Are you overthinking authenticity?

Here are 6 questions that might help...

As a twenty-something, neck deep in an all-consuming career as a secondary-school teacher, I prided myself on my work ethic, my attitude to developing my skills, and the very many systems I’d developed for making sure I met the very many demands of my job.

One evening, I joined some colleagues for drinks and when I arrived realised I’d left home without proper shoes, my bag, my phone, or my house keys. A colleague who knew me well laughed and said, ‘I always forget how different you are outside school.’

My early adulthood especially is littered with the ghosts of many wildly different personas. At work I was serious, diligent, a great problem-solver and good in a crisis. In unfamiliar social situations I would ‘channel Holly’ - a particularly gregarious friend whose effervescence I could never match, but who did inspire a more bubbly, less serious side of me to surface. At home I was dark, and quiet, and - perhaps unsurprisingly - exhausted.

I’m sure many of you have similar experiences of bending yourself into different shapes to suit different people and places, an experience often heightened for people of marginalised groups. Perhaps you call it people-pleasing, maybe there is pressure to make yourself ‘palatable’ in some way, or maybe you identify these adaptations as your masks.

Perhaps for you it’s less intense and the behavioural adjustments you make are small ones necessitated by existing as a social animal, primed for living in community with others.

Wherever you are on this spectrum though, rare is the person who expresses themselves freely and wholly in every context they find themselves in, from the work place, to public transport, to parties, to intimate dinners, to a night in front of the tele with their most favourite person, to the middle of the night with a feverish child, to those infrequent moments alone when they’re confronted with what they really think.

Each of these scenarios - alongside many more - will likely witness a different version of us as though our ‘whole self’ is in fact a colour wheel, divided into wedges, each one representing a different personality trait, interest, our likes, dislikes and more.

Photo by Jannet Serhan on Unsplash

In some contexts certain coloured wedges are brighter, while others are duller, a change that might or might not be conscious; at other times the ratio of brilliance to subtlety will shift, and these wheels remain in some degree of constant flux for our entire lives.

So if we are shifting and adjusting and changing to varying degrees all of the time, does this mean inauthenticity is inevitable?

I don’t think so.

As in life, and even more so on social media - where the limitations of the platforms force us all, however innocently, to curate which ‘colours’ show up on our profile pages - it depends on how we define authenticity.

Redefining authenticity

Discourse around ‘authenticity’ on social media especially is often characterised by vague appeals to ‘just be yourself’ - an intangible, over-simplified goal that ignores the influence of social and cultural expectations and norms, and how we adjust ourselves to them - aka a never-changing, Pantone-true, colour wheel.

Social media also encourages us to see authenticity as a status that can be attained; something akin to a personality trait determined in the womb; or perhaps as something that is performed and consequently identified by others as a quality someone just…has.

In fact, authenticity should be defined as a doing state, rather than a being state.

It is something we can all do, rather than something we do, or do not, have.

6 questions you can ask yourself, before you post on social media, to safeguard your authenticity

• am I saying what I mean, or do I need to spend more time finding the right words?

• am I saying what I mean, or do I need to acknowledge I’m not sure what I’m trying to say, that I might be wrong, that I’m open to expansion?

• do I mean what I’m saying, or am I saying it because I think it’s what people want to hear?

• is it something I am interested in talking about, or am I saying it because I’ve seen it ‘work’ for other people?

• does this feel strange or vulnerable because it’s new, because it crosses an unacknowledged boundary, or because it’s not aligned with what I value?

• if no one liked, commented, or engaged in any other way, with this post, would I still stand by what I say?

These questions ask us to examine and be honest about our intentions behind, and motivations for, showing up online. This applies just as much to promotional posts about our books (or other writing) as it does to posts about your thoughts or opinions on a topic. I’d love all writers to stop trying to hide behind apologies and own that the purpose of a promotional post is to encourage people to take action. Your work has value, you’re not trying to scam them!

These questions also offer an alternative to the idea that our entire ‘colour wheels’ must be permanently on show if we are to show up authentically. You could post about the same single subject over and over again - a tiny portion of your ‘colour wheel’ - but still be completely ‘true to yourself’ by asking yourself these questions each time.

Finally, these questions transform authenticity from something to worry about, into a secret weapon for making life online more sustainable, comfortable and perhaps even enjoyable. Revisit them often and authenticity becomes a quality that can not only be felt by others, but will also be a fortifying presence in our own guts and our own hearts, there in the confidence in our voice and the certainty in our bones. And who doesn’t need a healthy dose of that ;-)

I’d love to hear your experiences of in/authenticity, whether it’s a time you’ve been on the receiving end of something that didn’t quite feel ‘right’; have found yourself doing things online that feel inauthentic to you because you feel like you should; or whether you’ve figured out what feels right to you and are determined to stick to that.

Photo by Catrin Johnson on Unsplash