Complete acceptance of our identity is central to our way of life, given every interaction emerges from our authentic self. The Dalai Lama said it puzzled him why so many people in the West suffer from low self-esteem and lack of acceptance. Our personal needs are met when we honour our authentic self. The media’s influence portrays a fictitious world that doesn’t meet our needs. We are inundated with information to convince us of a news story we can’t live without. Yet, we are no better off because we avoid realising our own authenticity. ‘Awaken Your Authentic Self’ is a book to reconnect you with the core of your essential self. It is a move away from whom you should be espoused by popular culture. The book invites you to reconnect with the deepest part of your being which knows who you are and how you should live. We are encoded with the DNA to thrive. Yet, through cultural conditioning and paradigms, we lose our place to the pull of our external environment. We subscribe to ideologies and beliefs regarding who we should be because we want to be accepted. This comes at a cost to our self-worth since we give up an aspect of ourselves and lose our authenticity. However, standing out has become a rite of passage insofar as the clothes one wears, hair colour, body piercings and decorations. It may be viewed as a show of defiance instead of a proclamation of distinction. You have more power than you realise. More genius than you can imagine. More wisdom and knowledge than you can ever access. This is not a patronising statement to seduce you into a false belief. You have unlimited power, and accessing that power is the basis to ‘Awaken Your Authentic Self.’ When you let go of the false belief that you are lacking or inadequate, in that moment you arouse your potential. Who you are today results from your beliefs, thoughts, and ideas of the world. Unless you challenge the status quo, you remain one of the masses. One has only look to mainstream culture to see the effects the media and marketing hype have on our society. We are drawn into a fictitious way of life at the expense of our sanity and earned dollars.