Edna J. White explores authenticity as a process of self-awareness, truth, confidence, and living in alignment with one's values, beliefs, and purpose.
Introduction
Becoming your authentic self is a process. It is about digging deep, recognizing your truths, discovering who you are and what you stand for, and sharing your opinions and thoughts freely with respect and confidence.
The Science Behind Authenticity
In Sincerity and Authenticity, literary critic and professor Lionel Trilling described how society in past centuries was held together by people's commitment to fulfilling their stations in life, whether they were blacksmiths or barons.
Trilling argued that people in modern societies are much less willing to give up their individuality and instead value authenticity.
What Is Authenticity?
Like Trilling, many modern philosophers understood authenticity as a kind of individuality. Soren Kierkegaard believed that being authentic meant breaking from cultural and social constraints and living a self-determined life.
Martin Heidegger connected authenticity to accepting who you are today and living up to all the potential you have in the future.
Jean-Paul Sartre held a similar idea: people have the freedom to interpret themselves and their experiences however they choose. Being true to oneself means living as the person one understands oneself to be.
Common among these perspectives is the idea that something within a person represents who they truly are. By finding the true self behind the false self, a person can live a more authentic life.
Why Become Your Authentic Self?
- Lead a fully connected life.
- Build stronger and more connected relationships.
- Grow confidence and inner strength.
- Live connected to values and beliefs.
- Feel open and free to share thoughts and opinions.
- Know who you are and who you are not.
- Have the confidence to ask for what you want and need in life.
- Have the confidence to do the things you want in life.
- Experience more meaningful conversations.
- Attract more people through authentic presence.
- Live a true, whole, and engaged life worth living.
After the work of becoming self-aware, a person can live life in the way they choose and feel free to be themselves.
Is It Worth It?
Becoming fully authentic and self-aware, while building complete connection with relationships and the world, can make a person wonder how they survived without that knowledge.
- Everyone's process will be different.
- The process is ongoing, with more still to learn.
- Becoming comfortable with oneself is part of the journey.
- The journey toward the authentic self is worth it and can last through a fully engaged life.
- Authenticity includes knowing strengths and weaknesses and continuing to work on them.
- Core values become identified.
- There is greater ease in voicing opinions.