Today we are going to talk about choosing to be your authentic self. Find the show notes on my website at Poweryourimpact.com/17.
Being your authentic self means being true to you regardless of external pressures and implications.
When you are true to you, you expend less energy pretending to be something that is not in line with who you are.
Reality is, however, the relentless pressure to conform, at times, holds us back. Conforming can open doors that may not be open if we were not to conform.
As individual’s we do have a choice, but with our choice may come trade-offs.
Choosing to be your authentic self requires self-awareness and courage.
I recently had the opportunity to engage in a webinar spotlighting Ritu Bhasin, author of Amazon best-seller “The Authentic Principle”.
She defined Authentic Principle as a commitment to being yourself, as much as possible, so that you feel more empowered, confident and joyful.
She started by outlining what she referred to as a framework of our “3 selves”:
- Our authentic self: being who you would be if there were no consequences for your actions.
- Our adaptive self: willingly and happily choosing to adapt yourself to meet your needs and that of others.
- Our performing self: masking our true selves to conform to the pressures of the dominant culture.
The author then explained that we make choices every day on how we apply our 3 selves across 7 behaviors:
- How we choose to express ourself
- How we choose to communicate verbally
- How we choose to communicate non-verbally
- The tone in which we choose to speak
- Our appearance
- The content we share
- Our actions
Once the ground work was laid out, Ritu emphasized a few key points:
Being your authentic self is a choice and a journey.
At times you may choose to shift your behavior between your authentic self and your adaptive self based on a situation or a circumstance.
Certain behaviors may be your anchor. These are the ones you will not change regardless of the situation or circumstance. Be unapologetic and resilient against judgement.
She concluded by highlighting 4 additional points:
Being your authentic self is the consistent practice of choosing to know who you are, embracing it, and being it.
When we choose to be our authentic self or our adaptive self we are operating in a zone of empowerment.
When we choose to be our performing self we are operating in the zone of disempowerment.
The first step is to know who you are.
