Authenticity?

Authenticity..What even is it?

I recently wrote a piece in which I talked openly about entering into a relationship with our inner demons, you can read that piece here. I talked about how at times of success my inner doubt would raise it’s head and voice its objection to me accepting compliments and praise from clients.

Now, of course, there is a place for humility; I’ll speak a bit more about that later, but the voice in my head wasn’t one promoting humility it was one promoting criticism. When I looked deeper into this criticism using Compassionate Inquiry techniques I discovered that this criticism was acting as a protection for my true authentic self. This criticism was a behavior I had learned to keep myself protected from the judgement of others, or rather should I say, this criticism was something I had been taught as a child happened when I tried to express my needs. So now when I wanted to express my needs my behavioural modus operandi was to criticise and judge myself.

This piece of writing seemed to trigger a lot of emotion for a lot of people. I received several messages, comments and posts telling me so. I’m really interested in why this piece of writing in particular sparked such interest. I could say it was the quality of the writing, maybe, I could argue that readers enjoyed the glimpse into my psyche, maybe, or I think what was more likely was that the words I used and the emotions I described gave the reader a glimpse into their own psyche. So it was really about how the words made the reader feel and how that feeling generated a reaction inside themselves which in turn caused the reader to take action. And this, in a nutshell, is life.

Your authenticity isn’t about how you present yourself to the outside world. It’s not about how open you are to your colleagues, friends, family or business connections. It’s not about you speaking your truth to the world via your LinkedIn videos or Facebook Live broadcasts. Your authenticity is about how you present yourself to you. Your authenticity is about how good you can be at attuning to yourself, listening to what your emotional body has to say to you and doing the right thing by you. If you want to be really authentic the best thing you can learn is how to keep one eye on yourself and your reactions to any given experience and, on eye on the experience itself.

As I was preparing for a networking event in James Street South in Belfast yesterday I could sense some tension in my lower gut and a great phrase I have learned recently through my studies with Gabor Mate is ‘tension needs attention’. So why the tension?

I inquired into the feeling in my gut. It was deep in my gut, not like the sense of anxiety one might get in their solar plexus when nervous about meeting new people, but a deeper, lower, heavier feeling. With further compassionate inquiry I realised that this feeling was one of sadness. I felt sad about going to a networking event? When I authentically asked the feeling ‘Why are you sad?’ the answer that came back was ‘I don’t want to be left alone’. 

So there I had it, my authentic self was feeling sad that it was being brought along to an event where the other Kevin, the networking Kevin would appear and take over and my real self would be left alone. Thank God we have physical sensations that, if listened to, tell us how we really feel. How often do we have feelings and rather than listen to them we ignore them or worse use some form of behaviour or substance to distract us from them. That pattern of behaviour or substance use is known as addiction. Who amongst us is prepared to say they are addicted?

I made a commitment to myself that I would not click into ‘networking mode’ and leave the real me behind. I made a commitment that I would keep some of my attention on me and the rest on the room and the experience itself, and in doing so I ensured that I really enjoyed myself. 

By attuning to myself I recognised that I had no need to feel nervous at any point. I hadn’t prepared anything to say - in fact i hadn’t realised that I would be expected to take two minutes to introduce myself - but I did and I felt that I did that authentically.

By attuning to myself I was able to experience the full range of emotions that the event evoked in me. All of the participants spoke passionately about their businesses and even more interesting was that most of the participants spoke authentically about themselves. Some spoke of a deep love of a departed parent, some spoke of the joy of physical connections in a digital world whilst others spoke of humility, honesty, diversity and truth. Some sounded a little nervous, some used notes, some winged it, but all gave some of themselves.

What I learned from the event was that if you go out into the outside world, whilst keeping one eye on your inside world, you will find people with whom you can be authentic - the group of people that I know, the ones who put this event together and delivered it so well, have worked hard at creating that authenticity. If you find yourself in a room where you are being forced to choose between your own authenticity and attachment to the people or relationships in the room, you're in the wrong room. I’d suggest you plan your exit strategy.

Your emotional body will tell what's going on for you, just listen to it. If you find yourself leaning heavily towards a behaviour; fawning, people pleasing, gossiping, self deprecating or towards a substance; cocaine, alcohol, food then maybe it’s time to do a little work on your addictions.

So in summary, and in my experience, which is just that, one experience of living in a sometimes complicated and busy world, I’ll leave you with a question..Are you being authentic with you?