How To Be Authentic, Even When You Feel You Can't Be

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How To Be Authentic, Even When You Feel You Can’t Be

Authenticity has been a core value of mine since I understood what values even were. Until it became a buzzword for people who quite often weren’t actually authentic at all and it all felt a bit cringe ha.

Authenticity will also have a different meaning to each individual person too.

It might mean trustworthiness.

It might mean honesty.

It might mean saying what you think without concern.

It might simply mean the opposite of fake to you. (I hugely struggle with fakery which is probably one of the reasons it’s so important to me.)

It might encapsulate all those things.

Often in the workplace people are told to be their authentic selves but that can get confusing if it’s delivered without clarification.

It can feel like, ‘be yourself but...on our terms.’

In online businesses people are always told ‘be authentic’ you’ll attract more people. And it’s true, but it’s also nuanced.

There will be times when you feel like you can’t give all of yourself because there are personal things going on that need to or should remain personal.

So what does authenticity look like when you can’t share everything. Maybe there’s ill health in the family, a situation that involves someone else. Legal issues. Your own health battles. There are so many reasons that you might feel like you can’t or don’t want to share what’s going on for you.

Also, should you ever feel like you have to share everything in order to be authentic?

I can’t tell you the answer to that but I encourage you to reflect on it.

For me authenticity is the ability to truly be oneself.

To be able to live authentically to me means not feeling like you have to hide anything and accepting all parts of you. Including loving the parts of yourself that are harder to love, because we all have those. And also knowing you don’t HAVE to share everything with everyone if that’s what’s authentic to you in that moment. It’s the self awareness to know where you’re at and what you need.

I spent a lot of time in my youth feeling like I couldn’t be myself. Like if I was truly myself then people wouldn’t like me.

I felt like I didn’t fit.

So I people pleased a lot, in terms of more often than not going along with what other people wanted and not speaking up for myself and what was important for me.

I let go of things I was interested in and loved doing because I thought it made me ‘different’ or ‘weird’.

I was absolutely, fully, completely uncomfortable in my own skin which made authenticity feel almost impossible because it was terrifying.

This didn’t lead to any kind of happiness. It led to feeling like I had to hide parts of myself. There were a few select people I could really be myself with and not worry they would judge me. People who were t...