First Pillar: Authenticity with Self
INTRODUCTION
You often experience a certain psychological phenomenon in the form of feelings and emotions that you don’t exactly know how to describe or explain. The experience arises without you even really stopping to observe it, analyze it, or to question why it arose. It’s likely that, as a result of being a human navigating the human experience, you’ve come across inauthenticity in yourself at one point or another. Perhaps you just didn’t know how to describe it or what to call it, but you probably didn’t like it.
For this reason, I would say it’s safe to assume that most of us intuitively understand the concept of authenticity. Your intuition is such a powerful tool because it operates at a higher level than your conscious understanding. When you know something intuitively, you know it, yet you don’t know how you know it.
One of my hopes in writing this book is to help you get in touch with your intuitive knowledge through introspection and the practice of asking questions to yourself, thus bringing that intuitive knowledge up to the level of consciousness. From the level of conscious awareness, you can then make changes in your behavior.
From an intuitive perspective, inauthenticity feels like not living up to your fullest potential. When you get the sense that you aren’t physically where you should be, that you’re not spending your time the way you would most like to, and that you aren’t creating or producing the results that you feel you’re capable of, you’re likely experiencing a degree of inauthenticity that you haven’t yet observed.
Inauthenticity looks like someone who lacks confidence, purpose, and fervor. Those who are easily impressionable suffer from inauthenticity because they aren’t clear on who they are. It looks like a lack of commitment to any singular direction for any length of time.
Inauthenticity sounds like making promises you don’t keep, people pleasing to avoid external conflict, and the utterance of contradictory statements.
Inauthenticity also manifests as feelings of dissatisfaction with yourself and a desire to create an outward illusion that you’re someone or something different. And each time you create that illusion, you deal with psychological consequences.
Our beings are meant to be in harmony. By developing a degree of conscious awareness of the signs of inauthenticity, you can work towards that harmony. You can choose actions that give you a sense of fulfillment and that don’t create illusions about who you are. You can expand your potential into the person you want to be and then consciously act to fulfill that potential. As a result, you’ll feel psychological ease, and a sense of inner peace with your life and yourself.
The self-reflection questions at the end of each chapter are meant to serve as a jumping-off point—to guide you in the development of the habit of introspection. Start by asking yourself these questions, but then expand on them with your own follow-up questions that are more specific to your life. My hope is that you’ll get good enough at introspection and self-observation that you can catch yourself in the moment of inauthentic action and change your behavior immediately. Start by journaling with the questions in this book while reflecting on past actions, and then continue to practice in your head throughout the day with these, and other questions, until you’ve formed a habit of observing your intentions and motives as you act.
I’m confident that this process of ongoing self-discovery will bring you a much more joyful experience of life.
WHAT IS AUTHENTICITY?
The term psychological congruence is attributed to psychologist Carl Rogers and is an important concept in the understanding of authenticity. Rogers defined congruence as the matching of what you think and feel internally with how you behave, act, and show up outwardly towards others.
When I try to bring awareness to my own levels of congruency, I am striving to show up and act in integrity with my inner concept of my best self. It isn’t always easy to be clear on who you think your best self is in order to evaluate that self against your actions. This requires careful introspection and frequent, honest self- assessment.
For example, if in your heart you know the best version of yourself is someone who makes time for anybody and everybody, yet when strangers approach you at the gym or at the office, you brush them off because you have work to do, then you will likely experience an inner tension that resembles a dissatisfaction for life, called incongruence. Or, if you believe it’s important to be educated in order to lead a successful career, yet whenever you’ve had the opportunity to increase your education, you shied away, this would create the same internal dissatisfaction. The idea of congruence is a building block towards grasping the full concept of inauthenticity. It explains part of the picture and one way that inauthenticity manifests, but we must expand on the idea to deepen your understanding.
So, if you understand congruence to be the matching of who you believe on the inside is your best self with how you behave on the outside, then how should you understand authenticity?
Authenticity goes a step further than congruence by defining three selves (as opposed to just two) and in the process, adds another dimension to congruence.
What follows are three general definitions. When defining your “self ” or “selves,” the focus must be internal and based on your own thoughts of yourself. It’s not an “opinion poll” of others which you are graded on. As you’ll learn, defining your “selves” is for your own evaluation, benefit, and clarity. Do not allow the opinions of others to influence your definition of “selves.”
True Self: True Self is the best of who you are right now. This is who you’re capable of being when you act as your best self. It represents your true motivations, your true intentions, what you truly value, and what is actually important to you. When your actions match this self, you are realizing your potential.
Cinematic Self: Cinematic Self is the story of your motivations, your intentions, and your values that your words and actions tell other people or the Universe.
Desired Self: Desired Self is who you want to develop into or grow into. This self represents the motivations and intentions you wish to adopt. If True Self and Desired Self are different, then some personal development is required. This is the work of changing your inner intentions. Moving True Self into alignment with a different Desired Self will increase what you’re potentially capable of longer- term.
The alignment of these three selves is what I refer to as your Authentic Self. The process of bringing these selves into alignment through careful observation of your motives and intentions, as well as of the motives and intentions you portray, is the process of becoming more authentic.
