When you grow up needing to become a chameleon for survival and acceptance, you never really get a chance to learn who you are.
At home, I was a people-pleaser to keep life as calm as possible. At school and after-school activities, I masked my true self to avoid more bullying. There was no real space for me to express myself authentically. I couldn’t try new things to explore who I was as an individual. I wore likes, interests, and personalities that suited those around me, rather than myself.
Living authentically is existing as you truly are, rather than putting on a mask or a show of what others around you want you to be. Accepting who you truly are creates space for you to live authentically, and loving yourself is meeting your authenticity with kindness and care.
Here, we’ll explore authenticity, self-acceptance, self-love, and how they work together. We’ll create a safe space for you to discover your authentic self, choose acceptance, and embrace love of who you truly are, underneath all the masks.
What is Authenticity?
Living authentically is all about dropping society’s expectations of you, discovering your personal values, and living in alignment with those values. What is really important to you? What do you feel you should care about, but doesn’t create any spark in you?
It’s incredibly common to lose ourselves in people-pleasing. We fear rejection, or comparisons where we don’t quite measure up to someone we either care about or look up to. Meeting the standards of everyone around you is exhausting work, especially when some of those external values are contradictory, and don’t align with your true self.
Maybe you’re told by society, social media, or friends, that you are supposed to care about having the cleanest house. This leads to spending your spare time cleaning and urging your family to clean constantly, taking away family connection time. Perhaps spending more time with your family is something you yearn for, but that means letting some of the cleaning go. People who value daily vacuuming and a clean kitchen sink may judge your home, but it’s okay that you’d rather spend time with your family instead of agonizing over an image of a perfectly clean model home.
Perhaps you constantly hear that it’s important to look your best, and you need certain products to achieve that. Deep down, you’d rather just throw on some mascara and lip balm and call it a day. Spending an hour in the morning on a full face of makeup might bring someone else joy, but it’s okay if you’d rather spend your time and money elsewhere.
Authenticity is about dropping the expectations of others and not existing in the standards of living that those around you hold dear to them. It’s about exploring what you value and where you want to spend your own time, energy, and money.
Why Self-Acceptance Comes Before Self-Love
Once you’ve taken the time to discover your true self and what you value in life, the next step is embracing self-acceptance. Offer yourself radical honesty and compassion toward all parts of yourself. When you accept your flaws, quirks, and internal contradictions with neutrality, you create space to love yourself no matter what is going on in your life.
Accepting yourself doesn’t mean you stop growing, but simply accepting where you are right now. You can accept that you are good at some things and still work to improve on the things you aren’t. You can accept your body type and be grateful for everything your body does for you, while also wanting to get into better shape.
Self-acceptance is the important step before self-love. Without it, self-love becomes performative or conditional.
When I practiced self-love before self-acceptance, I was hard on myself about my body image. I worked on loving my body as I was, but when I started to gain weight and my body began to change, I felt disappointed. Negative thoughts and unreasonable comparisons crept right back in.
When I learned about body neutrality instead of body love, I practiced accepting my body as it was. I practiced gratitude that my stomach held all of my organs, instead of getting caught up on the size of it. I focused on how my legs took me where I needed to go, instead of their thickness. I stopped hyper-fixating on the number on the scale, and switched my attention to how my body allows me to hug my kids and provide them comfort and love.
When we learn how to be grateful for where we are, we can embrace love for ourselves that isn’t conditional.
How These Three Work Together
Authenticity is about being real. Self-acceptance is making peace with what’s real. Self-love is treating what’s real with kindness, care, and compassion.
These all support each other, regardless of the topic.
Take anxiety as an example. To embrace authenticity is to come to terms with your struggle with it. Now, you probably want to get rid of it, but it’s a part of your reality. Self-acceptance is understanding that you experience anxiety over things and that’s a part of your personal story, without being hard on yourself. Self-love is showing compassion to yourself for having a sensitive nervous system.
When you accept yourself as you are, you honor your authentic self, and create a stable environment for your love to flow internally, without conditions. It can just exist.
Self-acceptance was the biggest factor in my own journey with authenticity and self-love. Adding a daily gratitude practice made a world of difference. When I took the time to explore my values, likes, dislikes, and interests—gratitude helped me hold them with care while releasing what didn’t align with me.
Common Blocks and How to Move Through Them
Admittedly, it takes a lot of courage and strength to embrace this kind of personal honesty. There are a lot of fears to push through, and a lot of conditioning to detach from. It’s a lot of relearning, but it’s worth it. You can live the life you are meant to live, in the way that speaks to your heart and soul.
There are a number of blocks you’ll encounter during your journey toward authenticity.
Fear of Rejection or Abandonment
It’s normal to worry about people in your life not liking or accepting your authentic self as you shed things that don’t align with you. Take stock of those relationships and consider if the kind of people who would negatively judge your true self are worth keeping close. Are those healthy relationships, or do they require you to be someone you aren’t to keep them happy? Do they really love you or do they love a version you created for their comfort?
Internalized Shame or Perfectionism
Sometimes the reality of being authentic is a less-than-perfect image. We may feel messier than we think other people want to deal with, creating a sense of shame because we aren’t perfect. Alas, perfectionism is an unrealistic standard that you’ll waste your life chasing.
Cultural or Family Conditioning
Stepping outside of the safety of family and going against what they value can be a daunting task. Wanting to be your true self when you know your culture or family values go against what you desire to embrace can create a big stopping point on the path to authenticity.
Helpful Tools to Overcome These Barriers
- Journaling and self-reflection.
- Creating your own safe space.
- Setting firm boundaries.
- Practicing gratitude.
- Therapy, counseling, or life coaching.
Remember, the journey you are embarking on is a lifelong process of growth and understanding. It’s not just about reaching a destination. There is no time limit that needs to be met. This is not a journey of comparison. Everyone’s path will look and feel different.
It’s not about speed, but rather consistency and dedication. Small daily acts of showing up for yourself with honesty and grace are going to help keep you going. You deserve the love and care that you want to provide yourself. You are absolutely worth it.
“To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best night and day to make you everybody else means to fight the hardest battle any human being can fight—and never stop fighting.” — E.E. Cummings
Leave a comment or tag me on social media about your journey towards personal authenticity and self-love. I’d love to hear about what practices are working for you, and what you’ve tried that missed the mark for you.
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