I watched a YouTube clip where someone complained about giving the pained laugh when they didn’t really like someone’s joke—you know the one— the half-hearted he-he-he. Who was speaking? Oprah! I thought, Oprah’s made trade-offs, too?!
The reality is that everyone makes trade-offs to get along with others—that’s just part of life. The trouble starts when you feel like you have to hide parts of yourself to be accepted. Over time, you may even lose your essence in that relationship. Shame then creeps up in two ways: You put yourself down for trading your authenticity away, then get upset because you don’t know how to turn the situation around!
Let me tell you how Trevor Noah faced and fixed the inauthenticity trap.
You might look at Trevor Noah—host of The Daily Show, internationally-known comedian, and Emmy and Grammy winner—and think he’s got it made. But in a conversation with Howard Stern, they joked how social pressures have made dating feel like a sales pitch. Replacing your authentic self with your aspirational self seems reasonable, and it may even work in the first blush of romance. However, disappointment happens when reality sets in.
Noah observed, “You didn’t change—you just became who you really are…When we meet people, we should tell them who we are. Be honest [because] you should have the person love you or hate you for who you are, not who you portray yourself to be.”
Trevor Noah has learned the hard way that trying to pretend to be someone he’s not is like building a house on a shaky foundation. Creating a fake persona, where he minimizes how much he loves his work and dedicates time to his craft, isn’t sustainable. Sooner or later, a relationship built around that fake persona will crumble.
In the October series, Shake Off Shame, we’re talking about four common types of shame and how to transform them using soft skills. Being authentic sounds easy and natural, but it can be hard to do in real life, especially when you want to impress someone! But when your fake persona backfires, it’s easy to fall into thoughts like, People just don’t like me or Why did I say (or didn’t say) that? However, you can shake off that shame by turning to the soft skill of healthy self-esteem.
Healthy self-esteem means you love and accept yourself, including times you don’t have the perfect words, or someone doesn’t seem to like you. Think of a teenager you’ve known who is just finding their social footing. Do you stop loving them when they accidentally say the wrong thing or go along with a painful joke? Of course not. Instead, you replay the conversation with them later and think about alternatives for the future. You deserve the same consideration.
Reclaim your authenticity one conversation at a time. Start by jotting down a few practical answers about what works for you to the sentence, “I stay authentic by _____,” so you’ll know what to do in tricky situations. For instance, you could say, “I stay authentic by…”:
Here’s your hack: When you think becoming someone else is the only option, you’re building a shaky foundation. Don’t give yourself away—anchor yourself in authenticity.