What do we mean by Success – Blog 20: Your Authenticity?

Being authentic, or in other words being yourself, is such an important part of how we live our lives. It influences who we are, how we work, why we do the things that we do, what we need to improve on and more. So, if being authentic plays a part in all of these different areas of our life, does it impact on how successful we are, both in life and as a person?

This is what we’ll be looking at in today’s “What do we mean by Success?” blog!

Hello and Welcome to Sweeney’s Blogs!

Today’s blog is the 20th blog in my “What do we mean by Success?” series, which is going to be tailored around your authenticity and whether that plays a part in how successful you are in life. In the blog w are going to look a little bit into what we mean by the term “authenticity”, as well as the role that it can play in your life and whether or not we can use it as a determiner factor of one’s success.

What is “authenticity”?

If you break it down to it’s core definition, authenticity is a measure of how authentic a person is. What this means is that it is how true and real a person is to themselves. I like to talk about authenticity and being yourself a lot in life, as to me it is a very important topic to bring up and I have also covered it in one of my LinkedIn posts, which can be found here. In my opinion, if we aren’t true to ourselves, then can we ever argue and say that we are happy, or even successful?

People are all different, that is common knowledge after all. We all have our own things that we like, things we dislike, skills that we have, areas for improvement, you name it. We hear the phrase “2 people are never the same” a lot when we are growing up and it is something that is true to this day. Why do I mention all of this? As it is exactly where the importance of being yourself, aka being authentic, comes into play.

There is only one you, so the question rises here now, are you going to spend your life living it the way you want to, or are you going to attempt to be a carbon copy of somebody else, to mask the qualities and traits that make you, well, you! The way that I look at life is that I am James Sweeney, yes granted there are lots of other people with maybe the same name as me, some may even have the same interests, but there is not another person who is the James Sweeney that I choose to be.

It’s that simple really, being authentic is being yourself. Whether you choose to embrace who you are, or simply shy away and hide from it, the choice comes down to you. I always offer to help people and give advice where I can, but if you do not want to be who you are as a person, then the only person that can change that is yourself.

We, as people, continually change, develop and grow, it’s how we live. When you go through life, you learn more things, you try more things, some things may be a massive success, others not so much, but as long as you have learned something along the way, then you have grown as a result.

What impact does being authentic have on your life?

When we are true to ourselves, there’s a lot of different things that spring off of it, some of which include:

Decision Making becomes a lot easier – when you are authentic to yourself, you do things that you want to do. You have a clear vision of where you want to see yourself go as a person, and then you can start to plan the route that you can take to get there. Decision Making becomes that much easier, as you don’t have to spend so much time thinking and debating with yourself, you do what you feel is right.
You will attract people who want to know you – one of the perks of being authentic is that you start to attract similar like-minded people, who want to get to know you, quite simply for you. You are not putting a fake mask on or simply blending in to the crowd, you are embracing what makes you individual.
You will learn new things so much faster – when you are being yourself, you soon start to notice how you operate your day to day life. You learn about what motivates you, how you learn new things, which areas you may need to do a bit more work on and more. You identify them at a much faster rate than if you were to be dishonest to yourself and this allows you to grow and develop new skills and knowledge at a much faster rate.
You will live life with no regrets – one of the last things that we want to say when we are older is, “oh I wish I did that”, or “I wish I gave that a try”. If you live life being true to yourself, then you shouldn’t have to worry about those thoughts seeping out as you would have lived your life the exact way that you wanted to, it’s that simple!
The list goes on!

You can see from the list above just how big a topic this can really be, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. As authenticity changes from person to person, it takes a different meaning for each instance too. Each different meaning, or definition, carries with it its own impact.

Let’s take a look at the example of myself. When I am being myself, I like to help and support others. One way that I do this is by writing blogs to share my stories and views on different topics and subjects. You, the reader will then read the blog and come away with your own view on the matter, while I will still have my view too. The views maybe similar, or even identical, on one subject matter and then be polar opposites on the other, it is one of the best things about debating.

So, we’ve taken a look at the impact that being yourself can have on your life, but what about its relationship with success?

The Relationship between Authenticity & Success

To answer this question, we need to figure out where our current thought process is. What does success mean? What does authenticity mean? Is there a correlation between the two? Now, depending on your answers to the above questions, your thoughts about this section may be in a completely different ball game to mine, and that is okay.

When I look at authenticity, I immediately rank it as one of the most important variables when we measure Personal Success, as it close enough matches the description of Personal Success, but can we attribute it towards Success as a whole? This is where my point about each persons definition leading them to a different answer comes into play.

In my opinion, if you are not being yourself, or in other words being authentic, then how can you ever really be happy, yet alone successful? This may seem like a rather blunt statement at first glance, but that is not what it is meant to be, it is the way that I see the subject after thinking about it for quite some time. You see, it is all well and good putting up a mask and shielding the real you from the world, but the only success you can achieve off of doing that is success which is attributed to the mask an not yourself, right?

It’s a very interesting concept for me due to the fact that I would never even consider the term successful, if I was not true to myself. Maybe it is just the way that I see the matter, but I do not see a logical way that I could factor in things like education, job, personal growth or anything else, if the person was not being authentic to who they are. I would almost feel like I was looking at the success of the alter ego of the person which they have made, as opposed to their own success.

So, going back to the question at hand, I believe there is a very strong relationship between success and authenticity. I think that you cannot ever even think about the term success, until you are being true and real to who you want to be. I would say that authenticity is a very important factor to not just Personal Success, but also to the whole purpose and definition of success.

That’s all I want to talk about in today’s blog! Thank you all for reading, what do you think? What does authenticity mean to you? What does success mean to you? Do you think there is a relationship between the two terms? Would you like to see more blogs in the “What do we mean by Success?” series? Are there any other topics that you would like to see me write about? Let me know your answers and thoughts in the comments below!

Thank you all for reading and I hope you have a great day!