Psychology Today Magazine, May/June, 2008 (http://www.psychologytoday.com)
Last Review: April 28, 2008
Article ID: 4576
Author: Karen Wright
Full article linke: http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/index.php?term=20080420-000001&page=1
A hunger for authenticity guides us in every age and aspect of life. It drives our explorations of work, relationships, play, and prayer. Teens and twentysomethings try out friends, fashions, hobbies, jobs, lovers, locations, and living arrangements to see what fits and what's "just not me." Midlifers deepen commitments to career, community, faith, and family that match their self-images, or feel trapped in existences that seem not their own. Elders regard life choices with regret or satisfaction based largely on whether they were "true" to themselves.
The Pain of Authenticity
Another reason we're not always true to ourselves is that authenticity is not for the faint of heart. There is, Kernis and Goldman acknowledge, a "potential downside of authenticity." Accurate self-knowledge can be painful. When taking a test, it isn't always fun to find out where you score on the grading curve. "Our self-images can be highly biased," Leary notes. "But in the long run, accuracy is almost always better than bias."
Behaving in accord with your true self may also bring on the disfavor of others: Must you admit to being a Democrat when meeting with your conservative clients? Does your wife really want to know whether you like her new dress? "Opening oneself up to an intimate makes one vulnerable to rejection or betrayal," Kernis and Goldman observe. It can feel better to be embraced as an impostor than dumped for the person you really are.
Authenticity also requires making conscious, informed choices based on accurate self-knowledge. Like the existentialists, today's psychologists emphasize the role of active choice in creating an authentic life: a willingness to evaluate nearly everything that you do. That's no mean feat in a culture where even simple acts—you can dye your hair any color you want, your television carries more than 500 channels, and Starbucks advertises more than 87,000 ways to enjoy a cup of coffee—require conscious consideration among alternatives.
Such freedom can be exhausting. Baumeister has found that deliberation, no matter how trivial, exacts a cost in psychic energy, of which we have only a finite amount. His studies show that authentic action demands a certain amount of psychological exertion that depletes the self's executive function. "It's harder to be authentic," he says. "It takes more work."
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Human is a complex creature. As mentioned in the article, sometimes we are afraid to find out the true self because the fact is not always pleasant. And we can't always be true to others and we fib to others sometimes in order not to hurt them. In addition to the book “Don’t Grow old, Grow Up" by Dale Carnegie, it also emphasize the importance of self-acceptance and it suggested that we should get some times alone to know yourself. I think it is important to know yourself but we do not need to spend too much time on this issue; after all, no one is able to understand yourself completely. The most important thing is just be yourself.
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