Being Authentic. An Observation.

I'll preface this by saying  say that a lot of my opinions do not jive with a popular or mainstream perspective.  However, I've always been a reflective person who has put a lot of emphasis and effort into understanding and assessing myself, analyzing my flaws and developing practices so to improve upon things that I think are weaknesses that need to be addressed.

One of the things I have been focused on developing over a number of years is expressing my thoughts and opinions despite the reaction or popularity of those thoughts and opinions. 

It's interesting how many times a day I see on social media posts about living your authentic self, expressing your truth and accepting everyone for who they.  It would seem to me that everyone is on board with at least some of the same practices that I also try to implement in my life.

It would seem that I am incorrect in this assumption.  What I've noticed though is an interesting circumstance of being authentic.  If you're being authentic, yet your authenticity doesn't jive with everyone else's, your world goes very quiet.

What do I mean by this?

Of the number of people on social media I am "friends" with, I can count on two hands the number of people who interact with me on a regular basis.  I can count ever fewer people that agree with my perspectives.  It's interesting to me because I see numerous people post about surrounding themselves with people that elevate them, make them think about things differently or challenge their status quo of human existence.  In reality, while these are nice sentiments that most people like, they have no desire to actually institute these beliefs in their lives.

Now Brad, what if your opinions are boring? or unfunny? or annoying? or you just suck at life and no one wants to be around you?

You're right, I do acknowledge that there could be a multitude of reasons why the interactions I have with people has steadily decreased since I began expressing how I think.  I also get that correlation doesn't equal causation.  However, I don't think that the two things are mutually exclusive.

What I've concluded is that, while people like to believe nice sentiments and feel good lessons, they in fact still exhibit the same group mentality where they only listen and interact with things they agree with.

The question to ask; Is this you living your authentic self?  or is this just another form of following the crowd?

It would seem to me that we have drifted away from authenticity and traded it in for another form of ease and comfort, instead of uniqueness and potential struggle. 

Look, I'm not asking for people to interact with me more.  If you truly think I'm terrible, that's alright as well.  I'm good with where I'm at.  However, you may need to ask yourself if you are actually demonstrating your authentic self, or are you continuing to censor yourself for likes and comments.

The alternative is that it could just be me.

At least consider the question.  You owe yourself that much.