The Value of Authenticity

So what is this blog really all about?  Why am I asking you to spend your valuable time reading what I’ve written?  Simple.  I’m committed to changing the world.  Well, more accurately stated, I’m committed to inventing a new world and I want to participate with others in the fulfillment of that vision.  In the first several posts, I’ve shared some ideas about how to create a better future.  I’m committed that this blog become more than that.  I’m committed it become a place where the future can actually be created. 

People seem to have a really big problem with the idea that in order to create something new, we must begin to talk about something new.  I guess it’s understandable given the quality of conversation most of us have become accustomed to combined with the fact that we are facing such seemingly overwhelming challenges that require us to act today.  How do we really create something new while so much is flying at us?   The confusion arises because for some reason we’ve decided that it has to either be one or the other.  Either we deal with what’s happening today or we sit around talking about the future.  Of course, today takes so much of our focus that talking about the future has become a joke to us.  “Oh great, we’ll all sit around and talk about a great future, and then we’ll just go back to dealing with the same crap.”  How about this?  We deal with today and talk about the future … and we don’t confuse the two.  And as far as what’s happening today, one of the simplest things we can do is to begin to talk about it differently.  Commiserating, complaining about, arguing with the way that it is does nothing to change it.  Neither does avoiding it or denying it. But neither does allowing it to dictate what you want to create in the future.  

So how do you talk about what’s happening now in a way that breaks the cycle?  You speak authentically about it.  The best part is you don’t need to have someone to talk about it with; you can do this on your own.  Just sit down and write how your life is authentically occurring for you.  “I’m really concerned that I’m going to lose my job” or “My son is such a drag on our family” or “I can’t count on my boss to do anything to back me up.”  Most of us haven’t been taught to be authentic with our thoughts and feelings, and so we go through life wrestling with all this pent up, negative emotion that continues to get more and more suppressed. 

And when I say be authentic, it’s not in the way that we typically think of authenticity.  We’ve come to associate being authentic with verbally puking on someone else (e.g., “It’s time I tell Joe what I really think of him”).   The type of authenticity I’m talking about includes being responsible for the fact that whatever you’re dealing with in life is your issue.  The people around you probably really don’t care what you think of them or about your opinions of how they should be living their lives.  The purpose is for you to get free; the purpose is not to trash the people in your life.  So you don’t have to tell your spouse, “I just don’t love you anymore, but I’m too weak to leave you,” just say it to yourself.  We seem to be afraid that if we say these things, say how it really is for us that the world will come crashing down or we’ll actually have to do something about what we said.  In fact, I think this is why we resist talking about the future, “Man, you want me to create a future too.  I’m already overwhelmed just trying to deal with what I’ve got on my plate.”  Talking is talking.  Other action is other action.  Talking about it, even to yourself, creates an opportunity for you to get clear about what you want to create in the future.

When you resist life – including how you feel about life - you’re arguing that it (whatever “it” is) should be some other way than it is.  Your particular brand of arguing may look like complaining or commiserating or it might just look like quietly going through life having given up.  The result is you spend your life in a state of resistance and this keeps your mind all tied up in knots.  Your mind isn’t free to invent what you want because it’s so occupied with resisting what is.  Being authentic allows you to get clear about how the world is occurring for you.  It allows you to fully and freely state what’s true for you in this moment of your life.  If you’re afraid of losing your house, your car, your job, so be it.  If you can’t stand the sight of your husband, your boss, or even your child, so be it.  When you can authentically state where you’re at then it opens up the possibility of asking the question, “Ok, so that’s where you’re at, that’s what’s authentic for you, those are the limits you see, … now … what do you want to create?”

And that’s really the question I’m posing with this blog.  The world is in the state it’s in, what do you want to create?  It seems like everywhere you look there’s more crisis - there’s war, hunger, poverty.  Got it.  What do you want to create?  We created a world that has a lot of amazing tremendous things in it, and yet it still doesn’t really work for most people?  If that is what’s authentic for you, I hear you.  What do you want to create?

“I want to create a better world, but I don’t know how (or I don’t think it can be done).”  Excellent, you want to create a better world, and you don’t know how (or don’t think it can be done).  Very good, you know what you want and you’ve identified some limitations.  You’re clear about where you’re at and how the world occurs for you.  “I want to make a difference in the world, but I don’t know where to begin.”  This is how you begin.  You begin by speaking authentically about where you are and then from there, ask the question, “What do I want to create?” and dwell in that conversation on your own or with others.  Dwell in that conversation again and again and again and again.  Be willing to not know for 100 or 1,000 or 10,000 conversations until something new arises and you know.  And of course, don’t just do that, live your life.  Deal with what’s happening today, and face it without resistance.  Just don’t confuse doing that with having a conversation for transformation.  And if at some point, you begin to resist what’s happening in your life, speak again authentically about how it is for you.  Write it down, acknowledge it, and then ask the question, “What do I want to create?”

I invite you right here, right now to begin a new conversation.  I invite you to stake your claim to the future.  I invite you to keep your eyes wide open, look right at the world as it is and deny nothing about it.  And then in the face of it, say something else.  The future is born in a declaration.  What’s the future you’re declaring? 

What do you want to create?