"Performative Authenticity" On Social Media | Dr Rangan Chatterjee | Fearne Cotton's Place — Transcript

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1. 0:00you don't have to have a smile on your
2. 0:01face to
3. 0:02have this deep level of core happiness
4. 0:05right if you came on my show
5. 0:08and
6. 0:09had a big smile on your face and were
7. 0:11pretending that everything was okay
8. 0:13here's the problem
9. 0:14on the inside you're crying you're
10. 0:16really upset you feel sad and on the
11. 0:19outside you're trying to pretend that
12. 0:21that's not happening yeah now there may
13. 0:23be a role for that in certain instances
14. 0:25in life
15. 0:26but
16. 0:27you were sad but you were aligned yeah
17. 0:31so you were happy you were actually
18. 0:33happy i spent years of my career
19. 0:36not aligning at all i would show up feel
20. 0:39like i was literally falling apart
21. 0:41inside but be
22. 0:42on the radio going hey welcome to the
23. 0:44show and it felt horrible jarring edgy
24. 0:48not great you know although i probably
25. 0:50wouldn't go back and do it much
26. 0:52differently because nobody necessarily
27. 0:53wants to hear every day someone coming
28. 0:55on saying they feel awful but i think i
29. 0:57could have met myself in the middle
30. 0:59somewhere and been a little bit more
31. 1:01honest and
32. 1:02a bit more honest with myself and i
33. 1:03guess
34. 1:04the way that all of us do this and i
35. 1:07think most of us have done this at some
36. 1:09point is of course on social media where
37. 1:11you know luckily there are lots of
38. 1:13people on social media now who will show
39. 1:14up and say i've got anxiety or i'm not
40. 1:17feeling good or whatever but a lot of
41. 1:19the time we are still looking to those
42. 1:20people that
43. 1:22their lives look so shiny and perfect
44. 1:24and even though i know all this stuff
45. 1:27and i write about it and i talk about it
46. 1:29i will still go on and sometimes see
47. 1:32other people and go
48. 1:33oh my how are they they've got
49. 1:35everything so sorted and they look
50. 1:37amazing and everything's going
51. 1:38brilliantly and i'm like i've got so
52. 1:41much laundry downstairs that is crumpled
53. 1:43in a basket and i haven't got any food a
54. 1:46moment i need to go and get cat food
55. 1:47after i've done this podcast like
56. 1:48everything feels a little bit like am i
57. 1:50going to make it to the end of the day
58. 1:52and have done everything and i feel a
59. 1:53bit
60. 1:55and it's you know we all fall into that
61. 1:57and we might have also portrayed
62. 1:59ourselves in that way been on instagram
63. 2:01to hopefully have people give us
64. 2:03validation so we've put on
65. 2:05a better version of ourselves to get
66. 2:07that like yeah this in particular
67. 2:11i think
68. 2:12relates to what we were saying about
69. 2:14alignment
70. 2:15you know i've been thinking about the
71. 2:16authenticity recently and you know i i
72. 2:19wrote a section in the book that i
73. 2:21really love about authenticity i spent
74. 2:23ages thinking about it
75. 2:25and i think at the moment
76. 2:27even the concepts of authenticity has
77. 2:29been hijacked yeah
78. 2:31so
79. 2:32you have what i call performative
80. 2:34authenticity which actually is not
81. 2:36authenticity yeah as opposed to true
82. 2:38authenticity so and you actually really
83. 2:40do
84. 2:41we can all fall into this trap on social
85. 2:43media because it kind of rewards
86. 2:44performance of authenticity so if you
87. 2:46pretend to be someone you're not
88. 2:48and you get validation for that you've
89. 2:50got a big problem massive right you've
90. 2:52got a big problem and there are actually
91. 2:53many many you know universal influences
92. 2:56who are well known to be
93. 2:58crying on the inside literally
94. 3:00struggling
95. 3:02because the image that they are
96. 3:03portraying is nothing like their life
97. 3:06and you can know this stuff i can know
98. 3:08it you can know it you can write
99. 3:09something into it yeah
100. 3:11and we can fall into thinking everyone's
101. 3:13got a better life than us it's called i
102. 3:14think perfectionist presentation it's we
103. 3:17have this tendency to
104. 3:18you know does someone want to see the
105. 3:20laundry overflowing in the basket and
106. 3:23the mess in the kitchen do you know is
107. 3:25that what people want to see well i
108. 3:27don't know like do we want to post that
109. 3:29it's it's really tricky isn't it because
110. 3:32that would be real
111. 3:33i think but the really interesting thing
112. 3:35about that section of your book
113. 3:37was something that i've given a lot of
114. 3:39time to sort of privately maybe i
115. 3:41haven't voiced it as much and that is
116. 3:43the notion of authenticity because
117. 3:45sometimes we think that's a fixed thing
118. 3:47like i know who i am and i will always
119. 3:49show up as that person which seems very
120. 3:52dead-ended whereas surely we should
121. 3:55always have a curiosity about well who
122. 3:58who the hell am i like we don't really
123. 3:59know do we
124. 4:01we don't know we did know
125. 4:03right i passionately believe that most
126. 4:05of us as children yeah new right
127. 4:09we've all got a memory from childhood
128. 4:10for me it's kind of i don't know four or
129. 4:13five years old on the grass in our
130. 4:14garden playing cricket with my brother
131. 4:16like you know i think saluting the the
132. 4:19trees because i think i scored a 50. you
133. 4:21know
134. 4:22but what was i i was in the moment yeah
135. 4:24i was present i wasn't fretting about
136. 4:26the future i wasn't worrying about the
137. 4:28past i was just there right i was being
138. 4:30who i was and
139. 4:31the more i think about core happiness
140. 4:33the more i think about
141. 4:34this is frankly just a journey back
142. 4:37inwards to where we once were
143. 4:39that we have somehow lost by society by
144. 4:42culture by conditioning
145. 4:45and
146. 4:46so i think we we all have it within us
147. 4:49somewhere yeah like we had it and we can
148. 4:51get back to it
149. 4:56[Music]
150. 5:13you