Megan Fluke, pictured above, is one of my "Facebook Friends." She was a nonprofit Executive Director and worked in both the nonprofit and public sectors for over twenty years. I know her best as the past Executive Director of Green Foothills. Now, Megan provides nonprofits and public agencies with consulting, coaching, facilitation, and mediation. Here is one of Megan's recent Facebook postings, which I saw on June 17, 2026 (emphasis added):
For a long time, I thought being authentic meant being unfiltered.
Raw. Telling it like it is.
That definition left me constantly at war with myself.
If raw = real, then who was I when I was thoughtful? Polished? More curated? Was the professional version of me a performance? Was the tired, unguarded version the truth?
I didn't know who the "real me" actually was.
Then my coach said something that changed everything: "Author and authenticity come from the same root word. You. Get. To. Create. Who. You. Are."
Authenticity isn't about letting whatever happens, happen. It's about being the originator of yourself. Choosing your values. Tending your character. Deciding how you want to show up.
That's a very different thing than just being unfiltered.
I've stopped trying to figure out who the "real me" is — and started making choices about who I want to be....
What are you writing in the book of you today?
This is very good advice. It is, I think, actually the same advice that I have been providing in many of my daily blog postings since 2010. To know what's "real," what "is," we must understand that our basic role is not to "observe." Rather, our role is to "act."
That principle also applies when we consider ourselves, and wonder who we really "are." There may be a temptation to think that we might be able to discover who "we are" by self-observation, but Megan Fluke tells us otherwise. The "authentic" me (or you) is the me, or you, we choose to be. We are the "authors" of our own selves. The same thing is true when we want to know what "reality" actually is. We are the authors of the "Political World" which we share with everyone else, and in which we most immediately reside.
I am not saying that self-observation is not valuable or important. It is! But as to who we "are," we find out who we are by deciding what to do - by acting, not by looking in the mirror (either a "real" mirror, on our wall, or the "metaphorical mirror" that we so often consult as if we discovered ourselves by reflection). That's what Megan Fluke is talking about, and she is right on target!
Image Credit:
https://www.facebook.com/meg.fluke
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