Who are You, the real person?
On this blog, I’ve talked a lot about career issues, but let’s face it: That’s only a part of who You are. I would hope that you recognize that there’s other important areas of your life: your family, spiritual growth, your physical self, contribution to important causes, your social circles – and perhaps more.
Your Authentic Self is the person underlying all that.
Why bother trying to combine all these different aspects of your life? Simple:
- Clarity about your Authentic Self helps you to make important life decisions
- Physically, you’re only a single person, with all your capabilities and limitations
- You have to balance all of these in 24 hours a day
- Wonderful things can happen when you remove the barriers between these areas
Over ten years ago, I became interested in the field of coaching. Originally, it was because I saw it as a great career path, but as I explored it more, I found that it tied together a number of other areas of my life as well. The principles of coaching strongly relate to why I contribute to certain ministries in my church. It affects the friendships I form and business partners I work with, even how I relate to my family. Not that I coach family members, but that the mindset of coaching contains some imp0rtant components of my personal principles.
One result of this is that I don’t have clear lines of demarcation between my “work self,” my “family self,” and my “social self.” It’s not necessary to adopt radically different personalities, because I’m more confident of my deeper Authentic Self and True Purpose.
You can discover your Authentic Self by asking some simple questions:
- What have you done which gives you the deepest satisfaction (not just surface pleasure)?
- Where do you enjoy doing hard work, just because you believe it’s worth it?
- How are you similar in different aspects of your life?
- Where do other people value you, even seek you out?
Your Authentic Self is something that’s very unique to you, so you may find it surprisingly hard to find appropriate words to describe it. Don’t worry – if it’s valuable to you, you’ll pursue it until the concepts become clearer.
What do you do with knowing your Authentic Self? Well, you use it to build your energy and make life decisions.
- What are you doing to grow toward your Authentic Self?
- How does your Authentic Self show up in your job, with your family and friends, and how you spend your discretionary time?
- How will you know if you’re making progress?
Believe me, this can be one of the most important things for you to figure out in your entire life. Really.
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Right on Carl, very well said! When we fragment ourselves, we tend to trap our energies into pockets. Worse, it takes additional energy to maintain those barriers as well. Conversely, the process of unifying ourselves (which includes the admittedly challenging task of reconciling and transcending what we identify with/against as polar opposites), unleashes energy and makes more of us available to us in each moment.
“One result of this is that I don’t have clear lines of demarcation between my “work self,” my “family self,” and my “social self.” It’s not necessary to adopt radically different personalities, because I’m more confident of my deeper Authentic Self and True Purpose.”
This is my experience as well, and resonates with my sense of integrity.
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Thanks, Kartik. I find it interesting that I do have some difference to how I communicate myself to different audiences – to coaching clients, to business partners, to family, etc. – but there’s still a strong and consistent core underlying that. It makes it easier for me to switch between contexts when necessary, and to not feel inauthentic to ANY of them.
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I had a great question on this topic today from Troy: Does this idea of authenticity get in the way of customizing your message toward different audiences, especially different employers?
Here’s the deal: The idea of the Authentic Self is mostly valuable for YOU, in order to understand yourself, your motivations, your goals, your actions. You get to choose how much of that you display in any particular context. Hopefully there will be a few people in your life with whom you can open up in true authenticity once in awhile – that’s one of the things that’s great about the relationship with a coach.
But, realistically, you choose to display various forms of that authenticity to various audiences, as appropriate. I have a particular passion around Sacred Music. Do I choose to share that with potential employers? No, at least not initially, because it’s probably irrelevant to them and may even get in the way of the more important conversation we need to have.
You will find that the further your displayed behavior is from your Authentic Self, the more internal conflict will be generated. That’s one reason why it’s important to understand the difference: To reduce stress. But you’ll also find that this exploration will help steer your choices about your career, potential employers, partners, and so on. The more you understand who you are at a deep level, the more you’ll be making CONSCIOUS choices, rather than feeling hemmed in by circumstances.
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Again, well said 🙂 You do a really good job of teasing out the subtle points involved here. Along with developing our authentic selves, we develop more consciousness over how we present ourselves in different situations. This gives us *greater* flexibility over our range of behavior than when we were unconsciously fragmented and driven to behave in certain ways. The key is the reduction of internal conflict, which opens up a larger space for us to think and act creatively.
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Great insights here Carl…I enjoyed reading it and agree highly with much of what you’re saying. Like Kartik, the following sentence is the one that jumped off the page and grabbed me most:
One result of this is that I don’t have clear lines of demarcation between my “work self,” my “family self,” and my “social self.” It’s not necessary to adopt radically different personalities, because I’m more confident of my deeper Authentic Self and True Purpose.
I mean, how refreshing to get to a point like this where you can be your authentic self in each of the variety of contexts that life throws at us? I like to think of the authentic self as being in layers where everyone gets to see the outer layers, while we get more and more selective about who sees the deeper layers. Nonetheless, they’re all the same authentic person.
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Don’t get me wrong, Carly, it’s by no means perfectly aligned. I still have to “play” different roles to a certain extent – just not nearly as much as I was doing, say, 10 years ago. Every baby step is an improvement.