Want to be more authentic, or be your true self in more situations? You can! Here are some wonderful and useful tips on how to be more authentic every day.
What Is Authenticity?
Being authentic means that you act in ways that show your true self and how you feel. Rather than showing people only a particular side of yourself, you express your whole self genuinely.
How We Lost Our Authenticity
From infancy into adulthood, we are constantly balancing inner and outer aspects of ourselves in order to better fit in. Become more successful, or find love. We all want to be loved, or at least liked. We want to find “our place” in society. And we want to be respected for who we are and what we have to contribute. Many of us are propelled even further. Desiring to know and live our purpose, to find deeper meaning in our lives. And to feel the fulfillment that comes with becoming a more authentic person.
How to Rekindle Authenticity
1. Observe yourself objectively to rekindle authenticity
Learn to observe yourself like a fly on the wall. Become the Watcher who is stalking the “Authentic Self”. In order to reclaim this “Authentic Self”, you will need to watch yourself as you live your life in the present, observing how your “Adaptive Self” behaves, what it believes, how it reacts under pressure, and how it responds to challenges. If you are to make any changes within the depth of your Being, you must first know what you are currently projecting in your life, and whether your actions and attitudes emanate from your true inner self or are merely mechanisms you adopted long ago in order to better fit in. By identifying those adaptive coping mechanisms, such as defensiveness, or attracting attention, or trying to please others, you will begin to notice the falseness and begin to see the glimmers of truth underneath.
2. Examine family belief systems to rekindle authenticity
Most people were raised in some sort of “family-style” environment during their earliest, most vulnerable years. These early years are where most of our false beliefs came from! Think back to episodes in your childhood especially, when extreme circumstances forcibly implanted certain beliefs into your impressionable mind. Or perhaps your behavior changed abruptly, but what happened to make it change? The past is where our fears and attitudes towards others come from. Our cultural beliefs about racism, poverty, religion, misogyny, xenophobia, etc. It usually reflects the mores of the family and the society within which we were raised. Authenticity is about speaking and acting in accordance with our beliefs. So, by examining our beliefs, we can learn a lot about ourselves.
3. Open a dialogue between the “Adaptive Self” and the “Authentic Self”
If you like visualization exercises, here’s one to try. Whether you tend to see, hear or feel, use your imagination to invite two aspects of your psyche – the “Adaptive Self” and the “Authentic Self”- for an inner mind dialogue. Respectfully introduce both: thank the “Adaptive Self” for helping you function through some difficult and confusing times. Understand that there’s no negative judgment here. Now invite the “Authentic Self” to present itself. Apologize for not being completely true to yourself in the past and vow to do better, once you more fully understand how you may have “lost your way” in a sea of beliefs.
4. Choose to be the adult to rekindle authenticity
When you were young, you were easily molded, but now that you are an adult investigating your own inner landscape, you will soon become aware of discrepancies buried in your beliefs. If you catch yourself making a racist, sexist or other derogatory remark, ask yourself whether you believe yourself to be racist, sexist or whatever. Be sure to look for the source of that attitude. It’s often a racist or sexist friend or family member.
Once you have identified the discrepancy between what you believe and the comment that just surfaced, know that you can change the false beliefs as long as you are not blind to them. If you acknowledge what is true for you now, then you can release the false belief. That means living one’s life according to the needs of your inner being and not according to the demands of society, nor according to the programming from your childhood. That kind of authenticity requires the vigilance of an adult perspective.
5. Examine your doubts to rekindle authenticity
When exploring your past for seeds of divergence from your “Authentic Self”, you may feel unsure of how to go about it. You may question whether it’s even possible to change what feels so deeply ingrained within you or is invisible to you. But where there’s a will, there’s a way. If you are tired of feeling partly “fake”, slightly insincere, or somewhat out-of-focus with who you know yourself to be, or you are shocked to hear comments you do not believe emerge from your own mouth, it’s usually because some kind of pressure was exerted upon you in the past to make you believe and behave in proscribed ways. Such ways were acceptable to your family or friends, your teachers or preachers, your business associates or whoever was paying you for some service.
Conclusion
As social pressures impacted us to form our system of beliefs, the “Adaptive Self” was born. It drives our beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors to this day! If we are to rediscover our original and natural “Authentic Self”, we must first acknowledge that the “Adaptive Self” is currently running the show, and we hardly realize that we are programmed to behave in very specific ways.
