Lolly Daskal

Elizabeth King: The Problem With Authenticity

Part 4 of 4

Why does pursuing authenticity ultimately matter?

….the authentic process may call for a little privacy, and sometimes privacy calls for discretion, which, you may have noticed, we tend to confuse with being inauthentic.

Instead of rallying for others’ authenticity, perhaps we should be supporting and encouraging each other in our quest to be better people. Perhaps it makes more sense to be kind to each other and to promote virtue. Perhaps an ethical, merciful culture and a willingness to begin with and quietly work on ourselves is the best path to authenticity and happiness.

Ultimately, the desire for an authentic experience is the desire for an experience grounded in truth and reality; and, if you want grounding in truth and reality, your daily life will become an evolutionary process of rooting out falsehoods, both the lies you’ve been told (about who you are, the way you do things, the type of person you are) and the lies we’re all telling each other thinking we make things easier.

Being brave enough to seek out authenticity—the truth—functionally calls us to battle for abundance in our lives. We learn to fight for what is good and right, we find joy in learning the freedom of giving without expecting in return, we bear others’ burdens as though they are our own—when we’re living authentically we’re finally freed to love deeply. Rooting out authenticity lets us know each other and ourselves and live fruitfully: after all, the truth shall set us free.

By Elizabeth King
Elizabeth will be exploring the issue in depth in a four part series.

Follow Elizabeth King on twitter. elizabethonline

A graduate of Mount Holyoke College, Elizabeth holds an interdisciplinary major that incorporates Economics, Mathematics, Art History, and Studio Art. Elizabeth began preparing students for the SAT with in Boca Raton, Florida. Since then she has taught students in conjunction with some of the country’s most prestigious education firms, including Judi Robinovitz Associates/Score at the Top, Arete Education, IvyWise, and EBL Coaching.

Elizabeth is the author of Outsmarting the SAT, a collection of the strategies and teaching tactics she uses every day to help students maximize their scores on the SAT. Known for her enthusiastic and direct teaching style, Elizabeth has successfully led students to score gains of well over 100 points on every section of the SAT and has helped others progress from the 50th to 95th percentile on the ACT. Additionally, she has prepared sample Writing section questions for a major test prep company’s international materials, written and taught a customized 9th grade home school curriculum, and has served as a proctor/facilitator for several online high school students.

Elizabeth is also a candidate in the UCLA Extension’s Certificate in College Counseling program and has helped students develop essays and applications that have been accepted at the nation’s most prestigious schools. Elizabeth has appeared in several regional theater productions and has been a member of several Manhattan vocal studios for years. She was also a proud recipient of a Mount Holyoke College Class of 1905 Alumnae Fellowship and a Mount Holyoke College Bardwell Fellowship.

Elizabeth King: The Problem With Authenticity

Part 3 of 4

Finding that what is authentic needs to be changed.

What motivates me is sometimes ugly, selfish, and destructive.

So that’s an awkward moment.

Everyone wants me to be so authentic, and yet… my authentic self or authentic feelings may not be something you’re dying to see today. I may not be itching to see your authentic self, either. It could get very messy. I may hurt your feelings or you may hurt mine. Worse, it might be damaging, debilitating, or drive us apart.

The truth is that the pursuit of the authentic self calls for a continual process of change, an ongoing dying of self or ego, and a chronically refreshed attitude of patience—with others and ourselves. It desires delicacy. If we desire to be authentic, truthful, and open, we have to honestly align ourselves with those ideals we want to be true of ourselves and refresh that alignment on a daily basis.

We have to let go of thoughts we might be using to protect ourselves from vulnerability.

We have to enjoy others’ success as though it were our own.

We have to forgive.

We’ll have to target specific ways of doing, being, thinking, considering, operating that get in the way of being honest—sometimes they’ll need to be entirely wiped out. Trashed. Replaced.

It’s really hard and it’s not a one shot deal.

Outing that process—being completely authentic today—is entirely up to you. Frankly, the authentic process may call for a little privacy, and sometimes privacy calls for discretion, which, you may have noticed, we tend to confuse with being inauthentic.

Thankfully, we do not owe the world this sort of transparency; it’s simply not part of the social contract. Indeed, it may be a little much to have your authentic-self-status posted on your Facebook profile in the hopes of a “thumbs up” from someone you once met at a networking event.

By Elizabeth King
Elizabeth will be exploring the issue in depth in a four part series.

Follow Elizabeth King on twitter. elizabethonline

A graduate of Mount Holyoke College, Elizabeth holds an interdisciplinary major that incorporates Economics, Mathematics, Art History, and Studio Art. Elizabeth began preparing students for the SAT with in Boca Raton, Florida. Since then she has taught students in conjunction with some of the country’s most prestigious education firms, including Judi Robinovitz Associates/Score at the Top, Arete Education, IvyWise, and EBL Coaching.

Elizabeth is the author of Outsmarting the SAT, a collection of the strategies and teaching tactics she uses every day to help students maximize their scores on the SAT. Known for her enthusiastic and direct teaching style, Elizabeth has successfully led students to score gains of well over 100 points on every section of the SAT and has helped others progress from the 50th to 95th percentile on the ACT. Additionally, she has prepared sample Writing section questions for a major test prep company’s international materials, written and taught a customized 9th grade home school curriculum, and has served as a proctor/facilitator for several online high school students.

Elizabeth is also a candidate in the UCLA Extension’s Certificate in College Counseling program and has helped students develop essays and applications that have been accepted at the nation’s most prestigious schools. Elizabeth has appeared in several regional theater productions and has been a member of several Manhattan vocal studios for years. She was also a proud recipient of a Mount Holyoke College Class of 1905 Alumnae Fellowship and a Mount Holyoke College Bardwell Fellowship.

Elizabeth King: The Problem With Authenticity

…we often punctuate conversation with desperate cries demanding, both for ourselves and of our audience, authenticity…. So? So the problem with authenticity is that it asks that we actually be exactly what we claim to be.

Part 2 of 4

Figuring out what we’ve actually got to work with.

It would seem that the very task of sorting out what is and is not authentic about my current life could be wildly daunting. Taking stock at any point is a challenge, but one of the beauties of taking stock is finding those moments where we discover that what we long to be, we are. Write those moments down! There are so many facets of modern life that can demand exploration.

Is my work a reflection of my ability/skill/passion? Am I stuck in false alliances at work that weigh me down?

Do I feed myself and my family natural foods or are we swamped in processed products? (This one is especially difficult because of the incredible cost of organics in a convenience-based culture.)

Are my relationships with my friends honest?

Am I overly concerned with appearances or creating a picture perfect life? Have I financed a weeklong vacation to Mexico so I can vacation, or so I can appear to vacation (or to afford a vacation)?

Does my marriage appear to be happy, or is it happy?

Are the time and resources I share with my community in keeping with my political/social philosophy?

The iterations are endless.

And then there are the most difficult questions: Am I being kind to appear to be kind, to be opportunistic, or because I am kind? Did I honestly give something today not expecting reciprocity? Did I do so because I wanted to? Did I say I wanted to?

Do I know what I want?
Do I know what motivates me?

Is what motivates me ugly, selfish, and destructive? The most difficult element in the search for authenticity is that, if I’m being completely authentic, sometimes the answer is a definitive yes.

By Elizabeth King
Elizabeth will be exploring the issue in depth in a four part series.

Follow Elizabeth King on twitter.

A graduate of Mount Holyoke College, Elizabeth holds an interdisciplinary major that incorporates Economics, Mathematics, Art History, and Studio Art. Elizabeth began preparing students for the SAT with in Boca Raton, Florida. Since then she has taught students in conjunction with some of the country’s most prestigious education firms, including Judi Robinovitz Associates/Score at the Top, Arete Education, IvyWise, and EBL Coaching.

Elizabeth is the author of Outsmarting the SAT, a collection of the strategies and teaching tactics she uses every day to help students maximize their scores on the SAT. Known for her enthusiastic and direct teaching style, Elizabeth has successfully led students to score gains of well over 100 points on every section of the SAT and has helped others progress from the 50th to 95th percentile on the ACT. Additionally, she has prepared sample Writing section questions for a major test prep company’s international materials, written and taught a customized 9th grade home school curriculum, and has served as a proctor/facilitator for several online high school students.

Elizabeth is also a candidate in the UCLA Extension’s Certificate in College Counseling program and has helped students develop essays and applications that have been accepted at the nation’s most prestigious schools. Elizabeth has appeared in several regional theater productions and has been a member of several Manhattan vocal studios for years. She was also a proud recipient of a Mount Holyoke College Class of 1905 Alumnae Fellowship and a Mount Holyoke College Bardwell Fellowship.

Elizabeth King: The Problem With Authenticity

PART 1 of 4

The issue:

We find ourselves in an age of personal branding and marketing, of relentless social media and networking, of the end of privacy and the promulgation of a self-crafted identity. An accepted social construct has emerged that allows for endless calls to forget your fears, to embrace your dreams, to listen to your inner voice. And yet in the midst of this media circus we often punctuate the conversation with desperate cries demanding, both for ourselves and of our audience, authenticity.

Merriam Webster defines authentic (albeit in its fifth definition) as “true to one’s own personality, spirit, or character.” I suppose this spirit or character is that which we refer to when we talk about “finding ourselves.” In fact, the very phrase I’m trying to find myself has become ubiquitous in popular culture.

The problem is, though, if you’ve been living in the United States in the past sixty years (and I’m choosing that number arbitrarily for the sake of argument), you’ve been living in a largely inauthentic reality. We live on inauthentic mortgages and credit lines based on inauthentic incomes. We eat mass produced foods that are mere shadows of their original, artisinal selves (think bread-turned-Wonderbread, pasta-turned-Chef-Boyardee, yogurt-turned-GoGurt, Sunday Dinner-turned-Hungry-Man). Our governments operate covertly, allowing us glimpses of their functionality, creating a façade to hide from us international intelligence that one wonders, frankly, if it we’d have any business being exposed to the truth there, anyway.

Our families are more broken than ever and those families live in homes that hope to replicate the great Georgian plantations and the Cape Cod lifestyles of 150 years ago—please excuse the Tyvek and Pergo. We “stage” our homes. We lock our doors.

And then there are ourselves. We botox, dye, and tuck every square inch of ourselves. We binge and purge. We mull over our personal brands. If we stray from the “brand message”, we perceive that we compromise our income-building opportunities. We filter.

And yet we grandstand about authenticity. So? So the problem with authenticity is that it asks that we actually be exactly what we claim to be.

By Elizabeth King
Elizabeth will be exploring the issue in depth in a four part series.

Follow Elizabeth King on twitter. elizabethonline

A graduate of Mount Holyoke College, Elizabeth holds an interdisciplinary major that incorporates Economics, Mathematics, Art History, and Studio Art. Elizabeth began preparing students for the SAT with in Boca Raton, Florida. Since then she has taught students in conjunction with some of the country’s most prestigious education firms, including Judi Robinovitz Associates/Score at the Top, Arete Education, IvyWise, and EBL Coaching.

Elizabeth is the author of Outsmarting the SAT, a collection of the strategies and teaching tactics she uses every day to help students maximize their scores on the SAT. Known for her enthusiastic and direct teaching style, Elizabeth has successfully led students to score gains of well over 100 points on every section of the SAT and has helped others progress from the 50th to 95th percentile on the ACT. Additionally, she has prepared sample Writing section questions for a major test prep company’s international materials, written and taught a customized 9th grade home school curriculum, and has served as a proctor/facilitator for several online high school students.

Elizabeth is also a candidate in the UCLA Extension’s Certificate in College Counseling program and has helped students develop essays and applications that have been accepted at the nation’s most prestigious schools. Elizabeth has appeared in several regional theater productions and has been a member of several Manhattan vocal studios for years. She was also a proud recipient of a Mount Holyoke College Class of 1905 Alumnae Fellowship and a Mount Holyoke College Bardwell Fellowship.