Originally posted on June 1, 2021

You have your own thumbprint – your own built-in signature.  You have your own DNA – a profile of your ethnography, potentiality for disease, and whether or not you will enjoy a certain wine all wrapped around strands that a human eye cannot see unless it is under a microscope.  Wow.  You – WE – are unique!

So, when did we stop being as unique as our biology set us up to be?  This is the classic nature versus nurture argument with neither one truly winning.  We act (or react) according to our nature and we nurture that behavior based on how we’ve been socialized to accept it.  Some of us may accept a joke as funny, others may react to the same joke and be offended by it.  One joke, two people, two different backgrounds, two different biology’s, two separate upbringings, two different reactions.  The most important part of this example is that both are being authentic and both are right to feel how they feel in the exact same situation.

At the heart of authenticity is acceptance and love for yourself.  Being authentic means accepting yourself where you are at.  This also means that you will grow as a person and must accept the new version of yourself, always.  It also means that you may experience a time of stagnation, and that will also require acceptance. Growth and stagnation will require action to continue to move forward and both will require authenticity with that action.  Without authenticity, you may find yourself on a different path than your own and that will inhibit your individual growth.  You have to always connect action with authenticity the same way your mind (may) associate peanut butter with jelly.

The biggest problem is that authenticity is not a loud voice bellowing instructions from the back of your head, it is a soft whisper or feeling that you get when you are about to make a decision.  It has also been coined as “going with your gut”.  It is a gentle nudge in the right direction when you are choosing to be true to yourself rather than going with the general consensus or even making a different decision than you may have before.  I like to think of it as our psychological algorithm and every time we make a decision, it gets built into that algorithm so we know how to act the next time in accordance to who we authentically are.  If we happen to make a different choice, based on a well-researched fact, than what our algorithm calculated then that also gets built into our algorithm so we now are working with an updated set of facts – still authentic, still true.  This is how we evolve and grow; it is a coordinated dance between mind (algorithm), body (gut), and reality (facts).  The ultimate goal is to do all of this authentically and without compromising ourselves.

Google the term “authenticity” and you will find this: authenticity is the opposite of being fake.  Did you notice that?  Google did not tell you what authenticity is, rather, what it is NOT.  If there was a true definition of authenticity then there would be over 1 billion definitions because there are that many people.  One definition for each person.  What is your definition of authenticity?  Who are you? And how do you show up authentically?