« Your authenticity alone is a powerful healing force. Just by showing up and existing, you are doing your part. People will either feel inspired, enamored, threatened or triggered by your natural state – and none of it will have anything to do with you. Remember why you are here.
By: unknown author
Authenticity is my guideline.
This article is closely related to the “about me” section, as it points out the element that makes me incapable of having relationships that satisfy me.
I’ll state something which for me is undebatable: we live in a fake world, now more than ever. I’ll not go into a historic analysis using phrases like “30 year ago it was different”. I know it was, we all do, but what was better and what was worse, that is something up for debate.
What is not up for debate is the total lack of authenticity that we are witnessing today and most of all, as this is my point of view, the effect that it has on me.
I know that the phrase “what will the others think?” is thought and said oh so many times, TOO MANY TIMES, enough to kill the smallest attempt of having a different way of thinking than the one of the masses. I’m only referring to “different way of thinking”, because being different is not just about the way of thinking. That is another story and it’s another subject: appearances and how they can make you stand out in the crowd and gain attention. Appearances….not known for their reliability….
So, what will the others think if they know what I’m thinking? First answer, if already “plugged” into the standard society, is: oh they wouldn’t approve. So let’s adapt the way of thinking, let’s say “I agree”, when in fact, we don’t, let’s say “you’re right” when in fact we’re either not sure or, worse, convinced they’re not right. Let’s NOT even try express our opinions, let’s just take the most common ones and make them our own, no risk taken, they’ve already been validated, and with them, us also. We’re “in”. And now all we have to do is exactly what 90% of people do (whatever that is).
As an authentic person, I am lonely. Is that good, is that bad?
At one point I realized that qualifying everything by following the standard panel of “colors”, can be a real nuisance to the flow of thoughts and ideas that I had
So I don’t know if it’s good or bad, I only know that I’ve shrunk to this version of myself who enjoys more my own company than an outside one. That doesn’t mean that I’m not in need of outside company, because I am, and very much so, but after a certain age, and after a certain number of experiences, the probability of being in the wrong company and being obligated to agree without agreeing and saying yes instead of no, got too big and unacceptable.
I’ve been told, and not once: don’t bother, just go with the flow. I find that extremely useful as an advice, as long as it’s for a short period of time and in certain circumstances, but it will most definitely not be a lifelong choice, it is physically (because we are talking about the brain here), impossible.
Adapting is crucial, we must do it, it’s the proof itself of intelligence, to what extent we’re doing it, though, that is another story. Being fake is not an option for me, once I got my principles straight and that I decided that they are who I am and I am made of them, there is absolutely no other path to be taken. It took me 5 years to get to this conclusion and it explains all my failures in the past. I was not being me….but hey, I had an excuse: I didn’t know who “me” was. So I guess it’s a good thing that I failed…imagine having won and being fake just so I can blend…
So what is authenticity ? if we were to take the dictionary definition, it’s “being what is claimed”.
A lot of people claim to be this and that…and when you dig deeper, the “this” and “that” turn out to be just ideas that sound good on paper but have no real character correspondence.
Applying what we claim to be, that is another story and once we do it, we are authentic, as dangerous as that may be and at a big cost sometimes.
Now, this quote got me thinking about the impact that my way of being and thinking, has on the others around me. I cannot help thinking about it even though, as I said before, the phrase “what will the others think” is a killer. I’m taking it from another point of view: is this impact positive or negative? Will I hurt more than I will help?
I spend a lot of time thinking about it, because all human interaction makes me reevaluate my behavior my actions and words, I relive the moments themselves, I relive entire conversations, trying to find something that soothes me and makes me think “it’s all good, I’ve not hurt anyone, I didn’t generate any problems and I maybe I can see and speak to that person again”.
I know that I have a problem, because I’m anxious and live in a constant “fight or flight” state. This comes with a lot of self doubting, because I’m trying to be myself and to adapt to others, and that is an exhausting way of living, hence my loneliness. Nevertheless, I never give up, I still try to create a “link” between me and the other, one that is the closest possible to my principles and at the same time is socially acceptable.
In the end, I always deviate and I express my opinions in a “raw” shape, I just cannot manage to put them in “packages” that would make the messages they carry, easy to understand and accept. I’m too direct.
So, now if I’m to take some distance from my story, myself and my way of thinking, and getting back to the message that this quote is carrying: authenticity has an impact on others and that should not stop anyone from being their true self because everyone has their own mind and way of understanding things. I think that the impact that we have on others is not something that we can predict to perfection. We can make suppositions, and there are some easy ones. At the same time there are some impacts, that we cannot even suspect, and these are not in our range of control and most of all, not for us to master and take responsibility for. This is where the self-managing should kick in: we’re all responsible of the way we choose to react to someone else’s words/actions.
I was saying earlier that for me, interacting with people is an exhausting process, but with time I realized that that was because of me and me only. No one is responsible for how I choose (even if I do it unconsciously) to let their actions and words, affect me
So at the end let’s say that we do what we can with what we have, but from my point of view, as I think about the authenticity as a concept, I will always cherish it and appreciate it to the highest point no matter how it manifests itself in others.
The “what you see is what you get” is my guideline, selling fake images and then trying to blend into them until we become them, is an everyday danger. Being true to oneself is a day to day struggle and I can understand why the majority of people create, unconsciously, images of themselves that are easily accepted.
For me, at least as I see it as I’m writing this text, authenticity comes with truth, because it is literally “being true to oneself”, and with a solid moral ground. You cannot be true to oneself and not be true to others…or maybe I’m just being naïve, but this is how I see it.