Being authentic means expressing yourself congruently. The person you project on the outside is the person you truly are on the inside, whether you’re communicating with an intimate friend or someone you just met. When people say, “Just be yourself,” they’re emphasizing the importance of authenticity. When you communicate authentically, you speak your truth without holding back. This helps others perceive you accurately and connect with you honestly and lovingly. Authentic communication empowers us.
As you interact with others, neither exaggerate nor downplay what’s true for you. Be completely real. Your honesty won’t always get a positive response, but allow others to have their reactions without feeling you must pretend to be something you’re not. If you try to slant the truth in order to tell people what you think they want to hear, you disconnect from your true self, and you encourage others to live in denial of their own power. Denying your power is a disservice to everyone. The best course of action is to be completely honest and accept that others are free to react as they choose. You needn’t agree with their reaction; just allow it to be.
For many years, I (Steve Pavlina) believed that the best way to relate to other people was to try to meet them at their own level of power. If someone was very timid, I’d downplay my accomplishments or hide them altogether because I didn’t want to make the other person feel uncomfortable. If someone was haughty and arrogant, I’d respond in kind by trying to win their approval. I didn’t have trouble making friends this way, but these were friendships rooted in falsehood, and in order to maintain them, I became increasingly disconnected with myself.
Eventually, I realized I’d rather experience a few honest friendships than settle for a plethora of connections that were corrupted by elements of phoniness. In my subsequent interactions, I did my best to stay connected to my true self. I decided to stop worrying about how other people would react to me.
At first, this approach seemed to backfire. When I expressed myself freely around some of my more timid friends, I must have scared them off, since they basically dropped out of my life. Similarly, my prideful friend feel out of my life as well, perhaps because they felt I was no longer at their level. I wish I could say I retained some middle group, but there wasn’t much of a middle to speak of. People tended to fall on either one side or the other. My social life declined for a while… but then something very interesting began to happen.
As new people came into my life and they got to know me, they began relating to me very differently from my old friends. The most obvious change was that these relationships were rooted in genuine mutual respect. Because I stayed connected with myself, I was also more selective about the people I decided to connect with, so I sought out friends who were consciously growth oriented and not complacent or apathetic. I began to develop strong bonds much more quickly than I used to, and I felt grateful for these stimulating and genuinely caring friendships. I was soon completely convinced that total authenticity is the right choice. There’s simply no point in maintaining relationships that cause us to subvert our true selves.
Being authentic doesn’t mean being perfect. It means doing our best to communicate like real human beings. Sometimes that requires exposing our warts and scars, but therein lies the power of complete self-acceptance. Instead of reacting out of fear and falsehood, we can consciously choose to respond with truth, love, and power.
* Source: Personal Development for Smart People by Steve Pavlina