All of us have something in common in this world: we are alive. Life is a gift, one that we often take for granted. Many of us don’t live to our fullest potential. Healthy living and happiness are your two best friends, the key to enjoying your time here on Earth. That said, it’s about the simple things in life. It doesn’t matter what you achieve if you cannot appreciate what you have.
There is something simple to strive for in authenticity versus fame: Your own well-being is more important than any type of outer success. There is a direct correlation between health and happiness. Take care of your body and it will take care of you.
While physical health is the obvious way to improve your well-being, mental and emotional health are just as important. Being healthy in all three areas takes ambition. You have to want it and often want it more than anything else.
Be willing to fight and suffer for something you believe in. This will ensure that you take pride in what you do. You need problems to solve versus shameless self-promotion. Innovate your uniqueness, even when the competition tries to copy you. Genius is coming at something from your own angle, as mentioned in Ted Talk by Jacob Barnett Forget What You Know.
Your inner life defines you. Wellbeing, health, and happiness are harder to achieve than fame and success. Authenticity is more worthwhile because it is about problem solving and purpose. Popularity and self-promotion for the sake of seeking celebration drives us away from truly solving problems that work. This is the behavior of frauds.
Frauds and experts combat one another in the media; Pseudoscience is an example of a problem that comes from people deciding they have solved a problem when they have forgotten – correlation is not causation. Agenda and bias run rampant because people are simply trying to make a name for themselves. They offer us quick-fixes or snake oil, they don’t solve our problems in the long term. There are many famous frauds. Are they timeless? The answer is no. Those who truly solve problems and create change have a stronger timelessness.
What is a fraud? A person standing in as an expert who has put more into image, connections and copying others than their own authenticity. An expert is a self-made strategist which is made by the strength of the content….AND character. They want to change the world. Purposeful Product. As Guy Kawasaki notes in many of his literature on start-ups, a lot of people in the Silicon Valley, for instance, focus on trying to get themselves out in self-promotion instead of problem-solving. A so-called inventor may buy the patents of others and pass them off as his own. A professor at a university might steal the research of his students.
This is about innovation. Look at the world from your own unique angle. Jacob Barnett talks about this in his Ted Talk, Forget What You Know. Genius also comes from approaching problems like a child. Observing and seeing things that no one else can see. Too often we get wrapped in the big picture, obsessing over every complex, intricate detail when true innovation starts in seeing something simple. A way to make something more efficient or effective, knowing that solving a problem for yourself with solving it for others. This can be applied to any circumstance. If someone copies or competes with the problem you solve, this allows an opportunity to innovate something greater and to become more uniquely authentic.
It’s like Dorothy from Wizard of Oz. She had the red slippers to walk the yellow brick road the entire time. What are your red slippers? And are you walking the right road? The authentic road? If you are, then there’s only one key you need to open the gates to the problem that needs to be solved. That’s walking with purpose. One step at a time is all you have to see it as. Persistence is the key to each battle. Power struggles will occur- people may try to trip you or take what you have. In those cases, this is an investment in learning and much like Dorothy being prevented from going home at the end of her walk, eventually, you will get there. You will click your own heels and find a new way.
The simple key in life is to not give up on yourself.
“Happiness, true happiness, is an inner quality. It is a state of mind. If your mind is at peace, you are happy. If your mind is at peace, but you have nothing else, you can be happy. If you have everything the world can give – pleasure, possessions, power – but lack peace of mind, you can never be happy.”
Great post. Very spot on.