AKA: You being real makes me weak at the knees

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about the quiet power of authenticity. Not the curated kind that gets packaged for social media, but the sort that slips out when we forget to manage ourselves. The blurts, the stumbles, the moments when our mind goes suddenly blank, or when we trip over a sentence or simply err aka be human. Those moments stay with us. They soften something. They connect us in ways that perfect performance never can.

And while this might sound strange coming from someone who routinely uses AI, it’s still obvious to be that a fully composed answer will never replace the warm chaos of human interaction. AI can be clever, charming, or even seemingly intuitive, but it cannot replicate the serendipity of a brain that diverges, rather than converges, meanders, corrects itself mid-thought, or reveals something vulnerable by accident. It cannot replace the way our nervous system respond to other nervous systems — the micro-signals of warmth, awkwardness, recognition, and relief that tell us, on a physiological level, “I see you, you see me. In all our human imperfection. Hello, this feels like home.”

The truth is that we connect through these imperfections. Perfection, for all its cultural value, is emotionally void. It leaves us cold. People who never crack, never wobble, never show their human edges are easy to admire but difficult to love. We do not bond with flawless people; we bond with people who remind us of ourselves.

As a coach, I see this play out constantly. The moments that deepen trust aren’t the polished insights or the perfectly timed reflections. They’re the moments when I lose my train of thought and laugh, or when I say something slightly clumsy and correct myself with kindness, or when a client admits they’ve forgotten every strategy we discussed the week before, and I meet them with an ‘of course, you’re not a bloody machine!’. Even AI can’t keep everything we throw at it straight!! These oopsy moments aren’t ruptures; they are invitations to peer inside. They signal that neither of us has to perform. When someone is willing to be seen fully, not as an idealised self but as a real one, the room becomes safer. And in a safe room, difficult truths and gentle epiphanies land on much kinder soils.

We often fear that messing up will make us look incompetent, less than, stupid even, when in reality it makes us look human. Owning a mistake — without spiralling into shame or rushing to over-explain — demonstrates integrity, humility, and emotional maturity. It says, “I am comfortable with my imperfection, and you can be comfortable with yours too.” This is one of the most powerful trust signals we have, and yet it’s one we’re trained out of from childhood.

Our school systems, workplaces, and cultural narratives tend to treat failure as a catastrophe, something to avoid at all costs. But the ability to recover from a mistake, to stay grounded while admitting it, is a life skill we were never taught and desperately need. Remember the saying: we learn more from our failures than our successes. It’s SO true. And it’s also THE antidote to shame. A counterspell to perfectionism (more on that soon, a favourite topic in neurodivergence land). And, quietly, it is one of the most generous things we can offer others — proof that it is safe to show up imperfectly.

This is also why, despite all the hype, AI will never replace our need for human connection. Perfectly generated text isn’t what we look for in friendship, love, collaboration or comedy. What we crave is the warmth of being recognised, the spark of seeing someone fully themselves, and the relief that comes from dropping the mask because someone else dropped theirs first. The real magic of humanity is not in how polished we are, but in how willing we are to be seen.

So perhaps the invitation here is simple: let yourself get it wrong from time to time. Speak before the thought is completely packaged. Let the moment be imperfect. Allow your humanity, with all its jiggly edges and occasionally chaotic brainwaves, to show.

Because authenticity has never been more attractive or more necessary than it is right now. And fucking up, in its messy little way, might just be the most honest expression of being alive. Mess up, break the box, be you. The ones who matter will only love you more for it.