How To Be More Authentic

Do you want to know how to be more authentic?

Have you been your real self in your business, professional, and personal relationships?

Are you seeking to be more genuine in your relationship with people and be your best self at all times?

In the world we live in today, there seems to be a lot of conformity and fake-living.

A lot of people pretend to be what they’re not just to fit into certain standards that society deems fit or holds in high esteem.

Furthermore, they hide their real personality just to please people around them and blend in with the rest of the crowd.

The result of living this kind of life is you’ll never truly discover who you are.

More so, you’ll end up living your life on people’s terms, beliefs, and standards rather than yours.

Thereby, making it difficult for you to discover your true potential and live a fulfilled life.

In this blog post, we share insight on how to break free from the pressure to conform and be more authentic either in your business, work, or life generally.

Stay with us and find out all you need to know to be your authentic self.

Read on to discover more.

How To Be More Authentic

Developing an authentic personality is even more important in this present time where we are surrounded by fakes and stereotypes.

However, before we discover how to be more authentic, let’s understand what it means.

What does it mean to be authentic?

Another word for authenticity is original or real.

In the context of this discussion, being authentic means being your real self in terms of your behavior, beliefs, values, and personality.

In simple terms, being your authentic self means being truthful and honest about who you are, your beliefs or values, and actions.

Most people are not completely honest in their interactions with the people around them.

They hide their true self or behavior from the people around them.

This brings us to consider some of the signs of inauthenticity.

Signs Of Inauthenticity

How can you tell that someone has an authentic personality or not?

Chances are that you do not know that you’re not being authentic as a person.

Here are some of the signs that show a lack of authenticity in a person.

difficulty in making decisions
comparing and living a life based on other people’s opinions or ideas
copying other people’s lifestyle
find it difficult to express your true thoughts, desires, or feelings
having perfectionistic tendencies (unwillingness to make mistakes and learn from them)
behaving in a certain way just to please others around you (you don’t act like your true self around others )
you do things just to seek attention from others or make people hold you in high esteem
lack the confidence to uphold your beliefs, values, or opinions and you’re easily swayed or quick to conform to what other people think even if they don’t make sense to you
you hide your emotions most times for the fear of being seen in a bad light

Why Most People Live A Fake Life

Some people choose not to be real or authentic in their relationship with the people around them for several reasons.

They include;

The fear of being judged, ridiculed, or criticized.

Most people fear that if they reveal their true personalities or identities they’ll get criticized or seen in a bad light.

So, to avoid it, they hide behind the mask of what is termed acceptable behavior.

Thereby, causing them to live a fake life and making it difficult for such people to be more authentic.

The feeling or desire to gain the admiration or attention of others

Most people pretend to be what they’re not just to get the attention of people around them and be held in high regard by people around them.

The desire to please people around them

Some people also find it difficult to be who they are not just to make other people around them happy.

The fear of being lonely or left out

Most people believe that revealing who they truly are would make people like them less or stay away from them.

As such, rather than being themselves they hide their real behaviors and pretend to be who they are not.

Overall, living life like this can be bad for you.

Firstly, it makes it difficult for you to discover your true identity (know who you really are)

Also, it makes it difficult for you to identify your potentials or unique talents/gifts.

This is because you’re not being truthful about who you are as such you hide away certain gifts or talents that make you a unique individual.

Lastly, it could lead to you living an unfulfilled life.

Hence, the need to be more authentic in life generally.

Tips On How To Live Life Authentically -How To Be More Authentic

Here are some ways to discover yourself and be your authentic self in your professional and personal relationships.

Develop Self-Awareness

This is the first and very important step to being more authentic or living authentically.

This is all about discovering who you are.

Self-awareness can be easily defined as getting to know who you are, your emotions, actions, and personality.

It involves a lot of activities that help you identify and understand your personality as an individual.

So how do you develop self-awareness, master your identity, and be your authentic self?

Here are some tips that could help.

Tips on how to develop self-awareness

The first step is to master your emotions and recognize your feelings.

This could be achieved through mindfulness practice, self-reflection, and meditation.

Self-awareness can be developed by paying more attention to your feelings.

This way you can identify your different emotions as a person, what gets to you and makes you tick and how best to control them.

Hence you could practice daily meditations or self-reflection exercises where you question yourself about your feelings.

Thereby helping you identify your emotions and be a more authentic individual.

The next step would be to keep track of your feelings/emotions

You can do this through journaling.

Journaling is the act of writing down your thoughts in a journal (diary, book, or any other writing material).

It involves writing down your emotions or feelings.

This way you can better understand how you feel, identity what’s making you feel that way, and how you reacted to such situations.

Thereby, helping you identify and understand your emotions better and be your true self.

You could also ask for feedback from trusted people

This is another way to discover yourself and become your true self.

You could ask trusted friends, colleagues, partners, or family members what they think of your personality or behavior traits.

Through their genuine answers, you could identify certain aspects of yourself that you didn’t know of.

Consequently, helping you improve your self-awareness and discover your true self.

Overall, self-awareness is key to discovering who you truly are so you can be more authentic in life generally.

Accept Yourself For Who You Are

Having achieved self-awareness and discovered your personality, self-acceptance comes next.

Self-acceptance refers to feeling good and satisfied with yourself having discovered your strength and weaknesses.

Bear in mind that, this is not about being complacent or unwilling to change and become a better person.

Rather it is confidently accepting your flaws as a person.

Thereby, helping you seek ways to improve and become a better person overall.

It is also about preventing self-denial and living in self-deceit (pretending to be what you’re not)

Hence, to be more authentic as a person, you need to be willing to practice self-acceptance.

Only then can you be truly honest about yourself and also recognize areas in your life where you need to improve yourself.

Discover Your Uniqueness

This is another important step to take to be your authentic self in whatsoever you do.

It’s about discovering what makes you different from the rest of the crowd.

Every individual is different and has so many unique abilities.

As such discovering what these unique abilities are can help to make you unique and original.

There are several ways you could discover your uniqueness as a person.

You could identify, your hobbies, interests, natural gifts, and talents.

Also, asking people around you can help you identify what makes you unique as a person.

Thereby, helping you to be unique, avoid conformity, and be more authentic in whatever you do.

Dare To Be Different

It’s one thing to discover what makes you different, it entirely another thing to act differently.

Being different or acting differently requires a lot of courage and confidence.

This is true, given the fact that the society we live in today is one full of stereotypes and photocopies.

It’s okay to model good behavior or conform to laid out rules.

However, while doing so, you need to be careful so that you don’t lose yourself and blend in with the rest of the crowd.

Given this, you need to be willing to be different by confidently acting on your beliefs or values.

Thereby, giving you originality and helping you to be more authentic.

Stop Comparing Yourself To Other People

One of the major causes of inauthenticity is self-comparison.

Self-comparison means comparing and evaluating your life with other people’s lives or standards.

When you compare your life to that of other people, the tendency to model your life after such people increases.

You begin to want to live your life to measure up to the standards of other people’s life.

Thereby, making you do things just because someone else is doing those things.

Hence, to be more authentic in life generally avoid comparing yourself to other people.

Understand that you’re unique in your own way as such live your life by your own standards and not what other people’s lives.

Thereby, helping you to be more authentic.

Challenge Perfectionism

This is another thing you must be willing to do if you want to be more authentic in life.

Perfectionism is also one of the main causes of inauthenticity.

This is a trait that makes people pretend to know it all or have life all sorted out even when they do not.

Perfectionists are so obsessed with being perfect or right all the time.

Also, they try to put up an image of being infallible, not vulnerable, or without flaws.

Thereby, making them unwilling to accept the truth about themselves, live in self-denial, pleasing people, and put up false self-confidence.

Everyone regardless of how much of an expert you might have flaws.

When you’re unwilling to accept this fact due to your perfectionist tendencies, you’re lying to yourself.

Hence, be willing to challenge your perfectionist tendencies and accept your weaknesses.

Thereby, helping you to be more authentic.

Be Authentic By Practicing Integrity

Authenticity transcends beyond self-discovery and self-acceptance, you also have to act authentically.

What this means is that you must be honest in your actions and dealings with the people around you.

To do this you need to practice integrity.

This means you must be truthful in words and actions.

For instance, you shouldn’t have double personalities whereby you uphold a particular belief but your actions speak otherwise.

More so you should avoid telling lies to people about what you’re not.

Integrity is a vital part of authenticity.

Hence, to be more authentic, you need to practice integrity.

Build Confidence

Another thing you need to be more authentic in life generally is confidence.

If you struggle with self-doubt and insecurities how do you stand up for what you believe or uphold your values?

More so, if you lack self-belief, you can easily fall prey to doing what other people believe.

It takes a lot of courage to behave out of the ordinary and carve your own path in life.

Hence the need for you to build confidence.

This is so that you can firmly stand for what you believe rather than conforming to other people’s beliefs.

Thereby, helping you to be more authentic.

Now you know how to be more authentic.

Being authentic isn’t quite easy especially in a world where the pressure to conform is so much.

It is also quite difficult to live authentically in a society that tends to judge or criticize people.

However, if you can be courageous enough to be more authentic, you can reap off the many benefits of living authentically.

This brings us to consider the benefits of being authentic in life generally.

Benefits Of Living Authentically

Here are some of the benefits of being authentic either in your business, professional, or personal life.

It improves your self-confidence.
Authenticity helps you build respect
It also helps you build trust.
Being authentic also strengthens business, professional, and personal relationships.
It reduces stress and anxiety.
It brings out the best in you.
Living authentically helps you discover and fulfill your true potentials.
It also increases your chances of success in every area of life.
The self-acceptance and confidence that comes with being authentic help to improve your overall performance as an individual.
Decision making becomes easier.
It helps you not to be easily manipulated or influenced by people.
It helps you discover your sense of purpose.
Being authentic enhances your chances of self-improvement. This is because it helps you recognize your flaws and improve yourself.
You’ll be happier in life.
Overall, it helps you develop a likable personality.