Being authentic vs. Acting like the person you want to be

Are the goals of being authentic and acting like the person you want to be contradictory? Or are they the same?

I’ve been reading The Happiness Project: Or, Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun by Gretchen Rubin recently. I’ll have a lot more to say about it once I’ve finished and start it again for the second time. I thought it might annoy me, but SO much of what she writes resonates with me.

But I was confused by these two ideals. Being authentic has been one of my goals for this year. I’m not sure I’ve mastered it; in fact, I’m sure I haven’t. But I’m doing much better than I was. On the other hand, can I be better than who I am? Is it being authentic to act like the person I want to be?

While at first I believed these to be contradictory, I have decided that striving to be a better me is certainly being authentic. It isn’t easy, and I will fail at it even more than I fail at being authentic, but, as I’ve seen, incremental steps do eventually add up.

I don’t promise to stop being so cranky, at least not immediately. But I’ll work on acting like the person I want to be, and that’s not a cranky one!