Making Authenticity Personal: Part 3

Justin Oberndorf: I honestly believe you know it's, it's thrown around a lot authenticity or be authentic. Be your authentic self, um, and when I look at it that way, to me, authenticity is, is real, is truth, um, it just kind of equates to truth. Uh, break. Be your true self. You know, don't do it for others, but really reflect and be authentic with the situation. Don't do it in order to, don't be authentic, in order to please be authentic, because that's what we're here for, is to find our true, authentic self and then show up.

And so to me, it's, it's the word, I would say, synonymous with truth, raw. I know that has a negative connotation, but to me, I think the truest form of us is we're not perfect, and that's awesome. That's who you know we are authentic selves, and so that's what authenticity means to me. Show up and be yourself.

Meridith Grundei: What does authenticity mean to me? Authenticity to me means showing up as yourself unapologetically, and allowing people to see your heart, yeah, allowing yourself to be vulnerable and show up authentically, yeah, I would, that's it. Show up unapologetically, be yourself, allow all of your quirks to shine through and being present. Being present, I love that question, because we hear that word a lot these days, don't we?

Taylor Short: Authenticity to me, you guys even told me that I was going to be asked this question. Authenticity to me means that you were just being your real self. Simple as that. 

Cristina Amigoni: Beautiful, simple.

Amanda Gulino: It's the most honest honesty, and the truthfulness that we could come up with that ultimately, is what authenticity is, to me, is, I think we talked about it earlier, where who we are on the inside, we feel like whether or not we would always make a choice, but we could choose to reflect that on the outside, right? And that's welcomed. And well, that's a different conversation, but like, it's the insides matching the outsides to me, is authenticity. And can I show up here with my thoughts, my truth, my honesty? That's it. That's ultimately it for me. When it's unique to every person, that's what I love. That's why I find it so hard to describe authenticity, because it's gonna be different for all of us. I think that's what's so special about the concept,

Scott Miller: My definition of authenticity, you know, it probably is finding congruence between what is your public life and your private life and your secret life. Because, right, everyone's got a public life and everyone's got a private life, and then everyone has a secret life. And, you know, in 2022 it's probably more acceptable, more encouraged, more compelling, more requisite, to bring congruence to your public life and your personal life and your secret life. Now, if your secret life is that of, you know, a mass killer, then no, don't bring congruence to that. 

Most of us should feel more and more comfortable about bringing alignment and congruence with all three of those. Now someone goes out on secret life. No, no, I think everyone is single. I do well, do that perhaps your spouse doesn't know about right or, or he's your ex-spouse because now he doesn't know about it, or because it was secret, and, you know, obviously use good judgment on all of that, but I do think that's something I'm striving towards to really figure out. 

So what parts of my life are a secret, and why are they a secret, and why do I not feel comfortable sharing them, talking about them, acting on them, whether it be courage, whether it be someone's dreams, whether it be someone's sexuality or orientation, or whether someone's fears, whether it's someone's passion that is their secret, and they're not yet comfortable, you know, going first or going at all. 

So maybe a long answer to your question, but it's bringing congruence between your public, your private and your secret lives. I'm not sure 10 years ago I could have said that comfortably, because I don't think most corporations were ready for people to bring congruency between their public and their private life, let alone their secret life. 

Now, of course, you know that can become a distraction, kind of not if you're bringing your secret life and your private life to the workplace every hour every day, you have to use good judgment and all things and maybe moderation, know your audience, know your setting. But I think now, like never before in our generation, in our lifetime, is society, our organizations, more willing to have you bring congruence between the three. So that's what I'd say. I didn't rehearse that. That's kind of what I'm feeling.

JC Quintana: Oh, that's a good one. So I. Give you the perspective of an old married man of you know, years and years of marriage, and what I found applicable to business as well. And Brene Brown. You all know Brene Brown's work, you know, I learned a lot from her work and her workshops and her books. I think I may have every one of her books here being who you are despite your fault, right. 

Now, I'm not going to show it to you, but four years ago, I had a stroke, and it paralyzed me. Half of my body was completely paralyzed. I was in the hospital. They thought I was going to die, I was going to survive it, and I ended up getting a tattoo for the first time in my life, and it is an enso circle, which is kind of being changed to have the birth colors of my five children. And instead of it being a circle as an enso circle painting that ends, you know, flat, it actually ends in a flow of water. 

And what I tell people is, the cool thing about an enso circle is that you are to paint the circle continuously, and the result of that circle, regardless of its imperfection, is still a reflection of its creator, right? And that's authenticity. Is owning that, right? Owning that your work, your life's work, who you are as individual is the result of its creator in its imperfection. If you're willing to tell people that and you're open to learn from it, then you're being truly authentic. If you can reach out to people and allow them to be part of your journey to being a better human being, then you're being authentic, right? So we all define it differently. That's my definition, and it comes from my own personal journey

Lyn Wineman: I love that question, and it's a hard question too, right? I mean, honestly, if I'd been more prepared, I would have just looked it up and taken inspiration from the dictionary, but since I didn't, we'll just have to go with what's in my brain. And I think, to me, authenticity is being very comfortable, comfortable enough in your own skin and in your own situation that you can be exactly who you are, right? There's there's not that fear of having to pretend or having to act, but you're just exactly who you are,

Bill Powell: Being your highest best self at all times, even when you don't want to, or you don't feel like you can, and still sticking your neck out to do.

Betsy Westhafer: My definition of authenticity is when after you have engaged with someone, you don't replay it in your head, wondering how you could have done it differently.

Becca Marshall: So authenticity, in reflecting on this, I think there's two pieces. And one is there's authenticity as, like, the definition of authenticity, and then there's like, to live authentically, and the being authentic. And I think that there's, you know, of course, similarity in there, like, how do we know how to live it in practice, if we don't know what it is we're aiming for. And so I feel like in its, perhaps its simplest form, for me, authenticity is truth and living from the truth of my being, or from the truth of one's being in any given moment at any time, to the best of our ability, despite the impermanence of things, right, the ever changing nature and evolvement of self, of situations, of whatever to show up to our truth. To show up to my truth in practice is authenticity in action.

Aaron Velky: I really led with an easy one. I used to think that authenticity was saying what was unexpected. It just punched you, and therefore it was authentic. Now I believe that authenticity is saying what hasn't been spoken. That very much needs to be said, and that often comes with a degree of cost to the speaker.

Sarah Filman: Authenticity, to me, means your actions align with your values and beliefs, the true values and beliefs that you hold that are stripped of the shoulds, stripped of the have tos, stripped of the fear, yeah, and your actions aligning to those things. Yeah.

Gareth Evans: Authenticity, taking the mask off, being you, being who you are, being in the moment, getting after it.

Jude Schweppe: Authenticity, that is such a big question. I think it is embracing every facet and side of who you are, and making no apology for it, while being kind, if that makes sense, and showing up with all your flaws and your color and your humanness and your creativity and connecting with people in a way that they know that they are seen by you and that they are understood by you and they are heard by you. That's a really convoluted answer. Be yourself.

Cristina Amigoni: But be kind about it. 

Jude Schweppe: Be yourself and be kind. Yeah, be yourself and be kind. 

Yeah. I'm sure there's a whole book on how to show up authentically, but it's been a real journey for me to embrace all of my foibles and my flaws and all of the things that drive people mad about me and knowing that it comes from a genuine place. And if you can put that out into the world and all your craziness with kindness. I think you can't go too far wrong. Hopefully. 

Gabe Ratliff: I've been doing - are you familiar with Positive Intelligence? Shirzad Chamine. 

Cristina Amigoni: Heard of it. 

Alex Cullimore: Heard of the idea. Haven’t read into it.

Gabe Ratliff: It's powerful stuff. My coach, one of my coaches, got me started on this. This work in Positive Intelligence. And it's this wonderful aspect of it's actually ties into your two brains and our saboteurs, our master judge and his accomplice, saboteurs, the pleaser, the hyper achiever, all these people, the restless. There's nine of them. And then you have your Sage, and there's five sages, and that's your other side of your brain. We have two brains, right? 

So what's happened is, over the years, and I'm not going to leave the longest answer here, I'm going to be quick, over the years, right? We keep going. We keep like I mentioned from my own story, we keep going to our saboteurs to save us. And so we think that they're serving us, and we get away from our sage and how the difference between one and the other is the saboteurs and our master judge come from a place of judgment, which we see all over, right? We see it in social media. We see it in the news. We see it everywhere, finger pointing and you did them blaming and blame shifting and all this stuff, right? And that's all judging and saboteurs, right? It's all this work that needs to take place inside. 

Meanwhile, the sage just comes from a place of discernment, this positive side. And so, to answer your question, what I've come to learn in doing this work and this practice of connecting with our Sage is, it's our, it's our, it's our, like deep down, untouched child self. It's that little version of us, and in the way that he did this, in the exercise I'm actually working on it this week is looking at a childhood photo of yourself and remembering how you showed up back then, right before all the stuff happened, before all those bad things happened and brought the saboteurs up to help, help you, right? And like for me, the three things that came up was imaginative, playful and caring. Those were the three words that came up for me when I was looking back at my little photo with my mom and just this cute little toe head kid, right? Just big glasses, kind of goofy and and the way that he speaks to it is like, that kid is still inside us. 

I remember growing up, my mom, she's she said this to me, like, every, every once in a while she'd be like, there's still that young version of me inside. It's just, you know, my outside is getting older, and that stuck with me for so long, and now that's what connects with me when I hear this right in this work with PQ, is that that's really what's happening, right? Like, that's our soul, that's our spirit, that's that young. You know, they make, they talk about Peter Pan con complex and the wanting to, like a lot of guys, have the Peter Pan complex and all this stuff. And I think we all have it, right? 

Like, we there's like, that little kid inside that wants to play and just enjoy, but we have all this stuff on the outside that we've had to deal with and go through and manage and struggles and challenges and all this stuff, and being adults, right, all that, and then having families and kids and grandkids and all that stuff, and there's money and investments and houses and right, all of these things we have to juggle, insurance, health, all of this stuff that we juggle, that like puts these layers on. And his example was about, have you heard the example about the Golden Buddha that they covered? 

So there was this golden Buddha. It was like, it was like 12,000 pounds of gold, 15 karat gold. But when these marauders came into their town, to their village, they had, they had covered it and it so it looked cheap and old and like not worth anything. And so they stole everything else out of these temples, everything else. And then 1955 they discover this Buddha is covered with this cheap material, but underneath is 15,000 pounds of 15 karat gold, 12,000 pounds of 15 karat gold, just so. And they saved it. And it's gorgeous, absolutely gorgeous, Buddha, but they saved it by having it covered with that. 

And so in his example, that's what we've done. We've covered ourselves with all of this, like cheap layers to protect ourselves. That's our saboteurs. But inside is our sage. And it's just like, golden, right? It's this golden person inside. And so to me, that's being our authentic selves.