Tag Archives: authenticity

Why is BEING AUTHENTIC so important?

Posted in Practicing Self Mastery by

mocha moments

Today was my first radio show for the year on Heartbeat radio, with host Marcia Miranda. The theme for this year’s series of programs is AUTHENTICITY.

Webster’s dictionary defines authenticity as “worthy of acceptance or true to one’s own personality, spirit or character.”

Are you being authentic? This is a question I actually have on my business cards. I want everyone I hand a card to, to seriously consider this question.

A lack of authenticity lies at the core of all our failed marketing and selling efforts, business transformation projects, employee performance improvement programs and ALL of our strained relationships.

When we’re authentic we allow others to be authentic too.

Gift-of-Giving1-408x140

Dan Rockwell wrote a post today called ‘Popping the Self-Delusion Bubble’. He kicks off the post with these questions:

What do you call someone who believes they’re:

  1. Supportive but demanding, instead.
  2. Humble but in reality, arrogant.
  3. Listening when they’re talking.
  4. Able to do everything “right” while others fall short.
  5. Informed when they don’t know.

You call them deluded leaders.

Deluded leaders falsely believe intentions automatically translate into behaviors.

We are all personally leading ourselves. We’re deluded (and not being authentic leaders) when our audio is not aligned with our video. When we expect change to happen all around us while we marinate in our perfection (albeit deluded). When we pretend that everything is “ok” when it really isn’t. When we fail to have those difficult conversations because we would much rather keep the peace.

Being authentic is important because it allows us to play a much bigger game, to grow into the true size of our potential and to find the inner strength and courage to demand the highest level of accountability and integrity for ourselves and others.

Wouldn’t it be great if everyone lived their lives authentically?

The choice is ALWAYS yours….

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Image from http://www.darethebook.com

“Without hard work, nothing grows but weeds.”

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I saw this quote by Gordon B. Hinckley and it literally grabbed me behind the ears and pulled me in. You see I’ve been attempting to develop a couple spots in my yard and hopefully one day be able to say that I have a garden and am gardening.

After a months holiday (December 2011 to January 2012) I returned to find quite a number of weeds in a tiny area that I created just for jump up and kiss me’s and in an area that I actually paid to have landscaped.

I set about one Saturday morning to try to salvage what I could, till the soil and replant the survivors.

Man was I proud! The very next day I saw a pink flower emerge and I smiled to myself. I’d done it! I have the green thumb just like my mother and my grandmother. I saved the plants. The other colors will emerge soon. Good job Gis! Mission accomplished!

Don’t ask me why I thought that my work was finished.

Yes, I knew I had to water the plants but the rainy season seemed to be upon us so I was comfortable.

As I came down my driveway yesterday I glanced at the jump up and kiss me bed and realized that I could not tell plant from weed. Didn’t I “just” weed this patch? “Just” of course being a month ago :) . It was evening so I waited until this morning to go see the condition of the bed.

This is what I saw…

My jump and kiss me bed is covered  with weeds. You mean I have to go pull them out again??!!!! I don’t want to. I want a bed of beautiful flowers.

But isn’t that how I treat my own life sometimes? Ok – MOST TIMES! :)

I do the “work” whatever that work is – one time and then think that this is all it would take to create lasting change. One shot at hard work and I’m done.

If however I don’t regularly pay attention and remove the weeds when they’re manageable, like once a week, then I am going to find that eventually the weeds WILL take over my garden. If I don’t pay attention to when the weeds reemerge in my own life (the habits that don’t help but hinder) and work at keeping the good habits in place so that my talents and passions (the beautiful flowers) are not crowded out then before I know it I would slip right back into behaviors that take me backward and towards becoming my best self.

So it’s back to weeding AGAIN! Of course I was a little dramatic and said that I would pull up everything and start over. But then I saw that there were still flowers and probably potential flowers that I am not seeing. So I will just keep what I have, weed today, and weed again in two weeks time.

And so it is with life. The flowers are an indication that we have done some work – we are making progress, replacing self defeating behaviors with more positive fulfilling ones. And while we continue to nurture those that we do see we must continue taking out the other weeds so that they don’t grow so profusely that we no longer see our gifts and lose hope in ourselves.

First jump and kiss me pic from http://www.caribbeangarden.blogspot.com the other two are from ‘ahem’ MY GARDEN! :)

 

Guess What? You’re not perfect.

Posted in Practicing Self Mastery by

As published in the Woman Express - Sunday Express Magazine, Trinidad and Tobago on April 8th 2012

Feel relieved? Someone needs to remind us right? Yet how often do we measure ourselves against some perfect life that we could never attain? Think. How many ‘shoulds’ are floating around in your head right now? Let me list a few…

I know I SHOULD meditate every day

I know I SHOULD wash those dishes up one time!

I know I SHOULD prepare the night before for work

I know I SHOULD get up a little earlier

I know I SHOULD make more time for my kids

I know I SHOULD go back to school

We read our feel-good magazines and books, we devour the articles in wellness and personal-development blogs, and then we measure our successes against the standard set before us only to come up short. We know what we “should” do.  We know what our happy and perfect life SHOULD look like.  So why do we struggle to achieve perfection?

BECAUSE WE’RE NOT PERFECT! And that’s wonderful to know because we’re not asked to be.  That’s a decision we made on our own. Trust me I know.

I find myself in pursuit of a perfect day- EVERY DAY. Sometimes I manage getting up at the right time, reading something inspirational for one hour, and planning my day and then it’s downhill from there.

I take a phone call that I know I shouldn’t  but I’d definitely enjoy, that keeps me detained longer than I need to be and then I check email. And that’s the end of that! For the next hour and a half I am clicking and checking and reading and absorbing. But wait! This was NOT in my plans. I need to prepare the agreement/write the article/prepare for the radio show. OK. OK. Now I am quite flustered and then the voice in my head gets loud “why can’t you just do what you had planned to do? You loser! You could never get it right! Look at Jack, Geoff, Janine…how come they have it together and you don’t? That’s because they completed their University degree and were more disciplined than you – that’s why.”

With all this “head” talk another hour and a half has slipped by. “Ah well, it’s time for lunch. Let me see if I can get back on track after one o’clock.” Of course by now I have the motivation of a car driving on fumes! So instead of ‘trying to get myself back on track’ I call it a day and tell myself that I’ll try again tomorrow. You get the picture? Yes – call me Giselle hamster on the treadmill of my life.

So as I remind myself often – let me remind you – we are not perfect, nor were we meant to be.

But our wrestle with wanting to be perfect isn’t so simple. It isn’t just about the benchmarks and standards. It’s really about our fear of disconnection otherwise known as shame. Speaker and author Brene Brown explains this disconnection best in a talk she gave called “The Power of Vulnerability” – “Shame is really easily understood as the fear of disconnection: Is there something about me that, if other people know it or see it, that I won’t be worthy of connection? The things I can tell you about it: it’s universal; we all have it. The only people who don’t experience shame have no capacity for human empathy or connection. No one wants to talk about it, and the less you talk about it the more you have it. What underpinned this shame, this “I’m not good enough,” — which we all know that feeling: “I’m not blank enough. I’m not thin enough, rich enough, beautiful enough, smart enough, promoted enough.” The thing that underpinned this was excruciating vulnerability, this idea of, in order for connection to happen, we have to allow ourselves to be seen, really seen.”

We live so much outside of who we are, desperately trying to prove that which we are not. We yearn to be ‘a part of’ so much that we would do just about anything to be accepted into ‘the club.’ We wonder often about what ‘they’ would think. Who the hell is ‘they’? We come home from get- togethers feeling angry, depressed, emotionally drained and weirdly competitive. We spend a tremendous amount of our downtime trying to figure out and anticipate what someone in our group is going to say so we can craft our responses accordingly and project the most perfect image possible.

Have you ever had a situation occur where you felt comfortable enough to share something that you thought you would never let see the light of day. And then right after you shared it the person you shared it with made a disparaging comment and you felt small. And you struggled to make a comeback, to say well it wasn’t EXACTLY like that but with every step forward, your ‘friend’ continued to be condescending until finally she says something like “gosh I didn’t realize this was such a sensitive issue for you. Let’s talk about something else!” Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. That made you mad didn’t it? And then what do you do? That’s right – you go work on becoming perfect so that stuff like that won’t EVER happen again!

There is only ONE you and you’re not perfect but you’re here and not by chance but for good reason.  Sure you’re going to mess up and make mistakes and chip your toenails after applying the perfect coat. Yes there will be cobwebs in your house and occasionally dishes will pile up in the sink. And most of all there will remain stuff on your To-Do list that you never seem to get to, but that doesn’t make you a failure does it?

Today, I would like to ask you to give yourself permission to take yourself off the hook.  Nobody thinks you need to be perfect but you. And any time you feel overwhelmed by your struggle to be perfect, remember these words by Brene Brown from her book ‘The Gifts of Imperfection’ – “AUTHENTICITY is a daily practice. Choosing authenticity means cultivating the COURAGE to be imperfect, to set boundaries, to allow ourselves to be vulnerable; exercising the COMPASSION that comes from knowing that we are all made of strength and struggle and connected to each other through a loving and resilient human spirit; nurturing the CONNECTION and sense of belonging that can only happen when we let go of who we are supposed to be and embrace who we are. Authenticity demands WHOLEHEARTED living and loving – even when it’s hard, even when we’re wrestling with the shame and fear of not being good enough, and especially when the joy is so intense that we’re afraid to let ourselves feel it. “

Be who you were meant to be

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I am always amazed when I get a call or an email telling me about the difference that I am making in people’s lives.

This is not a boast post but just a post to say that we all have something that we need to share, to teach, to demonstrate, to stand for, to be an example to – SOMETHING – that SOMEONE out there who we don’t know yet needs to hear and see YOU.

I had two gifts today:

A gentleman called me following my radio program this morning on 103.5 FM. He told me that what I was saying was smack on, simple and the ideas I gave so practical and doable that he pushed himself into action – although today is a public holiday in Trinidad and Tobago – to do things that he initially was putting off until tomorrow.

The other was from a young woman who was responding to an article I wrote – published on April 17th called – Are you on the Right Road to Your Destiny?

She said:

“Your article was so uplifting! You captured my exact sentiments. It was as if you somehow knew that someone out there needed that encouragement; …And I cant seem to depart from the feeling that He [God]used you as a vessel to get to me.

I really want to encourage you in continuing your great work and I am certain that I was not the only person who benefited from your article!

It is definitely evident that this is YOUR destiny; what you were born to do.”

Think about how many people out their needing to hear your message.

Think about the numbers needing to see you DO YOUR DO so that they can have the confidence to do the same.

Isn’t this the true meaning of living well and loving? That we help others as we’re being helped along this journey called life?

I encourage you today to begin NOW, being who you were meant to be. This is not a time to copy or to ‘be like’ whoever. This is the time to be you.

Don’t be selfish. Share yourself. Share your gifts. Share your talents.

The riches transcend money. Just look at the gems I received today! :)

Who is she and what is she to you?

Posted in Developing the Possibilities Mindset, Practicing Self Mastery by

I was thinking about this in the context of the person I am today and whether or not I was being REAL – being ME? Or was it that I was an assortment of habits, perceptions and things that over the years I learned to accept as my truth when in fact I just borrowed it from the rule book of  “How to fit in and be accepted”? Of course I never bothered to read the fine print that came right after the title “and never be noticed or genuinely happy!”

Toni Raiten D’Antonio, author of the Velveteen Principles says “there is a difference between superficial beauty and the inner beauty we all possess as unique human beings. One is a product of the object culture, which reduces us to the things we own and the milestones we accomplish. The other is the result of a life well lived, where our struggles and challenges make us more lovable and truly ourselves. Inner beauty, the kind you can feel and others can see, is what happens when you stop chasing false ideals and become the REAL person you are meant to be.”

As a child I struggled a lot with wanting to be liked. But trying to fit in cost me a lot. I neglected my own intelligence and uniqueness and opted to be the very entertaining class clown. Many times I chose activities because they were what others wanted to do and I went along although most times I was unhappy.

I am getting better at getting to know this person that is me. I no longer get involved in activities that I find are a waste of my time. Now I can do it without making excuses or apologies.

I am still learning and growing – it is a process.

What about you – do you know the woman or man looking back at you in the mirror?

Judgments are destructive but we can always choose new beliefs and values based on who we are for REAL. We need to have self-empathy – be aware of our own idiosyncrasies, values, priorities, needs and feelings.

A person with self-empathy doesn’t struggle to think what everyone else is thinking or feel what everyone eles is feeling but values her responses and considers them when making choices and decisions.

Tune into your heart and mind as you go through this day. Get to know the REAL you!

Illustration from http://www.elev8.com featured in an article “Are you on a journey of self-discovery” by Judi Mason

Self doubt is a good indication that you’re doing this…

Posted in Developing the Possibilities Mindset, Practicing Self Mastery by

Have you noticed that right after you say you want to do something – set a goal that really is outrageous – something you’ve never done in your life – that self doubt begins to bubble up – almost on cue. What you do next is extremely important. You can continue thinking along the line of ‘it’s too hard to accomplish so I’ll try something else’ or you can ask yourself: “If it were not hard to accomplish, would I still want it?”

Your mind automatically starts chattering once you introduce a new possibility. So please – don’t panic. Begin to accept that once you introduce a radical idea to fulfill your deepest wishes you will get back talk. Check in with yourself to see if it’s coming from your mind, if you’re feeling it somewhere in your body, or you are reacting emotionally to it. Welcome it. Breathe into it. It’s actually the first sign that the possibility seed you planted is taking root.

So for example you might say “My life is a total success because I now run a thriving business doing what I love and helping people live more authentic lives.” The moment you say this to yourself aloud your mind might feed back a stream of back talk like “That’s impossible. You could NEVER do what you love AND make money. Why are you trying to tell people how to live anyway? Let people live their lives as they choose. It’s not your business if they’re suffering. You’re suffering! Right now you can’t even pay your rent regularly let alone support yourself without help from family members. Who are you fooling?”

How do you make a comeback after that? LOL

Well one things for sure, that back talk is coming from somewhere. Something in your past. Some experience that made your form a particular self limiting belief – old programming from your childhood right up to where you are now. So reach out and embrace the back talk. Learn from it. Be compassionate towards yourself and try to understand why you might be holding yourself back. What do you have to believe about you that you think you CAN’T do what your heart is singing to you that you CAN?

We all have the capacity to achieve so much more in our lives – much more than we give ourselves credit for. Take direction from your heart and then take the back talk info and fine tune it so that it harmonizes with your hearts desires.

If we get out hearts AND minds into harmony we will achieve all that we set out to.

 

5th Chakra image from http://www.ilchileefan.net
[A problem with the fifth Chakra translates into a lack of emotional control and rapid fatigue arising out of hypersensitivity to change.]

Be Authentic and Remain Open to Inspiration

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I have been reading and listening to Perry Marshall for quite some time now, especially his “Guerrilla Marketing for Hi-Tech Sales People” and he always shares great stuff. So of course when I saw the subject line in today’s email “The #1 Enemy you will conquer in your life is SHAME” I immediately clicked to read.

This was Perry’s email

THE most powerful destructive force in the human race is shame.

There is nothing that holds any of us back more than the fear and terror that others will judge us and reject us as not good enough. Not measuring up. Not feeling worthy.

That’s a big enough challenge when you’re a regular guy or gal, paying the bills and being married and raising teenagers and whatnot. When you’re an entrepreneur and everything you do takes a risk of being accepted or rejected, when there are no guarantees of anything, you experience everything 2X.

My friend Dan Mack of Mack Elevation Forum sent me this TED video. It’s one of the best descriptions I’ve ever seen of how we either embrace or avoid the real stuff of living; how we either fling ourselves into the full experience, or else medicate – and numb ourselves to life itself.

This gets to the heart of why some succeed and some fail, even when given the same tools and the same education. The #1 enemy you will conquer in your life is your fear of shame. Rise up, stare it down and face it.

I had never heard of Dr Brené Brown before but boy did her story resonate with me. I talk a lot about standing out and being authentic and I am convinced that we could all be that much more fulfilled in our lives if we were courageous enough to ask for what we wanted and stopped settling for less than we deserve. After listening to the brilliant presentation I went to Dr. Brown’s blog and there  I met Karen Walrond,  an original Trinbagonian and in an interview with her she  summarized the essence of fulfillment like this -

‘What are your greatest creative barriers?’

My own head.  Even though I’ve been writing and shooting full-time for about 2 years now, it’s still sometimes hard for me to think that perhaps I should have stayed in the corporate life that I’d built for myself prior to being a writer.

Then I remember how miserable I was and how happy I am now, and I feel worlds better. <—— This is EXACTLY what I’m talking about! :)

Check out Karen’s book…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

and begin seeing you for who you are, with everything that you love, and don’t love about yourself including your own vulnerability!

You are worthy of love and belonging…Let yourself be SEEN!

Sometimes it’s hard to welcome ALL guests

Posted in Practicing Self Mastery by

The person we want to be isn’t always the person we actually are at any given moment. When others reflect back to us those parts of ourselves we would prefer to ignore – it is painful. Many times we find feelings surfacing like resentment and annoyance that we’d prefer to think is not a part of who we really are. Yet Rumi reminds us in the poem ‘The Guest House’ – that we must entertain everybody!

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice.
meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.

Be grateful for whatever comes.
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

-Rumi; translation by Coleman Barks

Illustration from http://www.creativeeveryday.com

Stop Teaching and Start Doing the Work

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I’m sure you’re all familiar with the saying ‘We teach what we most need to learn’. Regardless of the service we provide – whether we are teachers, insurance executives, or massage therapists, we can often get so caught up in the “service part” to others that we forget to do our own work on ourselves.

If you’re not practicing what you’re preaching you are going to find yourself in a lot of hot water.  Before you go trying to sell anything that you do, you need to be sold yourself. Remember the last four letters in enthusiasm – IASM – I am sold myself! Use your own product – walk yourself through your service steps – are you happy?

Customers are like blood hounds when it comes to sniffing out authenticity. You need to believe in what you’re offering when everyone’s behind you but you definitely need to believe when others are laughing at you in your face.

I saw the movie “Wall Street” recently and in it one of the main characters – a young broker – is fully committed and betting on great things from a start up clean energy company. He talks about it in meetings, he brings it up any chance he has to, he’s telling other brokers about it and in the end almost loses much in his life because of it. He was willing to put his own money behind his recommendation. How many of us believe in what we’re doing to the point of being charismatic?

But this is not just about believing in your product or service, – sometimes you need to use the very thing that you’re recommending on yourself. At that point you must stop teaching and do the work.

For example – young lawyer Alex Neely was quite successful. She had her own law firm but avoided the issues around legal, insurance, finances and taxes – just a little too long. According to her not having her legal stuff set up right, and having the wrong insurance in place, messed up her financial systems and poor tax planning cost her nearly $800,000 plus stress, worry and heartache.

While we are busy recommending that others should get their taxes in order with our new XYZ software that makes filing income tax a breeze our own tax situation is horrific. Why don’t we do the work on ourselves? Well we think that if we keep our mouths shut and deal with our stuff quietly AND privately we won’t have to seem negative and maybe not have to admit just how painful whatever it is we’re going through really is. We are ashamed.

What we don’t realize is that we are not alone. There are others suffering just like us simply waiting for us to bring the truth into the light so that they can learn and perhaps find a solution to their trauma. These problems don’t have to bring us down but we must be willing to confront the shadows, quit avoiding it and transform it by bringing it into the light.

If you focus all your energy on making more and more money so you don’t have to deal with your own stuff and stuff that perhaps your own products or solutions might solve, then you’re in big trouble because no matter how much you work and how much money you make it would never be enough — not when what you’re doing is really a distraction to avoid looking at the things that are hard for you to look at – like in Alex’s case – the legal and financial parts of her business.

From ever since I first started to work, I’ve been studying how and why some people are successful in life – and why some people are NOT. It’s interesting the answer because it all comes down to a few key principles and techniques.

One of the most important things a person can do to make themselves successful – both personally and with money – is to access opportunity. The thing with opportunity, according to Robert Collier in “The Magic Word” is that the door to it is never ajar. Always closed we have to knock, we have to seek, we have to be persistent. Alex Neely created a LIFT foundation System and Toolkit – LIFT an acronym for Legal, Insurance, Finance and Taxes – showing others how to do business with their eyes wide open so they wouldn’t get taken – as she did.

Think about the nuggets you might find if you only stop teaching and start doing the work you’ve been avoiding – perhaps far too long!

Cartoon from http://www.bettercartoon.com

Choices have consequences, Choose authenticity!

Posted in Developing the Possibilities Mindset by

As published in the Express Woman Magazine October 3rd 2010 as part of the Women In Leadership Series where Dr. Marcia Reynolds and I explore the barriers that are still in the workplace and the world at large and help women confront their inner demons before they can find the peace they desperately seek. If they do this, their burdens can become joys and their restless spirits can become the passionate energy that helps them find, explore, and achieve their purposeful path.

Making choices will bring consequences, whether good or bad. This is obvious — I know. But why do people fail to grasp the magnitude of this reality? Why is it that we live our lives as if the choices we make have nothing to do with the results we are experiencing? We all know that we will reap what we sow – whether it is physical, financial, mental, emotional, or spiritual — it will come back to us multiplied. This increase can be incredibly good or terribly bad — depending on the seeds sown. Yet why don’t we pay more attention to the seeds?

Part of the reason is that we live unconsciously. We operate without thinking through or for that matter stopping to think why we make the choices we do. Of course not all consequences are bad and those are definitely consequences for making right choices.

Yet we’ve all experienced minor choices having a major impact on our lives.

The thing is you never know how large the impact may be from a seemingly minor choice. Like the little ones we make that are not in keeping with who we know we are, but yet we make them anyway because that’s what everyone else is doing! We don’t really like to go liming on a Friday and would prefer to stay home and work on our book project but we go anyway. We don’t really like being aggressive at work but that’s what is required to get the job done — so we’ve been told. We really like how the new hire in accounting is thinking and would like to get to know her better — perhaps become friends but mixing friends and business never works so instead you come across cold and aloof. You are about to sign a huge contract that could help your business through a particularly rough patch when some information regarding the reputation of the investor crosses your desk, and it’s not good. In fact it makes you feel uncomfortable yet you sacrifice your values because you feel that this is your only ticket out of the financial mess that you’re in.

How disciplined an individual are you? The rise and fall of discipline in your life, is really the rise and fall of you. Whenever you begin to display discipline in your life you get opposition. Ever tried quitting alcohol consumption for lent or “just because”? Most times someone will be all too willing to let you know that one drink won’t hurt. What about announcing that you would like to start writing from seven o’clock every morning? Why be so regimented some may enquire? Life needs variety — why don’t you relax a little?

The only things that do not require discipline are bad habits. It’s easy to follow this path of least resistance — we all have at some point in time in our lives. Every one of us has been given gifts and talents that no one else can do but us. It may seem humble to you and may appear as if anyone ought to be able to do it yet only you can do it in that particular way and do it supremely well. Sadly many of us get talked out of our dreams, or talked down from our goals because they are too lofty and settle for less because we choose to live a less than authentic life.

At the base of every building is a foundation. Were it not for a strong foundation the elements of the weather would bring any structure eventually to its knees. Similarly if you build your life on a foundation of integrity it shows in the long-term. Integrity includes taking 100 per cent responsibility for everything in your life, keeping your word, being honest, standing your ground for what you know to be right, never blaming others for your circumstances, and making conscious right choices.

When you choose authenticity then you choose to live with integrity. Think about all the times you thought you lost by choosing integrity only to realise that you did not lose anything in the long run. The truth always surfaces and what’s done in the dark always comes to light. When you compromise your authenticity and ultimately your integrity whatever you gain might be temporary at best but will bring you long-term hurt in the end. Being authentic and living with integrity is like the bedrock upon which anything can stand, no matter how high you go. Choose authenticity!

Giselle Hudson is a speaker, author, and master mind coach™, planting possibility seeds and unleashing the greatness in people who’ve never seen the greatness in themselves. If you want to learn more about the ideas written in this article or would like the FREE report “Standing at the Junction – How to Become your ‘Next’ Self”, send an email to womenleaderseries@gmail.com


Photo from http://www.momimprovement.com