» Celeb Inspiration of the Day: Keeping It Real with Chelsea Lately

Simply Serenity

Inspiration for inner peace and love by Lauralyn, a yoga and angel therapist.

Celeb Inspiration of the Day: Keeping It Real with Chelsea Lately

September 6th, 2011

I felt inspired after reading fellow blogger, Rebekah Moan’s, entry about envy this week. It reminded me of a string of comments I also recently read about Chelsea Lately.

Celebrity Inspiration

Chelsea Lately recently admitted to the New York Times that she had an abortion when she was 16 years old and this spurred a long chain of comments on a blog that probed people to share their feelings about her. Was she too open? Is she too blunt and direct with how she feels?

The majority of comments posted on this blog celebrated Lately’s honesty and encouraged more people to be their real selves. Being real means being honest about who you are and how you feel instead of pretending to appease someone else or fit in with the majority. Being real also involves taking responsibility for your decisions. I think what makes Lately’s witty, sarcastic style appealing is that she doesn’t strive to be offensive. She is simply sharing how she really feels. Her show has been so successful because millions of other people are feeling the same way but may not have courage to speak their own truth like she does. She is a role model for being honest with yourself and others and to find humor in life – to be able to laugh at ourselves and not take life so seriously.

Allow Yourself To Be Loved and Appreciated Just As You Are

People have senses like hound dogs and can sniff out the times when you’re pretending or trying to impress or appease them rather than sharing how you really feel, what you’re really experiencing. It’s so easy to pretend, in spirituality, that life is grand all the time. That you’re unfazed by negativity and that your mind has superpowers to block out any unpleasant emotion or event that stirs in this world. There’s an unrealistic perception that spiritual people never judge, never lie, never have a bad day because they’re so darn positive all the time and divinely connected. That’s simply not true. Spiritual people just tend to be more self-aware and committed to positive and compassionate thinking, which guides them to judge less, lie less and cope with bad days a bit easier thanks to their faith and deeper understanding of things. A spiritual person may be able to catch themselves judging or lying about how they really feel, and strive to to correct their thinking so it aligns with their spiritual practice.

For me, spirituality is, above all, the practice of understanding yourself better, loving yourself, and living your life with integrity so you feel good about yourself and the unique way in which you share your inspiration with others.

Watching Chelsea Lately, you can tell she likes herself – so much so that she can admit she’s not perfect. That alone is an act of self-acceptance. She appreciates her silliness, her curiosity, her humanity. She stands by her beliefs and decisions and doesn’t apologize for who she is and how she feels, regardless of what other people may think. She nurtures these innate traits by expressing herself in a way that entertains others and makes them laugh. There are spiritual teachers who are blatantly direct in their approach to open our minds and challenge our ways of thinking – and some just make us laugh, which is an amazing gift!

There is no wrong way of being spiritual: it’s an experience, a practice; not a size you have to fit.

Use Your Authentic Voice: that’s how you really feel

Some spiritual teachers I’ve met truly have a hippie-like soul; they believe in a beautiful lightness of being and they live their lives according to it. Others are denying their own truth to represent what they think others expect from a spiritual person: whether it’s to be vegan, to be perfect, to say kind things all the time, to embody every good available to man. But even the saints had flaws and opinions. And Buddha ate meat. There is beauty in our divine humanness. There is relativity in our imperfections. And there is authenticity in our life’s experiences and the unique way we choose to express ourselves in this world. If we live under the expectations or rules of what we should be, then we don’t allow our true spirit to shine. Life is too short to not enjoy who you are.

Be true to yourself. Don’t apologize for who you are or how you feel, own it! Because there are plenty of other people feeling the same way who may be trying to deny that part of themselves that needs love and acceptance, too. When we’re authentic to ourselves, we inspire other people to be true to themselves. When we allow other people to be authentic, we practice acceptance, listening and respect. We may not agree with what they say, but we grant them the opportunity for self-expression, the same opportunity we want for ourselves.

We live in a melting pot of personalities – as Bob Marley once said, stir it up! The colorful spectrum of personalities is what makes life here interesting and fun.

Chelsea Lately is an example of the success and support that can follow one choosing to be true to themselves and not caring what others think. So is Oprah. I’m sure you can name many others who have paved the way for us to not only be our true selves, but celebrate it!

Digg Digg