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Elinor Greenberg Ph.D.
Understanding Narcissism
How to Become Happier by Discovering Your Authentic Self
Happiness can increase when you discover your real preferences.
Updated September 1, 2023
Reviewed by Davia Sills
KEY POINT
People can increase their happiness by surrounding themselves with things that they authentically enjoy.
Individuals can experiment with colors, smells, and textures to find which they genuinely prefer.
They can replace things they do not like or just find so-so with things that make them feel good.
Guilherme Almeida/Pexels
Source: Guilherme Almeida/Pexels
Many of us are living what I call a so-so life. We are not actively unhappy, but neither do we spend much time delighted. An easy way to improve our level of satisfaction without making major changes is to make sure that our daily choices actually reflect what we authentically enjoy instead of simply going along with whatever is popular. For example, do you really like the color that your walls are painted or the fragrance you are wearing, or did you let someone else choose them because you were not sure what you wanted?
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One way to think about authenticity is that each of us is like a unique plant that grows best when our personal requirements for sun, soil, and nutrients are met. We would not expect an oak tree to flourish in the same spot as a climbing rose.
When we copy other people instead of expressing our authentic selves, it is unlikely to be a better fit than a rose copying an oak tree in an attempt to learn how to live well.
Strategies to Express Your Authentic Self
Buy yourself a notebook or create an online journal, and use it daily to record your reactions to the exercises below.
Step 1: Gather Information.
This step involves moving away from your ideas about what you should or should not like. It uses your five senses to explore your gut reactions. This is a bit like becoming a small child again. Small children are not confused. They automatically gravitate to whatever attracts them, and they ignore or move away from what does not.
Exercise 1: Smell
Go to a shop that sells essential oils. I am starting with essential oils because they are fairly uncomplicated. You can sniff oils with only one main ingredient, like rose oil or grapefruit, which makes it easier to tell the scents apart. Start sniffing the samples one at a time with your eyes closed. Separate them into three groups:
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Love the scent
So-So
Unpleasant
Look at the ones in each group and see what they have in common. Is any particular scent group your favorite? For example, I tend to find lots of citrus scents in my favorite group. Is there a group that you instinctively dislike? Or are there others that are just not very interesting to you—the so-so's?
The So-So’s
The so-so’s are an important group by default. When we blindly follow other peoples’ lead in life, we often find ourselves living with a lot of so-so things, doing a lot of things that are just so-so, and wondering why we are not feeling much pleasure or excitement.
Note: If you cannot find essential oils, go to a fragrance counter in a department store. Ask to smell categories of scents—a floral group, a citrus group, a musky or earthy group, etc. Do the same exercises as with the essential oils.
Exercise 2: Visual
Another simple way to understand our authentic selves is from a visual perspective. Some colors will make us feel happier than other colors. We are instinctively drawn to our happy colors and repelled by ones that we dislike on a gut level.
It is as if we are a walking chemistry factory that unconsciously recognizes and automatically responds well to certain needed elements and rejects and avoids looking at ones that we do not need or like.
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