photo credit: Pandiyan

Editor’s note:  I originally posted this in October 2008.  The content is still relevant today as I’m revisiting authenticity!

I have found it – the definition of authenticity! Sure, there are plenty of Toms, Dicks, and Harrys out there who claim to know all about “authentic” life styles. They say, “Listen to me. I can guide you to happiness!” Then they charge you an arm and a leg. But I think I have found the real definition of authenticity. Here it is, for free I might add. (You’re welcome!)

It comes by way of Brian Goldman, a graduate student at the University of Georgia in Athens. He was digging through centuries-old research and philosophy when he uncovered what I think is a pretty great definition:

“The unimpeded operations of one’s true or core self in one’s daily enterprise.

Ohhh … pretty! How simple and sweet is that, huh?

I agree completely with it too, which you probably already knew because I’ve been using the same definition of authenticity for quite sometime now.

Another one of my favorites is Neil Lark Warren’s 10 Characteristics in Finding Contentment. I’ve also recently been struck by so-called physical acts of authenticity, which the authors outlined in a newer issue of Psychology Today.

These physical acts of authenticity are:

1. Meditate. Think of it only as a way to get to your “happy place,” not a technique to influence outside forces. For instance, why do you work? To earn money to buy pretty things. Why do you meditate? To achieve internal happiness. I can handle that.

2. Be Deliberate. Be conscious that you have choices. You can choose to change (“I choose change” anyone?), or you can choose to stick with what you have. You can choose to move forward, go backward, or do nothing at all. Being deliberate simply means acting consciously, with purpose.

3. Act Intuitively. Sure, you got me; this runs counter to No. 2. But as we’ve talked about before, acting consciously can sometimes be detrimental when too much rationalizing and reasoning gets in the way of your gut feelings. Don’t be afraid to follow your instincts. They’re there to guide you forward.

4. Create Solitude. There’s nothing like shutting down–on purpose–so you can recharge. We’re talking power down your blackberry, shut your door, turn off the TV and the laptop, and provide yourself the space to just thing and be. Authentic people regularly look inside and listen to their intuition, but they can’t do this with all the chaos of the modern world swirling around them.

5. Stay Connected. Thomas Moore, author of A Life at Work, says, “Community is an outlook toward life in which you define yourself in relation to the world around you, rather than only in connection with yourself.” Community, he is saying, is a way to enlarge our own sense of self.

6. Play Hard. Don’t hold back when doing what you really love, whether it’s tennis, running, art, dancing. It allows you to fully express who you are at your core.

7. Be Willing to Lose. Authentic people know that failure is part of growing. You must be willing to stare down your failures, learn from them, and move forward if you are to live an authentic life.

I take no credit for the above definitions.  But I wholeheartedly believe in the importance of taking personal responsibility for life’s challenges.  That means peering inside for answers on why we do what we do, feel what we feel, and think what we think.  It’s only through an authentic life that we can look internally, and take personal responsibility.  Personal responsibility is the  genius of change!

Downloadable resources: a href=”http://www.ichoosechange.com/resources/”>Click here.

photo credit: ΗǼЯӨŁĐ PHOTOGЯAPHX

Going through life a little more unconscious wouldn’t be as bad as it sounds. I’m not talking about walking through life like a zombie or a sleepwalker. Please don’t take me literally!

What I mean is allowing the wisdom of your unconscious mind, where intuition can be found, to come through a little bit more. It’s only natural. Your brain is designed to help you make assumptions. After all, where do those assumptions come from? Your unconscious mind provides them. Did you actually think many of your assumptions come from conscious thoughts based on empirical evidence in front of you, the supposed “real world”? Nope.

Your brain is hardwired to allow your intuition to come through. So let it. Noted expert Gerd Gigerenzer wrote a book called “Gut Feelings: The Intelligence of the Unconscious” in which he provides three ways to get in touch with your unconscious mind and thus your intuition, rather than “thinking” our way through problems and difficulties.

Step 1: Let your emotions take over. Your unconscious mind has a way of picking up on what’s best for you. So let it. When it comes to making tough choices, let your unconscious mind detect the right path and go with what “feels right.”

Step 2: Trust your instincts. Allow yourself to hone in on choices and paths that resonate with you, the ones that seem clearer to you, especially when you confront forks in the road with several difference paths to choose from. Narrow down on those choices. Then feel the pull of the ultimate path. Simply put, that means picking the path that you feel most comfortable with. Say you’re on the job market and have two offers. They both basically pay the same, offer similar benefits … but one has a definite attraction to it. Go with it!

Step 3: Use common sense. Ever walked into a situation that makes you feel unnerved? Met someone who is setting off your “spidey sense” and you feel the need to be cautious around them? Follow that sixth sense. It’s your unconscious mind telling you something, not you being “judgmental” and “unfair.” It could be as simple a matter as someone you just met asking you a whole bunch of personal questions. If you get a weird sense about him, don’t answer all of his questions. Or it could be some situation as dangerous as walking alone down a dark street when two men begin walking at you quickly. In that case you want to listen to your unconscious mind if it tells you to speed up, get away from them, find a crowded street or store, etc. Of course, this doesn’t mean that the unconscious mind will come to your rescue in every situation like that. And you might automatically know (from your mom teaching you well) to be careful on a dark street. But it does go to show–if you feel your unconscious mind tingling, listen up.

photo credit: respres

I was walking with my daughters and my husband last night on the dark trail that winds behind our house, and we saw so many fireflies along the way. They flashed their tails and then, just as quickly, they vanished. An instant later, another two would light up. Our eyes had to dart around to keep up with all their illumination. 

My husband said to my daughters, “Keep looking, girls. You’ll see the fireflies!” 

They kept trying to find the bugs, and I did too. I’d catch one putting on a show, and just as that one dimmed, I’d see another light up in my peripheral vision. But by the time I turned to see it, it was gone. 

It made me realize that, no matter how much I squinted into the darkness, the harder I looked for the next firefly, the less likely I was to see one. 

That got me thinking about how life is the same way. 

The more intensely we focus on what we WANT to be in our lives, the more we see nothing. Sometimes we think we can WILL something to happen in our lives merely by concentrating on it with a stronger gaze. 

It brings me back to the Law of Attraction. I believe in this in large part, but it can be deceiving in one respect: It can make you believe that, if you focus on something hard enough, and believe that it will happen, that it will then occur. Sure, this might actually turn out to be true for you every once in a while, just because of the law of probabilities. There’s bound to be a coincidence every so often. 

But we need to get beyond mere probabilities. We need to look at another phenomenon at work here, which we can completely miss when we concentrate so hard on what we want that we put the blinders on for everything else. 

That phenomenon that we’re forgetting is free will, intuition, and divine timing. 

1.  Free will means we are free to follow the path that’s divinely ordained for us or one of our own making, and to change directions whenever and however we see fit. It means we can go on impulse, thinking (falsely) that we know what’s best for us, even when evidence mounts to the contrary! 

2.  Intuition, on the other hand, is the divine guidance trying to lead us along the right path. Think of it as a little nudge. Or getting back to the fireflies, remember that we don’t have to stare at one particular firefly. All the fireflies will light up no matter what we do, so the best bet is to sit back and enjoy all of them.

3.  Divine timing is the pace of our life according to intuition, or God’s guidance. When you follow your free will, though, the timing of events is all your own. But when you focus so hard on the darkness to make a firefly light up, chances are, it won’t. Yet when you look instead toward the fireflies’ general direction and allow yourself to be guided by the nudges of intuition, you’re sure get to where you need to go and see an incredible lightshow along the way.