The Importance of Authenticity
As a child I was taught to value personal and professional integrity and, traditionally, our social hierarchies have been structured around these values. However, there are numerous examples of people who have found success by denying their true selves. These could be people exaggerating their work histories, perhaps inventing or embellishing their qualifications, or more obviously lying about the life they have lived.
These false stories may be the result of self-delusion or they could be created through a deliberate attempt to mislead. Either case would mean that there is a second story that may be in awareness but that is being kept back.
Any success that is achieved through the promotion of this false self will be due in part to our willingness to accept the stories they have chosen to tell to us. Some perpetrators would call this gullibility, which suggests that it is our fault that we have been taken in and is for me a poor attempt at shifting responsibility. Behind any intentional deceit lies a lack of respect, possibly even contempt, for those being deceived.
There are many examples of people whose stories did not reflect their real intentions as evidenced by their actions. Once their true selves were revealed people recalled aspects of their stories that had not appeared to be authentic but which were not challenged at the time. We seem to be particularly tolerant of this lack of authenticity in public figures such as entertainers and politicians. Why would we choose to collude with this deceit when we are able to detect a lack of authenticity in the stories of others?
For me the explanation begins with the stories that we tell ourselves about ourselves and that we are then able tell to others. I believe it is through comparison with our own accounts of our own experiences that we are able to validate those of other people. Perhaps when we are misrepresenting our own portraits and histories we are more willing to accept the fabricated accounts of others.
I imagine that the earliest stories we create for ourselves would be constructed from mirror reflections of those around us. As children we may look to other people to tell us how we are then we try it out to see if there is a good fit with what we believe to be real about ourselves. Though initially we may need to rely on others, we soon begin to develop our own understanding of what is right for us. This requires a naturally growing sense of self which we can regularly test against our lived experience. For all of us there will be plenty of people in our lives eager to tell us who we are and how to be.
Problems will arise if our sense of self does not develop sufficiently strongly to resist the multiple messages coming from those around us. They too are continuously developing their narratives and where these lack the integrity of being rooted firmly in their personal reality, may require validation from others through a collusive inauthenticity. To understand the reasons behind this we would need to look at the payoffs for all concerned in sustaining this false dynamic. Perhaps our willingness to accept a lack of authenticity in others allows us the same opportunity.
The journey towards authenticity is a life-time project that both accumulates and evolves. There is a continuous cycle of gaining knowledge about ourselves through imaginative understanding and then seeing how it works for us as a lived reality. We can use feedback from both the external world of our relationships with others and our internal world of intuitive understanding. The double touchstones of head and heart will tell us when our compass is pointing the right way, and the more often it is brought into play the more accurate it will become. Intuitively and objectively, we come to know what feels right for us and what is working well for us in our experiences of others. This is a spiral that we continue to work our way around as we move ever closer to our authentic core.
There will always be challenges in trying to remain authentic in all that we do, however I believe that there are greater dangers in not acting in line with our authentic selves. Swimming against the tide will always be harder than swimming with it, and we will make slower progress. The same will be true when acting against your true self. There are implications for psyche and soma, mind and body, of not being our true selves. The most obvious outcome is stress. Though not always a negative, it is not sustainable for any length of time and will lead to a myriad of negative impacts that are well documented.
Sometimes being authentic can also feel like we are moving against the current when the situation seems to require a behavioural response that is out of keeping with our authentic self. There is a difference between being authentic and acting in an authentic way. We can choose to behave in a way that is not in line with our authentic selves. We will not be drawing upon the best in us and such situations can only be endured for a short time without incurring some negative impact.
How authentic is the view that you have of yourself, of what is important to you and what is particular about you? How is this reflected in the stories that you tell others? No matter how hard it may be to act in line with our authentic selves, I believe that the outcome will reward the effort. Once we are in touch with our own authentic selves we are also better able to recognise the authentic, and the false, in others.
A balanced wheel can spin at high speed for long periods without any wobbling or vibration that would cause it to fail; a well-trimmed sail does not flap or buzz but curves gracefully, silently capturing the power of the wind. There are plenty of metaphors that describe sustained high performance through matching qualities to purpose. Perhaps it is only when we fully understand our qualities that we may truly know our purpose.
? 2016 Michael Golding