Authenticity: What It Really Means and How to Live It

In this solo episode, I unpack one of the most misunderstood concepts in wellness space,  authenticity. It's not simply "being yourself" it's the alignment between your inner world (your values, emotions, and truth) and how you show up in the world. 

Drawing on the work of Dr. Gabor Maté, personal stories, and years of my own lived experience, this episode explores why we abandon authenticity, how our roles can swallow our identity, and what it actually looks and feels like to start living from the your deepest essence. 

Key Takeaways

• Authenticity is the alignment between your inner values and how you show up. It's not a personality trait, but a daily practice
• As children, we learn to choose connection over authenticity, and this shapes our adult patterns more than we realise
• The roles we play (parent, partner, professional) aren't who we are, they're things we do.
• Life responds to who you're being!
• Becoming more authentic doesn't mean losing people, it means finding the right ones

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Transcript

0:00

Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Tune In podcast, and it's my second solo podcast, and I've been really wanting to speak about this subject for quite a while: authenticity. Now, I know that it's being thrown around, Instagram, you know, the wellbeing space. You know, there's, there's lots of books on it. But what really is authenticity? And today I want to unpack this a little bit. Authenticity isn't just about being yourself, and I think this is a massive oversimplification of what it is. Psychologists define authenticity as the alignment between your inner world, which is essentially your values, your emotions, and your truth, and how you show up in the world. And when these two things match, that is authenticity, and when they don't, truly it can really start to make you feel pretty exhausted. So when we act out of alignment with our values, our body can really feel that as a threat. There's some cognitive dissonance going on here, okay? Your cortisol potentially rises, and your emotional resilience can drop, and your nervous system can go into a kind of protection mode, which is where the exhaustion can come from. Now, my personal journey with authenticity is, I'm really proud to say that I'm at a point in my life, in my business, well, throughout my life, where I am authentic. There's always somewhere, you know, there's always some part of you that, that still needs to be more authentic, right? Because being authentic can feel scary Dr. Gabor Maté always speaks about how we naturally, as humans, choose connection over authenticity. And this is something that we learn when we're children. Because we want to be loved, we want to be accepted, we want to be, you know, not told off, we want to keep our relationships. So we will behave in ways where we're not going to lose those connections or that family or those friendships. And we do a lot of this subconsciously as well, okay? But this really starts to feed into our later life and our belief systems and the way that we operate in the world. Now, my personal journey was always like I felt like I could be authentic within my groups, but then what happened was when I went on my first yoga teacher training, I thought that who I was, you know, bit of a wild- well, very much a wild child, wasn't going to fit into what I thought the yoga industry was. At that point, I thought it was all like, flowy outfits, and you had to be all spiritual, and you had to be holier than thou, and you shouldn't drink, and you shouldn't, you know, do all of these things, which is entirely not what yoga is about, by the way. But that's my preconception. So I moved through- A lot of resistance and a lot of pain. And, those of you who don't know, I really suffered from a really bad bout of alopecia, like the whole top of my head. It started off quite small, but I had a massive patch of alopecia right at the top of my head, like the, the crown, which I used to have to, well, one of my friends had to spray. I mean, gosh, sometimes think to myself, "How did I get through that?" I think I was just in that survival mode of, like, I can't really do anything about this. But I do recognize that that was a time where I didn't know how to show up in this new world that I was entering with my authenticity. I was denying who I really was. And now that this has become integrated, and I do this, I can honestly say I do this more and more every day. Actually, today I did a reel that was out of my comfort zone, which I actually ended up enjoying quite a lot. But it was more of my authentic self, less of the scripted, just showing up as me and not worrying about it being perfect. And the joy that it is bringing me is something that I can't even explain. So when we are not acting through our authentic selves, it does, it causes dis-ease in our bodies, which, you know, without being dramatic, can sometimes end in disease if we are constantly pushing down who we really are. Now, we have roles, right? We spend years and decades living through roles, whether this is the parent, the partner, the professional roles, as a sibling or as a friend. And every single one of these roles comes with its own expectations, and our ego loves this. It organizes our entire identity around how well we perform each role But the thing is, each of these roles aren't you, right? They're versions of you. And beneath or beyond, shall we say, these versions is your authentic self. It's the integration of all of these roles and beyond. So when we start to integrate all of this, it doesn't mean that you're abandoning any of your individual roles. It's just that you're stopping the confusion between them and your identity. You can hold all of these parts within your awareness. You can be a devoted parent. You can be a person with desires and boundaries. You can be a committed professional. You can be the person who knows how to say no. But the roles really are something you do. They're kind of like guidelines of how you behave within these roles, right? It doesn't mean that it's something that you are. And again, when I go back to Maté, I don't know if, if many people, you know, if you've heard of him, a lot of people have. But this attachment, right? Because a lot of these roles also bring the attachment to our parents, to our jobs, to our siblings. And if we are authentic sometimes in our decisions and what we want to share, we can be scared of losing that. And of course it's scary. We don't want to lose family members or friends or people that we love or, you know, our, our roles in our jobs or, careers. But it's something that's really ingrained in us. And once we really start to delve deeper into our values and what we really want in our lives, then we can start making really smart, small actions towards what feels aligned to us. And then, really isn't just easy to do overnight, and this is something that I'm going to just touch on today as well. So think about all the ways that you show up in the world, right? All of your different roles, all the responsibility Just take a moment just to think about all of those And I'd like you to really think about how in each of these roles you might be hiding something you want to say, some way that you want to express yourself parts of you that you push down because you feel that it might not be accepted in this particular role Could be some people-pleasing identity And from this, I want to share that, you know, life responds to who you're being. Okay? If you're operating from this people-pleasing identity, life will keep giving you situations where you're expected to please. If you're operating from self-sacrifice, life will keep asking you to sacrifice. If you're operating from a place where you take lots on, life will give you more of that. So life will always respond to who you're being. And do you ever find that sometimes you may feel uninspired or you might feel disconnected, resentful or numb, or just a feeling that something's like fizzled out, this excitement for life? This is where I want you to get really curious Because authenticity is starting to discern, be discerning about what you really want, not what you're conditioned to want or what- not what your roles expect you to want. And it's scary. It really is scary. I mean, I can give you examples. I used to think that if I was authentic, I have a family event, and I've become pretty strict on these. And even, like, going out at night, I don't like-- Considering I worked in nightclubs, I don't like being out at night. I'm a morning person. And when I started saying this in the beginning, you know, people would be like, "Oh, you're being boring," or, family members, if I said I don't want to go for dinner in the evening, they would take offense. And I used to think, gosh, they're going to think I'm just mean or, like, just really not flexible. But I know where my limits are, okay? I was discerning with that, and people end up accepting it, right? Now I just don't get invited out in the evenings. But it was scary to do that at first. It threatened your entire existence. Everything that we have, the, you know, the pillars and the roles that we hold and really build into our entire lives. When we start to be discerning, some of these pillars start to crumble a little bit, and that's not a bad thing, right? But I can guarantee that your energy will start to return once you start getting really clear on what your values are. You will start to have so much clarity when your boundaries strengthen. You'll, you'll be able to become clearer on your purpose. And part of stepping into your authenticity is that willingness to possibly lose people. And I'm not saying you're going to lose people, because the people who are supposed to be there for you, who are supposed to be in your life, will be there, no matter how much you tap into who you really are. The people who are truly aligned with you. You might have, say, for example, if you are a creator, if you are on something like Instagram or LinkedIn or anything like that, you might offend people by being yourself. But if you do, they're not your people, right? And more-- the people who you're speaking to, more of those are going to come, and I can't tell you how amazing that feels when you're like, "Do you know what? I am being myself, and yes, people may not like it, but there's more people who like it who are coming to my world." And isn't that a great place to live from at, on a daily basis? So how do you start to become more authentic? And I'm going to give you some tips, and I do genuinely do these myself. I've been practicing it over years, and I'm doing them every single day. So tip number one: Where are you performing rather than feeling? Now, I'm going to give you an example of myself today when I was doing this reel. And I've stopped doing the whole script and really trying to be really energetic in front of the camera, okay? And I was, I was really proud of myself 'cause I always thought, "Do you know what? I'm actually being my authentic self here. I'm being like I was, I'm just speaking to a friend." Okay? But when I was looking back on it, there was still that performative part of me. There's still this deep-rooted part that wants to be energetic, wants to be liked, and it's-- can be really difficult to kind of move away from that because it's so deeply ingrained, right? But this is the gap between how you're showing up and how you actually feel. Just start to get really curious about that. Whenever you're really feeling something, really feeling into your authenticity, is that feeling edgy for you? Do you then flip into a different version of you, a more palatable version of you, that performing version of you? Or are you operating from how you're feeling? So get really, really curious about that and start to notice that in the everyday. Tip number two: small acts of honesty. Right. Every single day we are going to have moments where we want to say something and we don't. It could even be to yourself, okay? And it could be the smallest little thing, and you just hold yourself back because you might offend someone or-- I mean, I'm not saying go out and go offend people. But somebody might not like what you say or you're scared that you might-- a friend might not like you as much or you wanna tell a parent something you think you're gonna get told off. I don't know. Something like that. Just think about all the moments that you do that, that you might rock the boat, so you don't say it. So just practice. Practice not swallowing that down and pushing it down and say it. Even-- No matter how small it is, say it every single day. Just edge into feeling confident and authentic enough in yourself to lead yourself in this way, and it's gonna be like a muscle that you exercise, okay? Just tiny deposits that build into your daily authentic life Tip number three, a values audit. I'm gonna invite you here to get really clear on three core values, and it's just three, the ones that feel the most important to you. You know, it could be connection, freedom, integrity, uh, creativity. And then ask yourself every single day, "Did I honor these today?" Because this is where your actions start to align with your values. So practicing authenticity in real time And if then, if your actions aren't coming from that place of your values, then just start to get curious about that gap. Why aren't you doing that? Ask yourself the question There's actually been research that shows that people who are more authentic do have stronger boundaries, have clearer values, and are actually healthier. And I totally understand that. I totally see it through my work. I see it with my clients. I see it in myself. I was feeling pretty PMS-y this morning, and then I started doing this work. Even today while I do this podcast, okay, it's pretty vulnerable. I'm freestyling. I have a couple of, you know, bullet points that I'm going to talk about, but this is me, and it feels so good to be able to do this, even though sometimes it's not 100% perfect, which I always say. But I know that this is a transmission of who I really am and what I really want to say. Authenticity really is a daily practice. There are parts of us that we have pushed down into the shadows. We wanna bring those back up because that's where our power is. That's where our self-leadership is And yeah, I absolutely love this work. I do speak about this at my-- I do a monthly Art of Self-Leadership workshop, and it's the work that I'm just so passionate about because I have been there. I have led myself through all of this, and being on the other side feels so empowering, and it isn't an easy path, but it's so worth it on the other side. So I invite you to really ask yourself these questions and start to tap into that authenticity, no matter how small, every single day. I really hope that this episode has shed some light on that, and please, please do, you know, come into my DMs. Please share. Please ask any questions if you have any. And yeah, thank you for listening.