Authentic people are true to themselves, enabling them to live fulfilling lives and develop deep, meaningful relationships. Learn how to be a more genuine person with these tips.
Authenticity refers to the quality of being true to yourself and your beliefs. It means acting in alignment with your inner values and character rather than allowing your adaptive self—the behavioral drive to fit in with other human beings like friends, family, or co-workers—to dictate everything you do. Authentic people would not try to be like anyone else or hold back their honest opinions. Instead of engaging in people-pleasing behaviors, a genuine person’s actions, thoughts, and intentions align with who they are.
Being authentic is essential because it contributes to your holistic well-being, encouraging happiness, fulfillment, and high self-esteem. When your actions align with your genuine nature, you are more likely to pursue your passions, believe in yourself, and feel confident in your opinions. Conversely, inauthenticity can negatively impact your mental health, creating a displaced sense of purpose.
How to Be an Authentic Person
Anyone can live an authentic life, but it may take hard work. Follow these tips to become a more genuine person:
- Be honest. Maintain an open mind toward other people’s opinions and feel comfortable expressing your point of view. Being vulnerable will help you think you are living your truth, attracting other genuine people into your life.
- Listen to your intuition. Listen to what your inner voice says as often as possible. Let your core values and true nature guide your decisions rather than responding out of habit or what you think will please others.
- Develop self-awareness. Take time to think about why you react to situations in the ways you do. Consider how your upbringing, home, or work environment influences your behaviors. Evaluate how your adaptive self—the part that adjusts your behavior in social situations—is in line or out of line with your authentic self. Being self-aware in this way helps you to make real choices. Learn more about self-awareness.
- Practice self-reflection. Think of times when you felt like your best self. What were you doing? Who were you with? By journaling, thinking, or talking it out, taking note of these things will allow you to seek more authentic experiences.
- Work on your self-esteem. Authenticity makes you less likely to seek external validation because you have the confidence to feel secure in your identity and actions. (Learn how to build trust.) However, it is essential to nurture this confidence through practicing self-care activities like positive self-talk. Also, try letting go of negative feelings when others criticize you. Focus instead on making yourself a better person.
- Talk to your inner child. Familial, generational, and societal conditioning is applied to us at an early age. We spend our lives defending and representing that. It influences your models of relationships, your models of love, and your political take on things, all of which might not be yours. Be prepared to dig deep and unearth some pain in pursuit of your true self – by examining your early life, and we can break old patterns.
- Establish your boundaries. When our boundaries are not in place, it can be effortless to lapse away from our true selves. While it can involve frank conversations, putting these boundaries in place is integral to faithful living. Set these with partners, friends, family, and colleagues by ring-fencing your time, energy, emotions, ethics, personal space, and standards.
You Are Worth It
Are you figuring out what to do next and how to get there? Read Wonder Stream Of The Soul by Craig Carpenter Downer to learn how to embrace your passions. The book is a beautiful, inspiring collection of poems and philosophical passages accompanied by exquisite images – all reaped from a lifetime of diverse, vast, and treasured insights and experiences. Its conceptions confront life’s most crucial dilemmas and are soul-liberating. They draw upon profound lessons of the past while simultaneously tapping future-oriented visions.
The book unites imagination and visions of the soul with the workings of logic and revelations of science. It befits life’s true nature and brings hearts and minds together. Uniting diverse, even opposite, facets open a beautiful vision of hope for all life’s future. This vision of hope guides our steps—conceived by a keen, truth-seeking intelligence and an exquisite moral and aesthetic sense, Wonder Streams of the Soul opens with meanings that cry out for recognition today. This can be brought to life by anyone humbly open to receiving them using the power and majesty of words.
Go ahead and grab a copy now online!
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