The true challenge of authenticity

My cousin Heidi Jandel recently issued an “authenticity challenge” on Facebook. Heidi’s instructions: “Each day ask yourself how you can show up more authentically in one small area of life that day.” and share on Facebook, tag her, etc. It’s a great idea. The trouble is that for me, the true challenge of authenticity isn’t presenting my authentic self. It’s not living my authentic self. It’s knowing who my authentic self is. The true challenge of authenticity is recognizing it.

I haven’t spoken to Heidi about it (I plan to share this post on Facebook as, as instructed, tag her). But I expect she would understand where I am coming from. It’s the family resemblance. Heidi and I have rarely seen each other over the years but we have a lot in common. To name a few? Travel. Living abroad. Blogging. Search for authenticity.

Yeah. Me too. The difference between Heidi and me is that I just worry about it for myself. My cousin actively tries to help others find their own authenticity. Heidi is a* holistic life coach.

*Or is it an holistic life coach? Doubts everywhere!

Life Coach?

Life coaching has always fascinated me. I’m not entirely clear on what it is, but I GUESS that life coaches provide professional (paid) guidance. I’ve always supposed this guidance to fall somewhere between shrink and best friend/mother and/or between secretary and best friend/father. (Yes yes, that’s sexist and stereotyping. I know people gossip with their fathers and ask their mothers for advice, but I just couldn’t resist.) Life coaches, from what I know of them, take from Maslow and Seligman. Reach your full potential from a positive psychology perspective.

Before I wrote this blog, I visited Heidi’s website. I’d been reading her blog posts via email subscription, but I had never really looked at her site. What I found most attractive of the potential benefits of coaching was stress reduction.

The authentic me is definitely prone to stress.

I have had loads of stress since I began my first frantic tenure-track job search in fall 2017, when I was completing my dissertation. The dissertation wasn’t that bad, but the job search… Add to that personal stressors, and you get a recipe for weight-loss, crankiness, and, especially doubt. How did I end up here? Is this really what I want to do?

These thoughts were not new to me. I had never lived in the same place for six years since I was 18, and never done the same job for more than 4.5. Mostly, every time I got bored, I moved. But this time it was worse than ever. Partly because I am older, partly because getting a PhD is a huge investment of time and grey hair, partly because… well. Authenticity. Not showing up authentically, but the true challenge of authenticity, knowing what it means for me, now.

So what Heidi is saying with her ‪#‎AuthenticityChallenge‬ and what appears on her website landing page really resonates with me right now.

Heidi’s questions for potential clients (and my answers):

Do you ever…

Wake up in in the morning and be instantly flooded by anxious thoughts?

Yes! And even when I don’t (e.g., when on vacation with boyfriend;-), I never jump out of bed.

Feel stuck in the same place, with the same problems, and feel like it will never change?

Only very briefly. My life changes too much for the problems to stay the same. But recently, sometimes, yeah, this has happened.

Deal with constant stress and overwhelm?

Far too frequently.

Dream of throwing in the towel on your business and working at a coffee shop? (this was my go-to daydream!)

For me, it’s always been live in a shack on a beach and/or be a bartender. Recently I’ve added a new one: be a caretaker on a horse breeding farm.

Feel like you’re not living up to your potential?

Yes. No. Maybe.
Not exactly. Or rather, I don’t know which if any of my potential selves I want to live up to. Comes the true challenge of authenticity: Who is the authentic me?

Is the authentic Jessica the one who wants to bar-tend or caretake? Or is she the one who loves to design research, collect and analyse data, and write papers? I fear the authentic Jessica wants to ride horses and write books. I’ve always known this, but these things aren’t conducive to paying the rent. So then what?

For now I’ll start small: Did I manage to show up authentically in one small area of life today?

I was trying to think how I could have shown up more authentically today. I worked on data analyses; not much room for authenticity or lack thereof in that realm. I participated in a few Facebook discussions, and I shared my horse blog posts to answer people’s questions. (Best bras for riding horses: What to look for and where to find them). Sometimes I feel like that is sketchy because it’s advertising for my blog, but! The entire reason I started blogging about horse topics was that it takes too long to answer questions on comment threads. I’d find myself tying the same responses time after time… Much easier to just have a blog I can link to for each topic.

The authentic me is definitely a writer, and she loves to share what she writes. Blogging was made for the authentic me (but blogging is not always a vehicle for showing up authentically).

Writing this blog is definitely the real Jessica, showing up authentically. Does it count, Heidi?

Of course, if I could, I’d spend a few hours blogging every day. A few hours riding. Go for a run. Hang out with my boyfriend (when we manage to be in the same state). Maybe finish writing up all the data I am sitting on. That’s what the authentic Jessica wants to do.

But there are other things, that feel much less authentic, that need to be done. Such as finding a job that allows me to be where I want (California, near my boyfriend and family) and cater to what the authentic Jessica really wants to do (write and ride). But…

Do we always want to be “authentic?”

Perhaps another true challenge of authenticity is knowing when it needs to be compromised.

When authenticity isn’t practical.

What else did I do today where authenticity might have played a role? I donated books to a library fundraising drive. Not sure if that was a violation of the authentic Jessica. I hate giving away books. Today around 100 books were cast out of my house into the wild world. I had read all of them. Some I had had since the early 1990s, Penguin classics that I bought when living in penury riding race horses. Those books have lived in Spain, California, Oklahoma. Some even traveled to Central America with me.

Why give them away now? Well, I brought over 9,000 pounds with me from California to Oklahoma 6.5 years ago. I don’t want to take (all of) them back when I move this summer.

But there is an inner Jessica that really wishes she could take all of her books everywhere. She is still upset from giving away over 100 books when we moved from Spain to California in 2009. Is she authentic? Or is the Jessica that daydreams of tornadoes that take my house and all its contents to Oz the “true” me? Fighting to get out?

What about relationships?

This is a hard one, because we can and must change ourselves to some degree if we want good relationships. (No? I suppose that’s the definition of a narcissist.) Sometimes it feels like the necessary changes are not reflections of the true self. Think about when you get home after a long stressful day at work. You pour your woes–real and imaginary–into the ears of your significant other. Who listens, patiently at first, and then probably less so, as two minutes of complaining turns into ten and you refuse to be distracted from the real problem–your misery.

That’s pretty authentic. You authentically feel miserable, and you want your SO to know it. You wanted him or her to take some of the responsibility for your happiness in that moment, and to comfort you. Hiding your self-pity would be… fake? inauthentic?

Maybe. But expecting someone else to take responsibility for your happiness is just not fair. Only you are responsible for your happiness. Just because someone loves you and has signed up to be your special person doesn’t mean they should have to listen to you whine all evening.

More in a later post…

such as… Can one be authentic–or lack authenticity–in the absence of other people? (Yes. But the social aspect of authenticity needs due consideration.) When are you most authentically you? Tell me in my third blog on the topic!

See my second #authenticitychallenge post: Authenticity in Academia