Thursday, September 7, 2017

Building relationships with authenticity

Authenticity is about owning who you are. Timidity (or worse, outright dishonesty) about your true character is an insidious repellent to making real friendships. The people who actually would be your friends won't see that they have anything in common with you if you aren't real with them. 

Defend the things you care about


Don't let anybody trash talk what's important to you. Your religion, your family, your livelihood, your person. Don't shy away from having an argument with someone you should argue with. That's much better than secretly resenting that person and communicating that your convictions don't really matter that much to you. In defending your convictions, you strengthen your ability to have them.

If you're ashamed of something, figure out if you should be


I know some people will disagree with me (but I'm owning it anyway), but there are some things that we do that we really should be ashamed of. I think the best gauge to use is the law of God, since it's not subjective like your own ideas about morality. 

Given that we're talking about making radical changes to the way we live, I only want the best standard to tell me how I should and shouldn't live. And that's going to be looking back to Moses, to the psalms and proverbs, the thundering of Isaiah, the sermons of Jesus, and the writings of Paul.

If it's something that really is shameful, let it go


The key to authenticity is making your public self and your private self the same person. If you can't do that because you're rightly ashamed of yourself, then you'll always keep your true friends at bay. The only person you're fooling is yourself if you think you can lead a double life, because you won't be able to lead either life very well. It's an ugly thing to love something that you can't share with the world.



Authenticity has important applications in network marketing. It's why it's so important to really believe in the industry and the products your company offers because people will see right through you if you don't. You'll have no desire or interest in talking about it if you secretly hate your company. True convictions are contagious.

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