What does Authenticity mean?

I spent the morning at a local women’s networking event, organised by my friend Linda Vantaggiato who owns the broth sisters.

I have rarely attended these types of things in the past, because I’ve felt they don’t align with my work. In my view, they are often all about forced connection, fake referrals, and largely performance. But this one felt like it was going to be different. Smaller, more real, less forced. And it was. We talked to a couple of themes, one being visibility in business, and it kept coming back to this word authenticity. A word I’ve seen get overused, misused, and abused on social media for a while now.

So what does authenticity mean?

To me, authenticity is alignment. Being true to yourself, regardless of whether it is in your work, home, business, parenting. Being who you are because it’s who you are, not because you’re performing to be validated, liked, or rewarded. In order to build a social media presence, or an online business around authenticity, you must have inner alignment.

But inner alignment is difficult when we’ve abandoned our true self to be safe and loved. We don’t know what matters to us beyond conditioning. Then when we do land on what feels true, it may feel unsafe to our nervous system to start operating from there.

But unless we do so, we will never fully feel the true essence of authenticity, and all that it brings. It doesn’t make things perfect. It makes things real. We navigate life from a place of inner trust and safety.

If you want to improve your health, your life, or your business, knowing your true self is essential. Otherwise how will you truly know what authentic means to you?