Is it a well-marketed buzzword/ploy to keep people in a box and hence small/manageable?
As a strategist, I ask questions of myself and my clients that at times may seem rather uncomfortable, if not unorthodox.
But that’s ok because to get new answers you need to constantly ask new questions, right?
Today’s focus is on “authenticity”. There are quotes galore urging you to be authentic throughout your life; be true to yourself they say. In other words, be what you have always been. Or what you were born to be.
Didn’t think much of it until recently I witnessed a friend of a friend, Andrea* (not her real name for obvious reasons), being “called out” by a vicious group of self appointed judges and jury (shockingly made up of old friends and family) for being “inauthentic”. “She has changed,” so they said.
Truth is Andrea used to be the “hood bum’ as they put it. You know those people who don’t seem to have any sense of purpose in life. They are just ‘there” for a lack of a better word. However, after divine intervention or whatever it is that made her truly want to change her future, she decided that she wanted out of the mediocrity. So she changed her old self-limiting beliefs, went back to school, got a job and started building new networks of people sharing her new found vision. To her former acquaintances who could no longer see eye to eye with her on several issues, she had become superficial and therefore “inauthentic”.
So what does being authentic really mean?
The dictionary defines authenticity as:
“1. An adjective that describes something that is of undisputed origin, not a copy: genuine.
(In existentialist philosophy) – relating to or denoting an emotionally appropriate, significant, purposive and responsible human life.
The Cambridge Dictionary simplifies it as the quality of being real or true.
The above definitions do not however relate to human behavioral change.
What I mean is in as much as you could translate authenticity as being genuine, what really determines your genuineness or the lack of it and especially after making positive behavioral changes in your life like Andrea did.
At what point will you be considered inauthentic or a copy?
I mean if you look at it from the context of being a two faced individual who says one thing and does another then by all means no one wants to deal with that.
But isn’t that a different matter altogether?
All personal branding projects include some level of horn tooting aka self-aggrandizement. Wouldn’t that be considered inauthentic as well?
If things are to be left as they were and behaviors are to be left unchanged then it means that all attempts to change anything are to be considered inauthentic, right?
After all, isn’t it your life to live the way you deem it necessary? So if you decide to change it, why can’t the new you be considered your new truth? Is change considered inauthentic? Would the same be said of you if the change were for the worse? Say for instance had Andrea become an alcoholic instead, would she have faced the same predicament?
I have learned from my own experiences and from studying the lives of people I admire that every next level of our lives demands a different “us”. My mentors, and I, had to change at some point in our lives. We’ve had to think differently. Act differently. And ultimately achieve the different results that we desired. I am still open to new change because I am still evolving. Still growing. Change is constant. So I will constantly change as we move forward.
So if changing my old thought patterns, old behaviors, my old toxic environment and ultimately my life means that I am inauthentic, then I am proudly so.
When working with new clients, one of the first things we do is to have a deep dive of things that may have been keeping them small and therefore unable to achieve their ultimate purpose.
One of the consistent things that seem to come up is the fear of judgment from colleagues or family. However, as soon as we get this out of the way, we are usually off racing to a new start towards an all new, powerful, unapologetic and influential personal brand.
How about you? Has the fear of being dubbed inauthentic ever stopped you from aiming to operate at your best self ever? Do you, like me, think we ought to do away with the word “authentic” in personal branding and instead come up with something else that’s probably less judgmental especially when referring to upward/positive change? Please let me have your thoughts below.