The Power of Living Your Truth | How authenticity fuels authority

We all know the friend who won’t play along with the stories we tell ourselves. The one who points out that a relationship isn’t healthy, no matter how many years you’ve invested. Or the sibling who refuses to smile politely while family drama gets swept under the rug. That pushback isn’t defiance for its own sake—it’s a demand for honesty. And it’s the same pushback middle schoolers, Gen Z employees, and young adults everywhere are giving to authority figures who can’t walk their talk. They might be onto something.

Toria Avila, principal of Alliance Virgil Roberts Leadership Academy in South Los Angeles, joined me recently on the Shaping Freedom podcast to talk about what it really takes to lead middle schoolers in 2025. What emerged was bigger: insights about authenticity, power dynamics, and what happens when people refuse to play by rules that no longer serve them.

Our conversation wasn’t about getting kids to behave. It was about what these young truth-tellers reveal about the rest of us—and why their refusal to accept our systems might be the wake-up call we need.

Here are three insights from my conversation with Toria that opened my eyes—and why they matter whether you’re leading a team, navigating relationships, or trying to live more authentically:

1. When people stop accepting your authority, check your authenticity.

“This generation of children are not allowing us to define for them where they will be and who they will be,” Toria shared. “They challenge us a lot more. They have a better sense of what’s happening in the world, and they can call BS at an earlier age.”

This isn’t just about kids—it’s about power dynamics everywhere. When someone stops accepting your influence, your instinct might be to assert more control. But what if their resistance is feedback about the gap between what you’re saying and what you’re doing?

Think about your own life: a colleague who won’t stay late just because “that’s how we’ve always done it.” A friend who refuses to keep pretending everything’s fine when it’s not.

The question isn’t how to get them to comply. The question is: What are they seeing that you’re not? When people stop buying what you’re selling, it’s often because they’ve spotted the disconnect between your words and your reality.

2. Understanding someone doesn’t mean you have to fix them.

When I asked Toria what people need most from us right now, her answer was immediate: “Understanding… they are asking us to understand who they are and the world that they’re existing in right now.”

Understanding isn’t the same as agreeing, and it’s definitely not the same as fixing. How many relationships have been damaged by jumping straight into solution mode instead of just witnessing someone’s experience?

“I might not understand you, but if I can offer you a willingness, a genuine willingness to get to know you and hear you, I think that would help,” Toria continued.

This applies to every difficult conversation in your life. A friend going through a career crisis doesn’t need you to solve their industry’s problems. A partner processing grief doesn’t need you to make it better. They need you to sit with them in their reality without trying to change it.

Real influence comes from understanding, not from having all the answers. Sometimes the most powerful thing you can say is, “Tell me more about what that’s like for you.”

3. Your struggles aren’t disqualifications—they’re your credentials.

“I have a fresh new 20-something-year-old teacher in the classroom who’s saying she has ADHD as well,” Toria shared, describing the reality of supporting people while managing your own challenges. “And I don’t know how to come to this medium and stand in front of this kid and teach them how to analyze the text.”

This reality exists everywhere: the manager with anxiety supporting a stressed team, the friend with depression offering advice about self-care, the parent with unresolved trauma trying to raise emotionally healthy kids.

“Because the parents are coming as bruised fruit,” Toria observed. We’re all trying to give from places where we’re still learning and healing ourselves.

The most liberating thing you can do is stop pretending you have it all figured out. Instead of performing competence, model growth. Show people what it looks like to work through challenges while still showing up.

This doesn’t mean dumping your problems on everyone—it means being honest about being human. People aren’t looking for perfection. They’re looking for someone real enough to trust.

These young people are doing something many of us learned too late: refusing to accept systems that don’t serve them, insisting on genuine connection over hollow authority, and calling out the gap between what we say and what we do. Maybe instead of trying to get them to conform, we should be asking what they’re trying to teach us about showing up more honestly in our own lives.

TL;DR

• Resistance reveals truth. When people stop accepting your influence, look for the gap between your words and actions. Their pushback might be pointing to something you need to address, not something they need to accept.

• Understanding doesn’t require fixing. The most powerful way to connect is to genuinely understand someone’s experience without immediately trying to change it. Presence often matters more than solutions.

• Drop the performance. Everyone’s figuring things out while trying to help others. Authenticity about your own growth process creates more trust than pretending you have all the answers.

LEARN MORE

• Alliance Virgil Roberts Leadership Academy — Official site of the school where Toria serves as principal.

• The Anxious Generation — Discussed in this episode, The Anxious Generation explores how social media and technology are reshaping our kids’ brains and emotional well-being.