The Benefits of Living as a More Authentic Person

Most of us grew up hearing some version of "just be yourself." People hand out that advice freely, right up until someone actually takes it and becomes a person we no longer care for. Part of what happens there, I think, is control. We like it when others match the quiet expectations we've set for them. When someone grows past those expectations and stops being afraid to show who they really are, they slip out of our grip.

Notice the word conform. To feel genuinely at ease with yourself, you usually have to be willing to ignore some of the rules society has drawn around you. That can be expensive. You may lose friends, especially the ones who liked you mostly because you stayed inside a predictable box. People who refuse to shrink themselves tend to be nonconformists, and a lot of them drift toward being loners. Being alone is simply easier than performing for a crowd of people who are busy performing for each other. Maybe nobody really decides to become an introvert. Maybe they just run out of patience for trying to fit in.

Becoming more authentic takes time spent alone with yourself, getting to know who you actually are at a close range. What you get back is a strange, large sense of freedom: the freedom to be the person you already are. You grow more open to the world and more patient with people whose beliefs and ways of living differ from your own. You might even drift toward a more liberal outlook, ideally a balanced one.

People who find the nerve to be themselves tend to carry themselves as freer people, and that shows up in the body. They get sick less, partly because they aren't living under the constant strain of pretending. They also sit closer to their own feelings, which is another way of saying their emotional intelligence runs higher.

There are odder benefits too. Authentic people often report a better sex life, in some cases well into their eighties, mostly because they're relaxed. Some have more children, since chronic tension can interfere with sperm production in men and with the reproductive cycle in women. Being free also means not being afraid to question anything, and an authentic person has the hours to do it, since they're often on their own anyway. Plenty of quiet time for self-examination.

Set that against people who don't feel free, who seem to lean on more medication just to stay level. There's a visible thread connecting freedom and authenticity to health, and its opposite connecting suppression to being sick much of the time.

Here's one that surprises people: the authentic tend to be more charismatic. Others like them, respect them. Whether those same others want to be around them is a separate question. Sometimes people keep their distance out of envy, and that reaction has little to do with the authentic person at all.

Anyone who commits sincerely to personal growth usually becomes more honest, first with themselves and then with everyone else. That honesty is exactly what draws people in. It's also what pushes some people away, and a single person can feel both pulls at once, attracted and repelled by the same openness.

People who haven't done this work often struggle and never quite figure out what they want. Underneath, they're frightened of themselves, maybe of the power they sense they're holding back. All those penned-up emotions can leave them relying on psychotropic drugs or treatments for physical complaints. The more authentic person, by contrast, knows what they're after and has stopped being afraid to chase it, mainly because settling for less has lost all its appeal.

That might explain why so few people take this road in the first place. Once you're on it, there's no clean exit. You can try to go back to where you started, but it will never feel the same. - Erwin Wooten