What does it mean to be authentic?

I am a girl who has tried hard for pretty much for my entire life to make others happy. This is silly because of course I cant MAKE anyone else anything. But oh I tried. And much of the time this meant not being my authentic self. It meant giving up some part of myself that was important to me. It sometimes even meant lying about what I thought or wanted.
Why did I do this? I have no idea.

But I am now working every day to stop it.

And sometimes as I try to compensate for this tendency that I have, I overcompensate and get a little unreasonable or even mean. I feel defensive much more often then I want to.

BUT I am getting better.

Slowly but surely. One step and one day at a time.

And that upward trend brings hope and calm.

Because being my authentic self is worth working for! :)

And I have realized that being authentic also means admitting that there are parts of who you are that you may not like. I believe that humans are capable of real change, but while you are changing you have to be honest with yourself about who you are and what and why you want to change anyway.

There are parts of myself that I love and parts that I really don’t love.
There are parts that don’t make much sense.
There are silly parts and serious parts.
Good parts and not so good parts.

But being authentic means acknowledging ALL the parts.

So that is the plan.
That and to have a nice, quite, productive, relaxing, weekend of catching up.