Growing Real: How to Tell If You’re Living in Alignment With Reality

by Oli Anderson, Transformational Coach for Realness

Real Always Works So Tap Into Your Realness

There’s a reason life feels heavier when you’re out of step with it:

When you’re not aligned with reality, life becomes a grind and so things never quite ‘click’, problems multiply, and a low-level hum of frustration or anxiety constantly lingers in the background of your life as you find yourself in the Void.

To make matters worse, the harder you try to force things into place, the further they seem to slip away and the more unreal your life seems to become.

Here’s the secret ingredient that’s missing from most people’s lives:

Life only ‘works’ when you live it in a REAL way.

“Real” in this context doesn’t mean the Instagram brand of ‘authenticity’ or sloganeering your way through another self-help trend – it means living in a way that’s aligned with your actual nature, rooted in humility, and flowing with the natural drive towards wholeness that’s built into the very core of existence itself.

In other words, when you start to grow real, life stops being a tug-of-war and becomes an adventure.

Let’s dig a little deeper:

Psychological patterns show you how to find reality. Growing real is about facing reality.

Growing Real: What We’ll Cover In This Article

Real Always Works So Tap Into Your Realness
The True Secret of Fulfilment: Be Real, Not Ideal
Growing Real & The Natural Drive Towards Wholeness
The Ego, the Shadow, and the Comfort Zone
Signs You’re Growing Real
Signs You’re Not Aligned or Growing Real
The Path Back Home: Awareness, Acceptance, Action
Practical Steps to Grow Real
Growing Real Means Growing Whole

The True Secret of Fulfilment: Be Real, Not Ideal

So many people spend their lives chasing ideals in the form of perfect careers, perfect bodies, perfect relationships, and perfect versions of themselves but the trouble with all this is that ideals are fantasies and fantasies are, by definition, not real.

If you want to find fulfilment in life, then, it isn’t about perfecting yourself but about learning to live in a way that’s aligned with reality.

This requires the humility to recognise that you’re a human being – not a god – and so you’re not omniscient or omnipotent but don’t need to be. It’s also about giving up the illusion that fulfilment comes from attempts at controlling life and embracing the truth that it comes from connection.

When you stop pretending you’re independent, fixed, and separate, and instead recognise your interdependence with the world, life begins to open up and everything becomes more real.

You don’t have to ‘become’ something to be whole because you’re already part of wholeness itself – you just need to stop resisting it so you can grow more deeply into it.

Growing Real & The Natural Drive Towards Wholeness

Here’s something crucial to understand if you want to find your own realness:

There is a natural drive towards wholeness always at work in reality – you can call it evolution, call it growth, or call it God – whatever name fits your worldview – but the point is that life wants to unfold, expand, and bring things together and it’s always doing this whether you ‘like’ it or not.

When you align yourself with this drive, you grow, evolve, and become more integrated, more alive, and more capable of handling life’s challenges because you stop getting in your own way.

The opposite is also true which means that when you resist this drive – because of fear, shame, or egoic attachments – you shrink and hold back instead of living. This means that you put yourself in survival mode and ten instead of joy, you get friction and instead of progress, you just circle the same old drain for most of your life.

The choice is simple:

You either move with reality or you fight it and suffer.

The Ego, the Shadow, and the Comfort Zone

The ego is always what keeps you stuck because filters reality, distorts truth, and insists you’re separate and in control of everything (when you have some control but not total control because of the natural drive towards wholeness). It spins stories and identities that feel safe but keep you caged.

Behind ego lies the shadow self – the parts of you you’d rather not face because they’ve been deemed as unacceptable somewhere along the line:

Fear. Anger. Shame. Vulnerability. Your love. Your Joy. Your relationship to something higher. The unresolved fragments of your past – all of these things are uncomfortable, which is why ego exists: to protect you from looking at them.

This is unfortunate because real growth only comes when you leave your comfort zone and face your shadow – if you don’t, the ego keeps you locked in loops of denial and self-sabotage that keep you circling that drain.

The irony is that once you face the shadow, it loses its power and what originally looked like a monster turns out to be a wounded child that simply needs acceptance.

When you get to this point, the energy you once wasted on resisting reality and upholding the ego and its illusions becomes fuel for wholeness and real life.

Signs You’re Growing Real

So how do you know you’re actually aligned with reality and not just fooling yourself at some level?

Here are three unmistakable signs that can serve as a compass:

1. Things Bother You Less

You stop being rattled by every minor irritation:

Life still throws challenges your way but they don’t define you and you’re no longer at the mercy of egoic stories about what things ‘mean’.

Instead, you develop a quiet trust in yourself and life itself and just keep moving with that natural drive towards wholeness.

2. You Find Your Flow

Instead of forcing everything, you start to move with life:

You notice opportunities, synchronicities, and moments where things just ‘click’ into place and so things like work feel less like a slog and more like being in the zone.

This is joy – not fleeting pleasure but the joy of harmony that lasts and permeates your days.

3. You Get Real Results

Reality is where results live and so, when you’re aligned with it, your actions bear fruit.

Projects complete, relationships deepen, your health improves, and you see tangible progress instead of endless frustration.

This is EVIDENCE of your realness because results don’t lie (which also means if you’re not getting them, you’re not rooted in reality).

Signs You’re Not Aligned or Growing Real

Of course, it works both ways and so if you’re not aligned with reality, you’ll know because:

Everything bothers you: Your ego projects stories onto every event, making you anxious, stressed, or resentful and you’re constantly on edge because you’re busy defending an illusion.
You feel stuck and forced: Nothing flows and everything feels like a battle as you push and push but the door never opens.
You don’t get results: Life feels like Groundhog Day. You’re hitting the same walls over and over because you’re recycling the same old outdated patterns rather than stepping into reality.

These are all symptoms of resistance – they’re not punishments from life (which the ego might tell you they are)…they’re just signals telling you to course correct and return to reality.

The Path Back Home: Awareness, Acceptance, Action

So, how do you get real again when you’ve drifted off course?

It always comes down to three simple stages (the stages I build my coaching containers around when working with clients on all this ‘stuff’):

1. Awareness (Deconstruct Ego)

You can’t change what you won’t acknowledge and so the first step is always to notice where you’re resisting reality.

Where are you forcing, projecting, or pretending? Awareness is painful at first because it strips away illusions but it’s also liberating because it gets you moving again.

2. Acceptance (Integrate Shadow)

Once you’re aware, accept what you see and embrace whatever it has to tell you about reality.

Acceptance doesn’t mean resignation – it means aligning with truth so you can stop wasting energy fighting what is and start redirecting it towards what can be.

3. Action (Trust Yourself and Life)

Finally, take real action by trusting yourself and life.

This doesn’t mean frantic busywork for the sake of ‘doing’ something – nor does it mean resorting to control-freak tactics and trying to omnipotent.

Real action means doing what is necessary (trusting yourself) and letting go of what isn’t (trusting life).

It means facing your shadow when needed, stepping outside the comfort zone, and trusting the process of wholeness to carry you forward as you keep learning, evolving, and going deeper and deeper into wholeness.

Read my book Trust: A Manual in Becoming the Void, Building Flow, and Finding Peace if you want to go deeper into your own realness than you’ve ever been before.

Practical Steps to Grow Real

Here are some practical ways you can start aligning with reality and growing real:

Do a Reality Check Journal: Each evening, write down one area where you were resisting reality (through control, denial, or avoidance) and one area where you flowed with it. Over time, patterns emerge and you can strip anything unreal away (the key is to train yourself to discern real from unreal).
Shadow Spotting: Notice emotional triggers. When something bothers you, for example, instead of blaming the situation, ask: What is this showing me about my shadow? Drop the projection (story) and lean into the discomfort rather than running from it.
The 90-Second Rule: When a strong emotion hits, give it 90 seconds to move through your body without attaching a story. This simple practice builds resilience and stops ego from hijacking your day.
Daily Trust Reps: Each morning, ask: What is the most REAL action I can take today? Then do it. Build your trust muscle with consistent reps of real action.
Comfort Zone Stretch: Once a week, do one thing that pushes you beyond the ego’s protective cage – it might be a difficult conversation, trying something new, or sitting with silence instead of distraction.
Let Go of One Illusion: Identify one belief, identity, or story you’ve been clinging to that no longer serves you. Release it and then notice how much lighter you feel.

Growing real is about letting reality be reality and then working with it.

Growing Real Means Growing Whole

At the end of the day, growing real and aligning with reality is about living from wholeness rather than fragmentation:

It’s about letting go of ego’s illusions, facing your shadow, and aligning with the natural drive towards wholeness that’s always at work.

When you do this, life doesn’t magically become ‘perfect’ but it does becomes real and that’s better than perfect because it leads to being unshakeable, finding flow, and getting results. It’s fulfilment without the fluff.

If you really wanna know whether you’re living in alignment with reality, don’t look at your fantasies—look at your results, your peace of mind, and your flow.

Reality is always trying to bring you back to itself and your only job is simply to say “Yes” instead of running away and hiding.

Stay real out there,

Oli Anderson, Transformational Coach for Realness

P.S. If you’re ready to grow real then book a free coaching call with me and I’ll help you start moving right away.

Trust: A Manual for Becoming the Void, Building Flow, and Finding Peace is a book about learning to return to your realness by cultivating trust in yourself and trust in life.

It contains practical exercises and dedicated meditations (Transformational Bridges) to take you DEEP in knowing yourself and life.

This book will answer many of the questions you have growing REAL and flowing towards wholeness. It covers everything from shame to addiction to the unconscious mind and synchronicity (and way more).

Download EGO/SHADOW/TRUST - a free guide to transformation that will walk you through the vital stages of Awareness, Acceptance, and Action with practical strategies to implement right away.

Join the 7-Day Bare Ass Minimum (BAM) Challenge and start to implement foundational health habits and a powerful life vision only a week from now.

Real Always Works

Real Always Works So Tap Into Your Realness

Growing Real: What We’ll Cover In This Article

The True Secret of Fulfilment: Be Real, Not Ideal

Growing Real & The Natural Drive Towards Wholeness

The Ego, the Shadow, and the Comfort Zone