Has anyone ever told you to just be yourself? 

It’s the sort of advice we give each other just before all those first impression experiences — job interviews, first dates, going to a new school — that tend to stir up a storm of nerves. We want people to like us. We want to feel understood and find connection with one another. It’s normal to feel nervous about how others might perceive us for the first time. New people and new environments can feel scary!

“Has anyone ever told you to just be yourself?”

Which is how we might find ourselves engaging in such classic, eleventh hour preparations as trying on every single item of clothing we own before panic-purchasing an entire new outfit; practicing our talking points in the mirror or on our phones with all the fervent focus of a professional actor learning lines for their Broadway debut; calling our loved ones to spiral out just a little bit about everything that could possibly go wrong, and why we’re not remotely ready for this, and how maybe, actually, we’re coming down with a cold anyway, and it’s probably the right thing to just call the whole thing off, right? 

Our loved ones will sigh, or laugh, or dismiss our concerns with an airy wave of their hand. “Oh stop, you’ll be fine! ” they say, their tone warm but firm. “Just be yourself.”

This, I’m sorry to say, is terrible advice. 

No offense to your best friend, or partner, or mom, but saying “just be yourself!” to someone in the throes of strategizing their first impression is like shouting “just calm down!” to a yowling cat in the middle of a bath it does not want to be taking. The cat is not going to calm down, because the cat does not understand what you’re saying. 

Which is exactly the problem with just be yourself, too.

“We’ve been taught our whole lives that there’s a ‘right’ way to be, which is often directly at odds with being, well, ourselves.”

We’ve been taught our whole lives that there’s a “right” way to be, which is often directly at odds with being, well, ourselves.

Most of us, for example, probably have a professional wardrobe that doesn’t necessarily overlap with our preferred clothes. If how we dress ourselves is important to us, then the restrictions of a corporate wardrobe might have a fairly strong impact on our sense of self. “Just be yourself, but just not in that outfit” doesn’t have the same ring though, does it?

I’m not convinced we use “just be yourself” literally anyway. The expression is used less as a directive, and more as a vote of confidence. I believe in you, our loved ones are really saying. I like you just as you are. We know they mean it too, because we’re likely standing in our underwear with our mascara running while every insecurity we’ve ever had comes bubbling to the surface when they say it. 

“You have to say that,” I’ve said to my mom and my spouse over the years, wholly dismissing their attempts to mollify me. “You already love me.” Because it’s true that as we grow closer with people throughout our lives, we make more room for each other’s messy stuff. The less we know and trust one another, however, makes very little room for error. How many times have we been warned about the power of first impressions, after all? 

Making a good impression relies on the ability to perform — to play the role of the ideal job candidate, or a desirable romantic partner, for example. A good performance will require some basic knowledge and social competency for what’s wanted in these interactions; a great performance will require the ability to read the room and adapt to their audience. When the goal is to be chosen, authenticity isn’t usually the strategy we go for. When we want to win the approval of others, we have to be some version of ourselves we know they will like.

“When the goal is to be chosen, authenticity isn’t usually the strategy we go for.”

After years spent learning that success in professional, social, and romantic spheres requires us to curb whatever won’t fit the mold, it seems only natural that many of us might not know what it means to “be ourselves” anymore — let alone live authentically. What does it mean to be ourselves in a world that’s constantly reminding us that there is an ideal that we should be striving to become?

Even the small ways we might have made ourselves more likeable over the years can take their toll, whether it’s been in modulating the volume of our voice or learning to keep our opinions to ourselves because people seem to prefer us that way.

It’s exhausting to live like this. But it can be terrifying to try to make space for the parts of yourself you’ve been modifying for so long. How do you even start?

Authenticity is built, not found

It’s nearly impossible to get on the internet without stumbling into a wellness influencer claiming that they’ve found the secret to living an authentic life. I watch these videos. I’m fascinated with how we define ourselves in the age of social media, when the space between our actual lived lives and the presentations online are only the beginning of a quantum-level fragmentation of what “the self” has become. But I’m rarely satisfied with these influencers, usually because their narratives hinge on the idea that our authentic, true selves are something static that we simply have to find.

“I don’t think our authentic self is something we can search for, but is instead something we have to create.”

Flat out, I don’t believe that. I think people are processes, from both the biological standpoint of human development and the psychological standpoint of lived experience and the accumulation of knowledge. We change. We are constantly evolving, shifting, becoming. So when we talk about trying to “be ourselves” and about being authentic, I don’t think we’re trying to define some fixed, hidden entity. In other words, I don’t think our authentic self is something we can search for, but is instead something we have to create.

So … how do we do that?

Timm Chiusano, a multi-hyphenate executive and thought leader, created a short video summarizing the best paper I’ve come across on the topic of authenticity, A Multicomponent Conceptualization of Authenticity: Theory and Research, by Michael H. Kernis, Brian M. Goldman. “This is what it means to actually be your authentic self,” he says at the beginning of the video.

Let’s break it down:

Step 1: Building a bold self-awareness of your emotions, preferences, abilities, and motives

Right to the deep end! Self-awareness is one of those deceptively tricky concepts that is all too easy to think we’ve mastered, only to discover in some crucial, vulnerable moment down the line just how far we still have to go.

That’s because self-awareness requires a willingness to not just look at yourself straight on, but to actually see what’s there. Not what we want to see, or what we know we’re supposed to see, but what’s actually, truly, really there. To see clearly and boldly.

Our emotions, preferences, and abilities are sometimes straightforward enough. Even if we have big or complicated feelings, or if we have unpopular opinions, we become more comfortable with naming these as they are as we age. Similarly, making peace with our abilities can come with maturity as well. Motives, however, can be much more challenging to identify. Some motives like to hide even from our own consciousness, riding on the coattails of other motives that are maybe more acceptable or appealing. Just like we can have multiple feelings at once, we can find ourselves serving multiple motives, too. Being able to look at these boldly means being totally honest about every motive you’re responding to — whether you like what you see or not.

Step 2: Unbiased processing: understanding your strengths and weaknesses without blame or denial

Your inner critic is not invited to this part of the journey. Because after working on our self-awareness, the next step is processing our findings without making value judgments.

“Your inner critic is not invited to this part of the journey.”

Did your motivation audit uncover a hunger for attention? No judgment. Self-awareness looks like: knowing that the reason you felt sulky after the board meeting was because your colleague got more props than you did, even though you had volunteered to create the slideshow for your boss’s presentation because you are better skilled.

Biased processing looks like: chastizing yourself for getting upset, and feeling guilty about not being able to control your emotions. Poor self-awareness looks like: blaming the boss and your colleague for taking you for granted.

Unbiased processing looks like: understanding that volunteering to show off your skills is not a guarantee that you will actually get that attention. If doing the work hinges on getting more visibility and it doesn’t pay off, you will need to manage your disappointment, frustration, and irritation — without drawing the wrong kind of attention to yourself.

Wanting more visibility and attention for your talents is not an inherently good or bad desire; how you manage that motivation depends on your ability to satisfy it in unharmful ways.

Understanding these aspects of ourselves without getting caught in the sticky webs of blame and denial is hard work. But the payoff is more than worth it, because once we get good at this part, we become untouchable.

Think about it: If we can look at ourselves straight on, then what was once a fatal flaw is now a mere weakness. And weaknesses can be strengthened.

Step 3: Behaviors that are focused on values, needs, and success without the distractions of criticism, rejection, and fear of failure

Once you’ve worked on auditing yourself boldly without bias, you should have a better understanding of your internal patterns and tendencies. It’s time to bridge the gap between what you’ve become aware of and what kind of person you want to be.

“It’s time to bridge the gap between what you’ve become aware of and what kind of person you want to be.”

While our feelings are not in our control, our behaviors are choices. Letting our feelings guide our behaviors isn’t always in our best interest — especially when what we’re feeling is at odds with what we believe.

For example, my daughter often wants to ask me the same question over and over again in a single afternoon. I will answer her in good faith the first few times, but then I start to lose my patience. “I already told you.” “I know,” she says. “I can’t remember.” She is six. She wants to know stuff like what a canary was used for in mines, and also what a mine is. None of the questions are straightforward, and my attempts at developmentally appropriate answers seem to only beg more questions. But she doesn’t yet know how to articulate what she wants to understand, so instead she says “What did the canary do in the mine, again?”

My feelings during these exchanges range from fond exasperation to suffocating panic. I feel trapped and frustrated, irritated to be repeating myself yet again, and annoyed that she doesn’t appear to be absorbing my words.

Reader, I do not act from these feelings. Because I believe that it is my job to cultivate her trust. I want her to come to me with her questions, and to know that I am her guide for the world. So I have to breathe and keep my tone calm and say the same thing multiple times. Because that is how she’s learning now, and I’m investing in much more than those ten minutes of irritation.

If we are clear on what we believe, on our core values, and our top priority needs, we can choose to act in service of these things — and not from anything else.

Step 4: Relational orientation: The ability to meet others where they are

The coolest part about building our own authenticity through self-awareness is that it makes us much better at seeing and understanding others, too. The more we understand how multifaceted our own feelings and motivations can be, and the more we untangle our own biases and tendencies to moralize what’s not in our control, the easier it is to do the same for everyone else.

“The coolest part about building our own authenticity through self-awareness is that it makes us much better at seeing and understanding others, too.”

Our experiences with minor friction out in the world shifts for the better once we’ve gotten to this step. The surly neighbor might take on a new dimension when we stop assigning negative judgments to their monosyllabic greetings. It might feel easier to be stalled in the cashier line when the mom juggling three toddlers has to run to get a new carton of berries right at the end of her turn. Compassion and patience are not qualities we strongarm or shame ourselves into; they come to us honestly, when we are living as our most authentic, true selves.

Now we get to experience authentic connection — to both ourselves and to others — without anything getting in the way. And isn’t that what we wanted all along? ✨

Stephanie H. Fallon is a Contributing Editor at The Good Trade. She is a writer originally from Houston, Texas and holds an MFA from the Jackson Center of Creative Writing at Hollins University. She lives with her family in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, and she is the author of Finishing Lines, where she writes about her fear of finishing, living a creative life, and (medical) motherhood. Since 2022, she has been reviewing sustainable home and lifestyle brands, fact-checking sustainability claims, and bringing her sharp editorial skills to every product review. Say hi on Instagram or on her website.