Empathy instead of Authenticity

Over the year, I’ve been asked to share more about myself and be more personal on here. Yet, I shy away from it.

To reveal stuff about myself doesn’t seem helpful. It draws attention to me when I really want to help others.

In Seth Godin’s book This is Marketing, he says:

If you need to be authentic to do your best work, you’re not a professional, you’re a fortunate amateur. Fortunate, because you have a gig where being the person you feel like being in the moment actually helps you move forward.


For the rest of us, there’s the opportunity to be a professional, to exert emotional labor in search of empathy—the empathy to imagine what someone else would want, what they might believe, what story would resonate with them.


We don’t do this work because we feel like it in the moment. We do this work, this draining emotional labor, because we’re professionals, and because we want to make change happen.

I want to be genuine, but I think I can do it without making it about myself.