I keep coming back to a line that gets thrown around so often it risks becoming wallpaper: “Be yourself, everyone else is already taken.” Often attributed to Oscar Wilde.

It sounds like a cute poster line until you sit with it in a coaching call, where “be yourself” is rarely simple.

Because most people I coach are not struggling to invent a personality. They are struggling to remember which parts of themselves they are allowed to bring into the room.

The boardroom. The leadership team. The investor update. The difficult conversation with a sibling or a direct report. Even the Sunday lunch where every sentence carries twenty years of history.

Somewhere along the way, being yourself gets replaced by being acceptable. The cost is not always visible at first.

You can still perform, deliver, and succeed. But inside, something tightens.

You start editing in real time, scanning the room before you speak, and living with a quiet split: the version of you that works, and the version of you that feels true.

In coaching, I’ve learned to treat that split as data, not as weakness.

Because it usually points to a moment when authenticity became unsafe or expensive. Maybe you were misunderstood. Maybe emotion got punished. Maybe certainty and speed got rewarded, while curiosity and doubt were quietly sidelined. Maybe honesty created conflict, and conflict felt dangerous.

So you adjusted. You rounded the edges. You learned the language that landed. You became easier to work with. Easier to manage. Easier to place.

So you adapted. We all do.

The problem is not adaptation. The problem is forgetting you adapted.

When someone says, “I want to be more authentic,” I often hear this underneath:

I want to stop managing the room.
I want to stop betraying myself in small ways.
I want to feel clean inside after I speak.
I want to lead without acting.

And that is where Wilde’s line becomes less inspirational and more diagnostic.

Because if everyone else is already taken, the only sustainable advantage left is congruence. Not authenticity that performs, but authenticity that aligns. The alignment between what you believe, what you say, and what you do.

You can feel it when someone walks into a room. There is a settled energy. No scanning for permission. No bracing for impact. No armor that doesn’t fit. Just presence.

So how do you get there?

Most people think it starts with confidence. I think it starts with honesty, especially about what you are already doing to not be yourself.

Here are a few patterns I see in high performers and family enterprise leaders.

1) Borrowed language

They speak in phrases that don’t belong to them. It sounds polished, but it feels hollow. “Strategic alignment” when they mean “I don’t trust this.” “Managing expectations” when they mean “I’m afraid to disappoint you.”

2) Borrowed certainty

They copy the confidence style of a former boss, a dominant sibling, a charismatic founder. They sound sure, but inside they’re not. The body knows when you’re performing.

3) Borrowed priorities

They chase someone else’s definition of success. The metrics look good, but the person feels flat. It is the success that doesn’t taste like anything.

And then, sometimes, in a session, something breaks open.

A leader says, “I don’t actually want that role.”
A successor says, “I am tired of being the reasonable one.”
A founder says, “I miss who I was before this all became so serious.”
A parent says, “I don’t know who I am without being needed.”

This is not a crisis. It is a return.

And the return does not mean throwing everything away. It means integrating.

It starts with practical questions:

What parts of me have I parked outside the room to be accepted inside it?
What do I consistently silence that I later regret?
Where do I perform competence when what is needed is clarity?
Where am I loyal to an old identity that no longer fits?

And the coaching work becomes grounded.

Not “Who am I, really?” as a philosophical quest.

More like: what is the next honest sentence I can say?

Because authenticity is not a personality trait. It is a practice. It lives in decisions: what you tolerate, what you name, what you ask for, what you stop pretending. Some days you do it well. Sometimes you lose it. But you can return, one honest choice at a time, making fewer and fewer compromises with yourself.

I sometimes ask clients to run a simple reflection at the end of a week:

Where did I feel most like myself this week?
Where did I feel least like myself?
What did I do in those moments to belong?
What did it cost me?
What would a one percent move toward myself look like next week?

One percent!!!  ....That matters, especially in complex systems, because small shifts ripple outward.

If you want to work with this theme in your own life, try these coaching questions. Do not try answer them perfectly (spoiler alert: there isn’t a right answer). Answer them honestly.

1. When do I feel most alive and most like myself?
   Name the environment, the people, the activity, the pace.
2. Where am I currently shape shifting?
   Where do I change tone, speed, posture, language, values, just to fit?
3. What am I protecting?
   If I am not being myself, what am I trying to avoid? Rejection? Conflict? Looking foolish? Losing status? Disappointing someone?
4. What is the sentence I keep not saying?
   Write it down. Then write a version that is truthful and kind.
5. What is one boundary that would make me more me?
   Not a dramatic boundary. A clean one. A small one. A clear one.

And then, a final thought.

“Be yourself” is not an instruction to be selfish. It is an invitation to stop outsourcing your identity.

Your values. Your voice. Your pace. Your way of leading, caring, disagreeing.

Everyone else is already taken, yes.

But more importantly, you are also already taken.

Taken by your history.
Taken by your roles.
Taken by your fear.
Taken by expectations that have followed you for years.

The coaching journey is not to invent a new self. It is to reclaim the one that has been waiting, patiently, behind the performance.

And the moment you do, something remarkable happens.

You do not become less effective.
You become lighter.
You become clearer.
You become harder to manipulate and easier to trust.
You start leading from the inside out.

That is not a slogan.

That is a strategy for a life that can actually be lived!