CoSMI - 1.0.1.07 - Authenticity - Know Yourself - friends
Proverbs 17:17
A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for a time of adversity.
But you don't have to rely entirely upon yourself. You don't have to sit in silence forever, waiting to figure yourself out. There are people who can help you.
Your family. Your friends.
Ask them. Now, I say "them," advisedly. Don't just ask one friend. Ask multiple friends. Ask your friends who you are. Ask your family who you are. Friends may be slightly more reliable than family. Family, in particular parents, pretty automatically have certain things that they want you to be. They may be aware of this, and they may fight against it, but they do have things that they would prefer that you be, rather than certain other things. Sometimes your family, and even your parents, can fight their way past their expectations, and give you an honest assessment. So ask them. Take their answers with a little bit of salt, but they are the people who know you best: who live with you for the most time.
So ask your family and friends. Ask acquaintances. Ask people who have only known you for a short time, and ask them what kind of a first impression you make. Since you intend to be an influencer on social media, there are going to be an awful lot of people who encounter you for the first time, and it's very valuable to know how you come across to people who don't know you very well.
Ask if you are a serious person. If you are a funny person. If you are a thoughtful person. If you are a reliable person. Ask all of these questions about yourself. About how other people see you. (I should note that this should not be the only topic of conversation: you should ask about the other person for a good amount of the time that you spent talking with them. It's only fair.)
If you have aspirations to be an influencer, you probably have some idea of what an influencer should be. And you probably hope that you have some of the characteristics of an influencer. So there are things that you hope that you are, that your friends may not identify in you. In fact, they may say that, no, this characteristic that you consider to be very important for an influencer is not present in your character at all.
Do not panic. And, in terms of panicking, do not immediately try to create this characteristic within yourself. Do not try to learn how to present yourself in such a way that it appears that you have this characteristic, whether you have this characteristic or not. That is not going to be successful. There is the old joke about sincerity being vitally important, and once you can fake sincerity you've got it made. But it's a joke. It is not career advice.
The thing is, if you don't have that characteristic, well, you don't have that characteristic. There is no point in trying to fake it. If you do try to fake it, you will come across as inauthentic. It may take a while for people to see through you, but, the longer it takes, the more they will turn against you when they finally realize that you have, essentially, been lying to them all along. So don't try to fake it.
But the other part of not panicking is, you may be wrong. You may be wrong in that this characteristic, that you think is vitally important to an influencer, may not be all that important at all. It may not be a significant factor in the success of any given social media influencer. So just keep on doing your best, and presenting yourself authentically, and your authenticity will probably outweigh the lack of whatever characteristic you think you should have, and you don't have.
The other way that you may be wrong is, well, your friends and family might be wrong. You may have this characteristic, only not to a major extent. You may have this characteristic as an underlying component of your personality. And, when it becomes important, if you remain authentic, if you remain honest, and present what you know to be your true self, then that characteristic will come to the fore when it is needed.
CoSMI series:
Introduction and ToC: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2026/05/cosmi-00100-introduction-and-table-of.html
Next: TBA
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