It’s easy to say–just be yourself–but it can be extremely hard to do. As human beings, we want to be and feel loved. In order to accomplish this, we sometimes tweak ourselves so that we are “more likable” to different types of people.

Some people feel the need to try and please everyone or go out of their way to be nice. Keeping up with this persona becomes exhausting after a while. Pretending to be someone else can only get you so far.

Your personality isn’t worth losing at the expense of pleasing others. It’s important to be your authentic self; Psychology Today says that it’s at the center of mental health. Authenticity is essential to a person’s psychological well-being, self-esteem, and vitality. Some experts believe that acting in accordance with one’s true self is one of three basic psychological needs, along with competence and a sense of relatedness.

Most of us experience inauthenticity as dissatisfaction, a sense of emptiness, or a feeling of self-betrayal. If you’ve ever laughed off an insensitive comment, agreed with your significant other just to smooth things over, or said yes when you really wanted to say no, you know the feeling.

How can we be our true self? Victoria Ayres from Tiny Buddha puts it nicely: “Our true self is who we really are when we let go of all of the stories, labels, and judgments that we have placed upon ourselves. It is who we naturally are without the masks and pretentiousness.”

Julie Gerstein from BuzzFeed reminds us that it’s not your job to make everyone like you. It’s impossible and exhausting. In life, your work is to take care of yourself and to find people who will let you do that and support you in it. Your work in life is to support those friends, too.

This doesn’t mean that you have to pretend to like or agree with everything your friends do. Nor does it mean you have to be so brutally honest that you are hurting feelings right and left. It means showing kindness—treating people like you want to be treated—without betraying yourself or your principles. You don’t have to be fake-nice. Being true to your authentic self requires you to find that balance between honesty and compassion with yourself and others. It can be work to find that balance, but it is well worth it.

If you’d like to set up a time to meet up with Reka, you can contact her by phone at 402-881-8125, by email at reka@omaha-counseling.com, or via Twitter or Facebook.

photo credit: And Be Yourself via photopin (license)