What does it mean to be a genuine person?
This is the conversation I started last week in my musings. None of us want to be around phony people who present a false front to the world or who don’t live with integrity. It is all relative of course because how you perceive someone and how I do will vary. We filter how we are perceiving someone and what they are saying based on our past experiences, our value and belief systems, and possiby on how we are feeling that day.
So it is perfectly possible for you and I to form very different opinions about how genuine or otherwise someone is being.
And that isn’t even the rub – because of course what this is about is our own behaviour and character growth. We cannot control how authentic or otherwise someone else’s behaviour choices are. We can of course decide not to let anything negative or false coming from them stick – what they say and how they choose to behave is their responsibility.
What does it mean for us to behave in a genuine way – as that is the only thing we do have control over?
We live in a world of fake news, glossy Instagram posts of the perfect life, new trends and fads and quick-fixes. Worse, this onslaught can fuel a sense of disatisfaction with what we do have. I have written often here about the importance of seeing – and celebrating – who we ARE and what we CAN do rather than getting stuck in who we are not and what we can’t.
It is too easy to get sucked up into the temptations of
look at me and do these three things and instantly you will solve [….] problem”
– fill in the blanks with whatever is most enticing to you. This kind of quick fix is anything but genuine and rarely produces the desired results. It suggests fake, hollow, superficial. Therein is not the path to real growth.
It is also the case that the shiny-happy-glossy online people might be, well, just a little attention seeking? Of course that is an incredibly sweeping statement, deliberately so. I simply like to make people think, and rather than possibly point the finger, to turn that internally and ask:
To what extent do I seek and need the attention and affirmation of others?
I came across a wee list of behaviours of genuine people. This is all subjective of course, and the list could probably be much longer. It simply serves as a springboard to these musings. This is the first noted behaviour:
Genuine people don’t seek attention.
If you know who you are, and you are confident in that person, then you do not need the constant reinforcement of your identity from the attention and affirmation of others.
Genuine people don’t need their egos massaged.
This ties in to all sorts of different aspects of who we are.
Self confidence is not about being cocky or arrogant. It is about understanding who we are and what we have to offer – our strengths, skills, experiences, characteristics. It is also about being self aware and taking time to regularly reflect on how we are and how we are growing so that the choices we make reflect accurately what is most important to us.
So this week, take a wee minute every so often to reflect on where your own sense of identity comes from. Where you are tempted to seek attention to fill an internal hole, stop instead and choose to see who you are and what you can do. This is a good step towards genuine living.