Today I am talking with Kimberly Lichty: painter, wife, mom and entrepreneur. We are speaking on how to be true to yourself.
LAS 002: How to be True to Yourself with Kimberly Lichty
We went to grade school together in Indiana and we’ve managed to stay friends throughout the years. She’s the type of friend that’s easy to talk to and can always find the right words for the emotions I’m feeling during the hardest or most wonderful times in my life. She is a talented acrylic painter and sells her paintings at Uptown Kitchen near the University of Notre Dame.
Being authentic is popular right now in all forms- social media, on television and with celebrities. The time has come where it is good to be close to your emotions and to talk about your real feelings.
Kimberly says that in today’s age, “It’s about focusing on your inner being and ignoring what other people think of you and expect out of you.”
“You are in charge of your own destiny and your own being”
No one can tell you how to navigate this. They can certainly try, but it is something that you need to figure out for yourself.
How to deal with the pitfalls of negativity and anger of today’s world:
Kimberly says, “If something I am reading or listening to starts to become negative in the first few seconds, I am over it. I’d rather be around something that will improve my day so I strive for finding and listening to positive thoughts.”
“Find the highlights in your life that will continue to lift you up”
“I try to show that to other people, especially my husband and kids. If you want to be a positive person, you have to be that. You can’t preach positivity but be an outwardly negative person.
There will always be times where you feel down and negative, but as the years go by you’ll ask yourself why you’re wasting your time. You can live your life being happy and be around the people and the positive energy you want, or you can stay grounded to negative things.”
I tell Kimberly that a great word that describes being true to yourself is someone that is congenial.
What Does It Mean to Be Congenial?
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Not everyone will like you but I understand that and I know that regardless, I wish those people well.
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Try no to bring negative things onto negative people. All it does is push forward more negativity.
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“Don’t spend your time judging someone when you have not walked in their shoes.” That’s the best way to live- judgement free.
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If you catch yourself falling prey to the judgement of others, refocus yourself.
I mention the quote, “Stop asking people who haven’t been where you’re trying to go for directions.” This brings us to a pivotal moment in Kimberly’s life- when her mom died of cancer in high school.
She talks about how she continued to form her own personality without the guidance of her mother and how she stayed true to herself when that happened.
Kimberly says the process of watching her mom go through that was traumatizing. “It happened 26 days after graduating from high school, and even though we knew it was coming, the ‘after’ was dreadful. I missed out on having a Mom around for the milestones- marriage & kids. I couldn’t ask her questions for guidance when I didn’t know what to do.”
Kimberly’s Mother’s best friend was the one to “wake her up” from her grieving period.
She was able to move forward and become a successful painter despite the unexpected trauma she experienced early on in life. She chose not to follow the pack and do what everyone else did when it came to growing up.
She says, “Some people will try to give you an outline for what they think you should do next, and sometimes those people don’t have your best interests at heart. If they say you should go to path A and you know path B is really where you want to be, you’re going to fall prey to not being true to yourself. You’ll end up following path A because that’s what everyone else did, when in the end you’ll realize what you wanted all along was path B.”
This is the perfect anecdote for staying true to who you are as a person.
You have to shoot for your goals and move toward what you want- put your feet forward.The rest will follow.
As we wrapped things up, I asked Kimberly how she stays centered in her heart with her painting. She talks about how most of her paintings come from current stages in her life. Behind her, she has a painting of an abstract city that has plenty of white winds at the top along with one black wind. She says the winds are about the changes going on in our world currently and the interchanging of new and old that is constant in today’s society.
The important part she mentions is to remember that there can be more positive winds in your life than there are negative- if you want.
Kimberly talks of getting her paintings in Uptown Kitchen by simply asking the owner if she could showcase her work there, which is another great example of staying true to the goals that you have for yourself. She is a great example of someone who has experienced tragedy and did not let it define her life. She stayed true to her goals and the path that she knew she should be on, and came out on the other side of success.
Kimberly can be found online via Facebook and Instagram by searching her name, Kimberly Lichty.
