I was talking with a mentee today when the topic of authenticity came up – if we are thinking so much about how we should behave, how do we know what is authentic? It seems like authenticity should be effortless – why is it so hard? (The below comments are only lightly specific to the mentee’s situation.)
Authenticity does not mean being unfiltered, unmodulated, completely ego-expressive. Instead, we are behaving authentically when our actions and our motivations and our sense of self are aligned with one another.
Your physical posture is how you hold your body, arrange your limbs and whatnot, and that posture affects your comfort and your behavior. For example, slouching leads to back fatigue, reduced lung capacity, and feelings of “being down,” and the behavioral effects flowing from these physical effects. We remind ourselves to sit up comfortably straight in part because we genuinely want the positive effects that this posture will bring, therefore the posture is authentic – even though we had to remember to do it, taking that posture matches our motivations.
What are the intellectual and social/emotional analogs of physical posture?
Intellectual posture – how you hold your mind/thought: What is an intellectual posture that makes you ready to consider the current tactical need, the comments of others, and the strategic situation without causing internal conflict? What is the intellectual frame you can put around what’s happening to recognize the problem to be solved and your place in the solution? This is useful for your own well-being and effectiveness, and becomes visible to others through your behavior. Your behavior is authentic if it matches your actual intellectual posture, and inauthentic if these don’t match. You change your intellectual posture in response to your motivations; if your motivations and posture match, the posture is (and your behavior will thus be) authentic.
Social posture – how you hold your heart: when entering a situation at work or socially, what are you hoping will happen? What sort of interactions would you like to have? These wishes motivate your social posture. What is your role to play in achieving interactions of the sort you would like to have? What attitude do you portray as part of playing that role? This is your social posture. Your social posture and the behavior it fosters can be authentic or inauthentic; if the wishes and the posture and the behavior are all in alignment, then they are authentic.
You may not be able to be perfectly authentic all the time. It takes practice. It gets easier if you can bring your goals and posture to consciousness (e.g., if you can think about them, observe them, reflect on their effect on the recent past) and behave in a way that is congruent with them. Sometimes it’s hard to get all three at once – but even struggling with these is authentic. Is it easier (even just a little) to model what you want at work or at home? Or even with just one friend? Practice where it is easier for a while.