3 Unorthodox EQ Strategies To Boost Your Authenticity

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For more than a century, workers were valued for what they knew. But AI and Superintelligence are upending that equation. “Humans have been valued on knowledge, credentials, experience, output, and productivity,” writes marketing expert Chris Walker. “Now, it’s completely collapsing.”

Walker predicts we’ll soon value something he calls “frequency,” which he defines as “how connected you are to yourself, and how that enables you to raise others up.” This is essentially a contemporary description of emotional intelligence (EQ).

And at the heart of emotional intelligence lies authenticity. Authenticity requires a rare blend of self-awareness, vulnerability, and honesty, especially in complex or high-stakes moments.

What follows are three practical strategies to strengthen your authenticity. Each is backed by research and illustrated with a real-life example.

Do What Gets Results (Not What Gets You Liked)

Tennis star Monica Seles was a teen phenom, winning the French Open at just 16. But she received harsh criticism for her trademark grunt after each hit, something almost unheard of in women’s tennis at the time. When her opponents publicly complained during Wimbledon, Seles tried to suppress her habit. The effort broke her focus, and she was eliminated early.

Looking back, she called this one of her biggest regrets. “You’ve got to be an individual, whatever makes you win that point,” she said. “[The grunt] was part of my game and who I was…I wasn’t out there to please people, I was out there to win.” Her perspective looking back on her mistake is the inspiration for the first EQ strategy in this article.

The EQ Strategy: Do What Gets Results, Not What Gets You Liked

There’s a common misconception that being emotionally intelligent means being “nice” or universally “liked.” But EQ isn’t about appeasing people. It’s about awareness and intentionality. Sometimes that requires you to be assertive, say no, or hold your ground even if it makes you uncomfortable. And here’s the paradox: When you focus on the results that align with your values, you naturally come across as authentic. While Seles may have received a lot of heat for her grunting and shrieking, it was also one of the things about her game that many of her true fans loved.

The Research Behind This Strategy: Pressure Triggers Self-Consciousness, Which Decreases Performance

Research on athletes shows that high-pressure situations can trigger self-consciousness, disrupt automatic action, and cause performance to collapse. Learn to shift your attention from “what others think” to “what you want to achieve.” Then, you can overcome self-consciousness and perform better.

Do What You Like (Not What Gets Results)

André 3000, the musician from Outkast, sold 20 million records and won 6 Grammys. Then, 17 years ago, he disappeared. He stopped releasing new albums. He stopped performing. Occasionally, he recorded a near-perfect guest verse, then vanished again. But, fan videos began to pop up of him playing the flute. One at a café. One in an airport and the backseat of a cab. Another on a trail somewhere in LA. It became a sort of around-the-world “Where’s Waldo.”

In 2023, he finally dropped a brand-new album, “New Blue Sun.” But, to the dismay of many listeners, he did absolutely no rapping. Instead, he improvised on the flute for 87 minutes. Asked why he made this choice, his answer was immediate and clear: “There may be opposition to this [album]. But the feeling I got making it – the love I had for the music – was much greater than the fear.”

This is an unwritten rule of authenticity: The specific is the universal. When you try to be “something for everyone,” you often end up being “nothing to anyone.” But when you honor what genuinely moves you, people see you more clearly, even if they don’t agree or relate.

The EQ Strategy: Run Your Decisions Through Your Values

Next time you face a big decision, ask yourself: “How is my proposed path forward in line with my core values? And how might it be out of line?” Then adjust your course accordingly. For Andre 3000, the pressure to make another rap album was immense—it would have pleased his fans and guaranteed financial success. Instead, he chose to create the type of music that felt true to him, honoring a core value: artistic integrity over external approval.

The Research Behind This Strategy: Intrinsic Motivation Drives Creativity

Brandeis psychologist Teresa Amabile brought 72 people into her lab and asked them to write two poems. Prior to writing their poems, they filled out a questionnaire. One group focused on extrinsic reasons for writing poetry, one on intrinsic questions, and one had no questionnaire. She found that those who had been given the intrinsic questionnaire wrote significantly more creative poems. When you act from your values instead of others’ expectations, creativity and authenticity thrive.

Do What You Don’t Like (To See if You Change Your Mind)

Poet David Whyte grew up under the impression that art was good and business was bad. “Where I grew up, anything that was part of the corporate world was the enemy to art. I inherited the belief that the corporate world was filled with big, bad, overreaching, all too powerful, inhuman people,” he said.

So when a corporate executive approached him after his poetry reading to hire him for a talk, Whyte rejected him on the spot. But, before walking away, he asked one question that changed the course of the conversation: “Why do you want to hire me?”

The man said, “The language we have in that world is not large enough for the territory that we’ve entered. And I just heard the language, in your poetry, that’s large enough.”

Moved by this response, Whyte agreed to do his first-ever corporate presentation. “And to my surprise at first, then to my gratification, I found that I didn’t have to compromise my work at all in the corporate environment,” he reflected. Whyte’s story reminds us that authenticity isn’t static. You have to generate and grow it by challenging your own assumptions and beliefs.

The EQ Strategy: Do Something You Don’t Think You Like

We often work hard to stay open to other people’s ideas but forget to challenge our own. Next time you find yourself reflexively saying no to an opportunity, test that belief with action. You might be surprised how your “authentic self” begins to expand into something more complex and nuanced.

The Research Behind This Strategy: Self-Expansion

Although it may seem like authenticity should come naturally, it’s often earned through experimentation. Psychologists call this “self-expansion,” the drive to broaden our sense of who we are through new experiences and perspectives. When you challenge assumptions (i.e., poets shouldn’t work with corporations), you create space for a more complete, flexible version of yourself.

Putting These Strategies Into Practice

All of these strategies feel like common sense, but they’re by no means easy to put into practice. If I were to choose one as a starting point, I’d recommend Strategy 2. When you run decisions through your values (big or small), authenticity comes naturally.

P.S. If you have a thought, question, or something you’d like me to write about, hit reply. I’m always looking to learn from you all!