The importance of being authentic

Posted on | October 20, 2008 |

If I have found one fundamental belief that brings more happiness than others, it is the act of being authentic.

Since we all have our own beliefs and definitions can vary, I will explain my take on “being authentic.”

To me, this means that you follow your own beliefs, believe that you make good decisions, and know yourself well enough to be honest not only with yourself, but with others around you.

At first, I found this to be a frightful thought… what are the possible effects of authenticity? Many questions swirled around this belief at first, like:

Isn’t it possible to hurt other people by expression your honesty?
What if others don’t like what you say?
Aren’t you exposing yourself in dangerous ways?

And the list of fear-based questions goes on…

Where once I was afraid of honesty eliminating possibilities, I now know through practice that it opens more doors than it closes. It is all benefit and has no disadvantages.

To illustrate, imagine this scenario. You have a strong belief about something. You fear that someone you care about would react adversely to your expression of this… What to do? Options: a) keep it to yourself an never find out or b) express it and know whether your view fits into the scenario.

Would you rather live wondering and avoid talking about something that is important, or find out for sure if it’s right or not? My take - life is too damn short to die wondering. Funny, I saw that on a t-shirt once and for other reasons I was enraged.

Those reasons included betrayal of trust, and the wearer of that shirt was the one who betrayed. It’s all water under the bridge, but at the time it was the most important things in the world to me. Why? I was living in fear of the consequences of following your beliefs. At that point I was afraid that standing up for mine would result in a loss unbearable - my marriage. The long-term result is that testing and reaffirming that I did believe in those things most important to me took me on a path to a much greater happiness than hiding behind the fear of loss. Expressing my unhappiness and choosing a path that was in line with my beliefs was always the right choice - just took me a while to realize that the shirt (and the wearer) was right - “Don’t Die Wondering.”

Another thing I hear when discussing this with friends and colleagues is that if you choose to follow your beliefs, be honest and authentic, you might end up pushing away people that don’t agree or are “hurt” by your beliefs. There is a lot to unravel here, so let’s take it one at a time.

Being “hurt” by beliefs: Beliefs have no substance and are individual to the holder. They cannot “hurt” someone. But the holder of a contrary belief can choose (knowingly or unknowingly if they do not know why they believe) to be hurt. Knowing that people are always trying to do their best to follow their beliefs paves the way for compassion. You don’t need to believe what someone else believes, but it does not mean that you have to judge them for any of their beliefs.

Pushing away people who don’t agree: Ask yourself this - Wouldn’t it be great if you only had people in your life that supported, encouraged and respected you? And, what benefits do you gain by keeping people in your life that do not respect your beliefs? I believe that if someone chooses to not respect me for being who I am, I would rather not have them in my life. Again, life is too short for that crap.

I live by a variation on the golden rule: You get what you give. Notice I didn’t say, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” The key difference here is that my world starts with me and my opinion of myself and what I choose to give, rather than what I do to others first. Even the golden Rule smacks of fear-based decisions to me. Like, “Don’t do that because you might not like someone else doing it to you!” Instead, I see the world as a fundamentally good place and choose to give good, happy things. Therefore, I receive them back. And since I choose to be authentic and this divides my contact to primarily people that enjoy/respect me and my beliefs, it is further enhanced and redoubled. Good work, eh?

To summarize, I prefer to be happy, so I live each day as if it were my last (well, close…). This includes being straightforward about my beliefs. I am pursuing being as authentic as possible on a daily basis. The net effect is that courage, which I believed was necessary to egg myself on when I was scared, is no longer necessary. It is a joy to know yourself and live it.

For every thing you choose not to do out of fear, you reduce your chances to experience the things you like.

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The importance of being authentic

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