A Mindful Perspective
Welcome to my podcast! I'm Nick Levesque, and I'm on a mission to help you navigate life's challenges with a mindful perspective. Join me every week as I dive deep into the realms of mindset, spirituality, and personal growth. Drawing from my own experiences, I want to provide you with tools, strategies, insights, and inspiring stories that will help you go from where you are now, to where you want to be.
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A Mindful Perspective
Why You Hide Your True Self (And How to Stop)
Why You Hide Your True Self (And How to Stop)
Have you ever felt like you had to hide parts of yourself just to be accepted? Like the real you wasn’t good enough? We all wear masks—whether it’s to fit in, avoid rejection, or meet expectations. But over time, these masks don’t just protect us… they trap us.
In this video, we’ll explore:
✅ Why we hide our true selves (fear of rejection, social conditioning, & the false self)
✅ How suppressing your real self impacts your happiness, relationships, and confidence
✅ The Golden Shadow—how what you admire in others is a reflection of your hidden potential
✅ Practical steps to take off the mask and start living as your authentic self
If you’ve ever struggled with people-pleasing, self-doubt, or feeling like you have to change who you are to be accepted—this video is for you. It’s time to embrace your truth and let go of the fear of being seen.
Hello everyone and welcome to A Mindful Perspective. I'm your host, nick Levesque, certified Spiritual Life Coach, and I'm here to share insights into my journey of mindfulness and self-discovery. Each week, we'll explore mindset, spirituality and personal growth to help you navigate life's challenges with practical strategies and inspiring stories. Let's dive in.
Speaker 2:If you've ever felt like you've had to hide parts of yourself or to mold yourself in specific ways in order to be socially accepted, in order to fit in, I want you to watch this video today, because my hope is that this video can allow you to step into who you truly are, step into your authenticity. Okay, stop hiding who you are and to maybe start slowly taking off the mask that maybe you've been wearing for a few years. And this is something I struggled with personally for most of my teenagers, up until my early 20s, where I just didn't feel like I was good enough, right, so I had to wear this mask in order for people to like me. So, just to give you a few examples of what I mean by that so, for me personally, a lot of times when I tried to share who I was or the things that I enjoyed doing, okay, oftentimes I was met with rejection, right With criticism, and just a lot of people didn't agree with that, right? So just to give you a few examples I've never been a big drinker. I've, you know, I've never really enjoyed or liked alcohol, okay, and whenever I share that with someone where I would go to gatherings, as an example, or parties in my teenage years and I wasn't drinking, a lot of people would look at me very funny. A lot of people would make remarks. A lot of people would be like, oh my God, you're so boring. Like, wow, live a little all these different things. And I got so many remarks from that. That still amazes me till this day, right, about how people were so caught up in that. But again I was like, wow, okay, so this is obviously a problem. Okay.
Speaker 2:Other things, for example, the music that I listened to was often seen as gay quote unquote okay, whatever that meant at the time, okay, that's really how it was seen. So the music that I enjoyed not good enough, right? Also, another part of me that I genuinely enjoyed is writing poetry, right? So in my teenage years I absolutely loved writing poetry. But then I remember I opened myself up to a few people, a few close friends, and I was ridiculed and I was mocked for it, right. So at a certain point I just started to believe like, okay, I'm not enough, right, the things that I'm doing here is obviously not enough. So let me mold myself, let me shape myself in a way that other people will like me. Let me put on this mask that will make sure that people see this mask and like what they see. Okay, so I felt like for a lot of years, for many years, I had to suppress myself, I had to hide myself because who I was at the core wasn't good enough.
Speaker 2:And I think this is why a lot of us hide who we really are because of that fear of rejection and because of that fear of judgment. Okay, kind of like I just talked about, and that's what happened for me specifically is, every time I tried to be so authentic with people and show who I was and show what I liked, I was met with criticism. I was met with rejection. So, personally, I just felt like I wasn't good enough and I had to wear this mask. So I had to mold myself. I had to please other people in order to be liked, in order to be accepted. So I wore this mask for many years.
Speaker 2:And the thing is, what I noticed about my own people-pleasing tendencies, for example, is that a lot of times we think people-pleasing is only to please others, but honestly, a part of people-pleasing is to also please yourself. It's to also make sure that by pleasing others, you get your needs met. By pleasing others, you get validation right. You get that validation that you're so missing. You get that feeling of, yes, I'm finally accepted, okay, and this is something that I've noticed in myself personally, and when I'm talking about a mask more specifically, what I'm referring to here is something called the persona.
Speaker 2:Okay, so in Carl Jung psychology okay, this is a term coined by Carl Jung and basically that's exactly what it means. It's a mask that we wear to be socially accepted. It's a mask that we wear so that other people will like us, right, and underneath that mask, that's who we truly are. But we're wearing that mask so that other people like us. Okay, so we hide and we suppress who we truly are. And this mask is not just something that we develop overnight, okay, this is something that's typically developed throughout our childhood. Okay, so we don't just wake up one random morning and be like, hey, okay, let me put on this mask and be socially accepted.
Speaker 2:Okay, and there are many different things that can be contributing factors to the development of this mask, if you will. Okay, um, but for example, it could be, you know, social rejection could be bullying trauma. It could be bullying trauma. It could be family dynamics specifically. There could be so many different things, but typically, to our parents and to our caregivers, we have certain aspects of ourselves, certain traits, certain qualities that are acceptable and some that aren't.
Speaker 2:And in order to make sure that our needs are met, if our parents tell us, hey, those things aren't good, you've got to stop doing that, that's not good enough, all these different things, we push that away, we throw that into our shadow Okay, and we forget about them for, unfortunately, a lot of times, a lot of our lifetime, right, until we, you know, do the shadow work and integrate those things. But because of that, okay, we're then forced to adopt ourself and mold ourselves to get our needs met. Okay, so, as an example, someone, if you're someone, for example, that your parents growing up you had conditional love Okay, so, for example, they only really praised you when you did something good. So you brought home a test Great, that was awesome. Okay, great test. Then you get your needs met. Okay, you did good in your sports Awesome, but other than that, they're pretty much emotionally available. They're pretty much not really doing anything. Okay, well, what that kind of tells a child is like okay, in order for me to get my needs met, I literally need to be quote unquote an overachiever. I need to be a perfectionist, I need to be a people pleaser. Make sure that you know I'm pleasing them in order to get my needs right. So this is what I'm trying to say here. There's so many different things that contribute to the development of this mask, but again, initially it's trying to protect us, but later on in life it's not a protection mechanism anymore because it's literally suppressing who we are authentically.
Speaker 2:And another thing that's very important to remember as well is that the persona isn't always a bad thing. I just want to be very clear on that, because obviously, we wear certain masks when we need to wear certain masks as well, right? So, as an example, if you're a teacher or an educator or a therapist, okay, if you're with your clients, you're going to have your professional persona. If you're teaching in class, you're going to have your professional persona as well. That's what I'm saying here. The persona isn't always that bad. The persona becomes bad when we tie our entire identity to that persona and lose the sense of who we are. We lose ourself. Okay, we literally lose ourself, and this can happen in many ways. Again, kind of like me, where I put my mask to be socially accepted by people and then that was it right. I lost who I really was, I disconnected from who I was, and it took me many years to truly find who I am again.
Speaker 2:Okay, but in the other sense as well is some people get lost in the role that they play. Some people get lost in their careers. They're a CEO of a company, they're a successful person, they're a therapist, they're a coach all these different things and sometimes it doesn't matter the job role, by the way. Some people get completely identified with that role that they're playing, that they lose sense of who they are. Entirely right, who they are essentially is their role, and that's not it. Right, your authentic self is underneath the mask that you're wearing. Okay, you are more than just the role quote unquote that you play. So this is another important distinction that I want to say about the persona.
Speaker 2:The persona isn't always something bad. Sometimes we do have to wear these specific masks that we have when we're going into a social setting, and the thing that I've come to realize is, when we're completely identified with this mask, with this persona, if you will, it comes at a great cost because we're not living authentically anymore. We're not living our true selves, we're not, we're not showing up in the world as we truly are. And that's what we need more of in this lifetime is for us to stop caring so much about what other people think and truly just embody who we are and stop hiding our true selves. And again, this is one of the costs that comes with being identified with the persona.
Speaker 2:For me personally I again it's like I said I filtered myself so much that I forgot who I was, how I thought personally, right, even like in classroom settings, for example, I would never raise my hand Okay, I would rarely ever raise my hand because of the fear of saying something stupid and people laughing at me, because all I wanted to was to be accepted, right. But I think also yes, it's kind of like a protection mechanism, but at a certain point as well, we hide ourselves so much that then, when we take off that mask, there's work that we need to do because we've suppressed so much of ourselves that then that also is work that's difficult to do, right, we get so lost in that role that we forget who we are, and part of remembering who we are is understanding why we forgot ourselves in the first place and what made us forget ourselves in the first place, right? So that's some deep inner work that we have to do, that's some shadow work that we need to do to understand the part of ourselves that have been suppressed and bring those things to light, right From the unconscious to the conscious. So that's a big part of it as well. But also, I think something that I noticed as well is you start to attract the wrong people. Okay, you generally start to attract the wrong people because if you wear a mask, you'll attract people who'd like that mask. You won't be attracting people who like you. So then, for me personally, what happened is I was surrounded by people, but I've never felt more lonely in my life because it wasn't the people that I was meant to be surrounded with.
Speaker 2:Right, and if there's anything I've come to understand in my life is if you're in a group setting, if you're with friends and you can't share who you are authentically, you can't talk about your values, what you value, the things that you like, you can't share. As an example, that you love to write poetry, you can't share that Maybe you've got something that you want to share in fear of rejection, in fear of not being able to fit in in fear of them laughing at you or mocked or ridiculed or all these different things. You are with the wrong group of people, period, right, you are with the wrong group of people, and that is something that I've learned. So please, you know, if you're listening to this and that kind of resonates, make sure that you're surrounding yourself with people, right, and take a look like is there is the people like the people that you're surrounded with right now? Could you share anything with them? If, like anything that really speaks to you, anything that you genuinely want to share, anything that you've been working on, anything that you are inspired to share with them? If the answer is no, then you are probably surrounded by the wrong people, right, and that's one thing that I've come to realize as well.
Speaker 2:Another thing is you start to be really exhausted from wearing a mask and playing a role. Okay, this is what happened to me specifically, is I, you know, after a certain point, I just. This is when I realized, right, I was surrounded by people and I never felt more lonely in my life, and I was like that's where I started to realize, like, okay, like you know, I need to start changing stuff here. I need to start. Something's going on. I need to start understanding what is going on. I need to start doing this deeper inner work and understanding why I'm feeling this way. Right, I am surrounded by people, yet I've never felt more lonely in my life, and it's again because I was looking for external validation from all the wrong people and not from the person that mattered most, which was myself. I would never validate myself, right, and this is another thing that's very important.
Speaker 2:And also another thing that I've also noticed is that you struggle with deep connection, right, you generally struggle with deep connection with people, because if no one sees you, if no one sees the real you, how can they truly accept you? Right, how can they truly accept the real you if no one sees you? So, again, this kind of ties back into when you're not able to share yourself, when you're not able to, you know, share anything that you want that's on your heart with your friends or the group of people that you're with, right? So these are a few things, and obviously there's many more costs to this. These are just things that I've noticed in my own personal experience that I felt like sharing with you today.
Speaker 2:Now I just wanted to end the episode with a few tips that have really helped me take off my mask and step into who I really am and stop hiding myself. And the first thing that I want to share, I think is very important it's not really a tip, it's just something I came to the realization of and the understanding of is that we need to come to a place of acceptance with the fact that not everyone is going to like us. Okay, and that is completely fine, because not everyone needs to like you. And there is such a sense of freedom of being able to show yourself in the world and step into who you really are and stop caring about what everyone else is doing or thinking about you. Right, there's a sense of power that comes with that and, in my personal opinion, I think if everyone quote unquote likes you, then you are wearing a mask, because there's no way that everyone's going to like you. And I will even go as far to say that once you start truly embodying who you are and stop hiding yourself and you start stepping into your power and living authentically and doing what you're meant to be doing in your life unfortunately, there are people that won't like that, okay, you're going to trigger people. There are people that aren't going to like that, and, unfortunately, there are some people that don't want to see you win, and that's completely fine. Some people don't want to see you win, and there's nothing we can do about that. All we can do is concentrate on ourselves and focus on ourselves, and that's the thing, right. This is the other thing I've come to the realization of is that no matter what you do in life, no matter what it is I don't care what you do you will get judged. So you might as well get judged doing something that you absolutely love and that truly brings you genuine love, joy and peace.
Speaker 2:The second thing that I want to share is identify where you're filtering yourself, kind of like. We talked about where I was filtering myself, right. A question that you can ask yourself is where in my life am I pretending? Okay, are you acting differently around certain people? Okay, are you molding yourself differently around certain people or for certain people? Do you downplay your interest? Do you hold back your opinions or your thoughts? Okay, and when I'm talking about with certain people here, I'm not talking about the good persona that we were talking about earlier. I'm talking about molding yourself in the way for other people to like you, right? So I think this is another really good way of starting to understand. Okay, like am I like what's going on here, right? Where am I hiding myself? Where am I not being authentic? Where am I not sharing more of what I'm meant to be sharing? Where am I holding back on my thoughts, my opinions, things that I truly want to say? And I think that's a really good start in understanding how we're holding ourselves back.
Speaker 2:The third thing that I want to share that really helped me was simply doing the inner work. Okay so, shadow work, inner child healing all these different modalities, right. Working with a coach, working with a therapist For me personally, I worked with a coach to help me really develop that relationship with my inner teenager. More specifically, because, as we talked about earlier in the episode, for me, obviously in my teenage years, when I tried to be authentic and show up as myself, I was met with rejection a lot, right. So a big part of that was healing the parts of myself that felt unsafe being seen right. And obviously I needed to have that dialogue with my inner teenager to make sure he understood that he was enough, just as he was right. Obviously, we had multiple sessions of this. You don't just do that in one time, right, it's a continuous process where you do the check-ins and all these different things. But again, that was a working through that fear of rejection and constantly seeking that external validation from other people. Right, that was a big catalyst for me and a big growth in my journey.
Speaker 2:But also, I think doing that shadow work, right, it's understanding that, hey, maybe certain parts of ourselves were repressed, were suppressed, as an example, right, in our childhood, because of what we talked about earlier in the video, right. So, having parents that certain traits were acceptable, certain traits were unacceptable, okay. So, as we grow older, it's about obviously getting to understand what we pushed away in our shadow, bringing those to light and integrating them within our lives, because there are so many things that we pushed away that are so, so good. So, as an example, let's say you've pushed away anger. Anger is something you can't be angry, can't do this, can't do that, but anger is an amazing thing, right. So, and especially as an example, if you're a woman that has suppressed their anger due to their childhood conditioning and you have trouble being assertive, right, let's say you know, as a woman, you were supposed to be agreeable, polite, no, anger, no, none of that, right? Well, a woman can grow up and have trouble being assertive, expressing herself herself, standing up for herself, okay, and just being able to set those healthy boundaries. An example. So that's why I'm saying anger is such an important emotion and the ability to assert ourselves is so important. Again, to set those boundaries and do all these different things okay.
Speaker 2:And maybe, for example, you are a man and, as we know, in you know the culture and society, men don't cry, right, toughen up, men don't cry, all these Toughing up, men don't cry, all these different things. So eventually you know you're like, oh, I can't cry. So, as a guy, you push your vulnerable parts of yourself away, right, lock those in the closet, put those in the shadow and you don't talk about them, you don't touch them, and you've got this tough skin type of thing, right. You're just, you're a tough guy, and men don't cry and all these different things, right? So those are all parts of ourselves that we need to reclaim. So this is what I'm saying.
Speaker 2:Right, there's so much to shadow work and obviously I can't just talk about this all in this one video, but this is a part of it as well, right? And that's why Carl Jung said that there's so much gold in our shadow. Right, there's so much gold in our shadow to uncover. A lot of times we talk about the shadow as the again, even the bad things, like anger, which are so healthy to have, when we're obviously channeling that anger in a healthy manner and creatively, like we just talked about. You don't want to put that in your shadow, you want to integrate that in your life, right?
Speaker 2:And another thing I've noticed, for me personally as well, is in my own journey, right, like we talked about. For me personally, I really liked writing poetry, right, this was something that I really liked to do as a teenager, and then, when I opened up to my friends about that, I was met with rejection. So what did I do? I threw away that part, I suppressed that part, right? So a part of understanding that and finding that golden shadow was like, hey, okay, that creative part of me, I need to put that back. And I only realized that years later okay, years later, as an example, when and this is how I found out personally, just to give you another quick short story here, but I was scrolling through Instagram and I noticed that I was reading these quotes and I love to read these quotes, and not only on Instagram, but like on Pinterest and such and I love to read these quotes and I was like, wow, I love that.
Speaker 2:And then I started to just think about that, like I admire people who and a part of me, envied people as well not only admired, but who are able to show up confidently, who are able to write and put these things online and just share themselves so freely. And this is what I noticed like, hmm, and this is what the golden shadow is right Is, sometimes when we envy people, when we look at people and we're like, wow, and we admire people, we project those good traits. But oftentimes, the reason we see those good traits within them is because we have them within ourselves, but they may have been suppressed or we're not owning up to them for a specific reason. Okay, and this is what I noticed in myself. The reason I was seeing this online and resonating with that so much is because I then noticed, oh, my goodness, right Light bulb moment.
Speaker 2:I used to love writing. I pushed that away and I haven't even tried writing. Why? Because I was met with rejection. So now fast forward.
Speaker 2:In my early twenties I started writing again and you know, it brought me a great sense of liberation.
Speaker 2:I like writing to fully express myself, trying different types of writing, all these different things.
Speaker 2:So this is what I'm saying there's so many layers to doing this inner work, but it's about understanding that, hey, behind this mask, you've got so much, so much power that you may have thrown away not necessarily your fault, because of your childhood conditioning and all these different things, but as adults, it is our responsibility to dive deeper and uncover those parts of ourselves that we've suppressed, that have been repressed, and to get those from the unconscious and bring them to light in the conscious mind. So again, these are just a few things that I want to share with you today in hopes that, if you are someone who struggles with hiding themselves and who they really are, I hope that this video again, it's not a cure, it's not a fix by any means, but I really hope that it can help you at least gain a new perspective or maybe a new understanding or sense of curiosity that you want to dive into yourself, because, again, you deserve that freedom. You deserve to be able to embody who you truly are and live your most authentic life.
Speaker 1:So, that being said, that's all I've got for you guys on today's episode. If you did like the episode.
Speaker 2:Please feel free to leave a comment or review, share it. It really helps bring awareness to what I'm trying to do, which is really kind of spread this podcast on a broader scale to really help people just navigate everyday life challenges. So, again, with that being said, I hope you have a good week and I will catch you guys next week. Thank you.
