman, and perhaps we don’t know what the hell we’d love to do anyway, so exploring these sensory alternatives might just open a door to a new, rich possibility.

Or perhaps ultimately the most useful thing we can do is notice that we’re resonating at all, in whatever way that happens. However faint or loud, clear or blurry that feeling is, it’s a pretty juicy clue – a clue that can be relied on. Because that feeling isn’t just a nice feeling, it’s a compass that will lead us to our note, our swing, our ‘thing’.