Have you ever had that experience? You go and you watch a movie, and the actors there, they virtually make you weep. They’re so profound, they’re so good.
And later on some late night show, you actually get to watch an interview from one of these actors, and, gosh, they’re just not very smart. Not at all. And you think to yourself, what is going on here?
But of course, they’re just actors. They’re just actors. They’re not that smart in real life, but the lines were truly wonderful.
So authenticity, authenticity is a big issue today. One of my students told me that many of her classmates are, in her words, false, inauthentic. They’re not really their true selves.
They make up who they are, who they could be. They try to copy or emulate perhaps a Korean star or an American star or perhaps one of their classmates, but they’re not really true. And, you know, let’s be fair.
This is acceptable within reason in young people, but at some point in life, at some point we have to become authentic, the real person.
And this troubles me in a way because the personal brand, which we’ve spoken about before, is a very unique concept. Am I a Porsche, a Nike or a Mercedes-Benz? Who am I?
But of course, if I am a Porsche, a Nike or a Mercedes-Benz and I have no engine, the car obviously could not drive. So the personal brand has gone to represent the real me, the person who I truly am.
Now, what does that mean? Well, my phone receives, let’s say, around 100,000 bits of data every single day. A lot of it confusing, a lot of it negative, a lot of it just not true at all.
So how am I going to find the real me? An ad nauseum, I know, but the notebook. Gotta get a notebook.
Who’s my teacher? Myself, myself. Gotta get the notebook and write in it every single day.
It’s not a journal, it’s not a diary, it’s a book of my spontaneous thoughts, the real me here, right? And over time, these will coalesce into a being, a real person. Now that real person at 20 years old, of course, is unsophisticated.
They don’t really know where they’re going, for sure.
But once again, like we discussed before, if they can imagine, if you can imagine this serenity point, this serenity point in the future, where everything will be okay, then you’re given license to discover who you really are in your life.
And sometimes you’re uncovering things, perhaps that aren’t acceptable to your parents or to your friends. Gosh, but you’ve got to go with it within reason. And I know we need a livelihood and I know we need an income and all those things, right?
We’re all the same. But in this consciousness, you have one life, one life. And you must live it well, live it well.
Young lady in the shop recently, I asked her how she was doing and she said, not very well. And I said, why, what’s wrong? What’s going on?
She said, I just failed my test. And I said to her, did you do 100%? And she said, yes, absolutely.
I said, well, then it’s a systems problem. You perhaps didn’t understand the material, but it’s not you. It’s not on you.
It’s on the test because the test tests the test. The test does not test me. So the more I research me, the more I knock at the door to me, the more the doors will open and then I will grow and down and down and down.
And ultimately, I believe there’s a real being there, a being that can give you love and it can give you tranquility and can give you peace, right? Which is, I think, what we all want. We all want happiness in this life, of course.
But once again, it’s a process. We got to work at it. We got to work at it.
It’s very, very hard to be happy in this world, as we’ve said before, easy to be unhappy. So what am I going to do?
Well, I think if you really believe that you can be authentic, the first thing you have to say to yourself, one of the major criterion is that you have to believe that you can be truthful with yourself firstly, and secondly, with others.
You have to learn to be truthful without being hurtful for sure. And if you’re truthful with yourself, right, then authenticity as a rule tends to come to you.
Now you think to yourself, hmm, I really want to be a painter in my heart, quite truly, but I know it’s not going to make any money, and my parents are telling me it’s a terrible career, blah, blah, blah.
And I have a choice at some point, because I will know in my heart what’s good for me. And if I do some artificial job, I will suffer.
I was reading recently about a poor man, he’s 80 years old, and they interviewed him, and he said, you get rich beyond God. Did you live a good life? He said, no, no, not at all.
I wanted to be an engineer. And he was in some other form, shoes or something. An engineer, yes, but my father said, there’s no money in engineering.
So I got into the shoe business and I thought, wow, that’s a shocking revelation at 80 years of age. You haven’t been truthful to yourself.
One time, one time I was feeling a little ill and I stopped quite late, I think it was nine o’clock or something, and there was a clinic open still. So I went inside and there was a nice doctor there and chatted away. He was extremely friendly.
And we find out he’s got two daughters, I got two sons. And so I said to him, Doctor, you must love being a doctor. And he looked at me with that kind of that deer in the headlights, kind of stupid look, like, are you mad?
And I was kind of shocked and he said, I hate being a doctor. I always wanted to be a lawyer like my wife. It’s a lot more fun, I’m sure.
And then he said, but you look a little sick. Would you like some medicine? Doctor, you can’t believe it.
I suddenly feel fine. Ask yourself, would you take medicine from a doctor who hates being a doctor? Now, how could you live out an inauthentic life?
How? Defies imagination, right? Doesn’t it?
Honestly, if you have one life in this consciousness, wouldn’t you at the very least be true to you? Wouldn’t you? I hope the answer is yes.
And it’s hard to be true to you. It takes time. I know this personally.
To do what I do right now, it’s taken me a very long time, virtually my lifetime, to get here, right? I had to raise money, I had children, and all those things. But in the end, I got to do what I wanted to do, and you can too.
You can too. That’s the point of human existence, happiness. Really is.
Aristotle says this, we got to work at it, right? And think to yourself, my gosh, do your best. Do your best, like I said before, in all circumstances, right?
Always excellence. Why not? So think about authenticity, right?
Ponder it. Authenticity, when it comes relative to my personal brand, I want to represent myself. Honestly, my brand has got to be honest outside, and it’s got to be honest inside.
Got to be honest inside. I cannot be fake, as they say, disingenuous. No way.
Because people will find out. They will find out. Little story, I like to wear this little bow tie, right?
And so one day, I went to work with school, came back, changed into my gym shorts or whatever at home, and a man phoned me with the camera on. I really didn’t think anything of it. And then he passed the camera to another individual.
And the individual said to me, wow, did you just wake up? Boy, you’re not very well dressed. I was very embarrassed.
Never forgot this. I was inauthentic to him, to this man. I could never claim that I like to wear bow ties.
I mean nothing to him inauthenticity. So be truthful to yourself. Be authentic throughout.
Takes time to discover, but you will, I’m sure. And you know what they say. You know what they say.
Critical thinking is everything, especially if you truly want to be authentic to yourself and to your loved ones and to the society. And critical thinking is great, truly great. You take care.
God bless. Bye bye.