Young Professional Development Blog Series

The Young Professional Development Blog Series is written and sponsored by: P3 Peak Performance 

Authenticity

Greek word: Authenteos-> that which we do with our own hands.
Trial and error. Being playful with your sense of self. Firm iterations, not firm ideas. Lion and the child, not the camel.
Courage to say “forget fitting in”.

How many times have we found ourselves in a conversation with someone that is full of it? We all know at least one person, family member or coworker. Always trying to sell you on who they are, or promote themselves with every chance they get to speak. But how do you know that’s not you?

How do you know how you are coming across to others? Who do they think YOU are?

Get to know yourself how others know you.

Well first, you’d need to ask. The fascinating thing about feedback is that it is totally necessary and crucial to our progress in life yet most of us have learned how to totally avoid it. For people that love giving honest feedback, they know that it doesn’t “make people happy”. Remember that critique is an art and it is important to understand that if someone doesn’t already respect you, they won’t respect your feedback.

So whose feedback do you respect? Who gives you the real answer and doesn’t sugar coat it or try to manage your feelings? Are the people around you dedicated to pleasing you or building authentic connections?

Therein lies the primary issue with getting to know ourselves, we may have surrounded ourselves with a lot of “yes sir”, “yes ma’am” followers and nobody that gives it to us straight.

“Fake friends write the wrong answers on the mirror for me” -Lil Wayne, Right Above It

Be thankful for honest feedback.

Imagine yourself at the dinner table and your mom or dad is telling you all the things that they are worried about… Do you get defensive? If you do, there is a better response: Thank you for caring enough about me to be honest with me.

Often we are defensive after we get some feedback, but the more triggered, the more true. If someone were to call you what you are not, then you would experience no emotion. You’d think “who cares?” But when someone says something that lands, we can feel our response build and grow inside of us. If you call an honest man a liar, he will be indifferent. If you call a dishonest man a liar, he might hurt you.

The point is that we have conditioned ourselves to react a certain way to our emotions and beliefs about ourselves. So when someone critiques us, instead of accepting it, we deflect it and continue on being whatever we are being.

Try saying thank you instead, even if they are dead wrong, it is good practice for patience.

Achieve consistency and be committed.

In scientific experiments, there are the dependent and independent variables, and the constants. The dependent are dependent upon the outcome, they are the measured data. Whereas the independent variables are manipulated in the experiment. As humans, free will enables us to view everything as impermanent, ever-changing. Constants are the most important variables to focus on though, this helps scientists understand their results and enables replicated and repeated testing.

In science, this might be temperature, size, pH, or instrumental measures, but in everyday life, we use values.

How we stick to our values is how we are typically judged. Same as an experiment can be unreliable, a friend can be untrustworthy. The way an experiment can be inaccurate, we can have unrealistic beliefs about ourselves and our abilities.

“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” -Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning

We might not be able to choose what happens and we end up having, we may not even be able to choose what we are forced to do to get by and make ends meet, but we can choose who we are going to be, what attitude we are choosing to have in any given set of circumstances.

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