As a woman you are born with a blank page. One of the greatest gifts we have, is the fact that each one of us has the capacity to take that blank page and decide what to write on it. You have the ability to choose what kind of person you want to be: your values, your aspirations and the principles you decide to uphold. Your page is blank, which means you have the ability to choose to do anything and head in any direction you want. What a privilege!
Having the freedom of choice isn’t as easy as it should be. As women, we are afraid of what family, friends, or people think of us and we worry constantly about getting it wrong. We seek guidance from others, assuming that they know better than us.
The desire to fit in, to conform, to be ‘normal’ is difficult to resist. But what does this mean for our authentic selves? The only person who can be the author of you is you. It’s a daunting task, and one that we must all face alone.
This Women’s Month, we ponder on the question of Authenticity, and it is important to celebrate the uniqueness of our Authentic selves. We are strong and vulnerable at the same time, loving and protective, nurturing and harsh, happy and disappointed, and the list goes on. What makes us unique is our ability to multi-task, to have multiple conflicting roles and carry them all with grace and elegance. As women we can come from different backgrounds, different environments, and from different cultures, but at the heart of it all, we are refreshingly similar and different, refreshingly ourselves.
The Authentic Woman is a woman with as many vulnerabilities as the next person, but who is definitely in a class of her own. Today, more than ever, women want to be their most authentic selves. Whether it’s embracing our natural bodies, our natural hair, our wigs or braids, refuting the need to be “likable,” or considering the possibility that maybe no one truly has it all — women are tired of being manipulated to fit a mould that is shaped by the world for them, and not by them.
Authenticity is as elusive as it is powerful, but so many people are still baffled by the notion of how to be authentic.
If we define authenticity as simply being your true self, then we really shouldn’t have to look for it in the first place. If we’re looking for it, then we’ve already lost it. And that is what we can call the paradox of authenticity.
Shakespeare defined authenticity best when he said, “To thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man”.
If you’re trying to be authentic, you’re not being authentic.
If you want to truly be authentic, don’t focus on revealing who you are, instead focus on creating and truly becoming yourself. It’s your “self” that others will be inspired by, connect with and ultimately trust. It’s your “self” that they will follow.
This women’s month, we celebrate YOU!
Author & Contributor: Agnes Hove (Influencer & Visionary Entrepreneur) – (LinkedIn Bio – https://www.linkedin.com/in/agnes-chikukwa-hove-03660315/)