Achieving Complete Authenticity – Dreams vs Goals
by Darcy G. Shenfield
Authenticity is being true to who you are and what is important to you. That seems pretty simple, but let’s take a closer at being completely authentic?
Complete Authenticity is when every thought and feeling you have and every action you take is a pure expression of who you are and what’s important to you. This seems much more challenging, if not impossible, because of “every”.
Using myself as an example, given that I have discovered that at the core I am love expressed through enjoying and caring, when I’m experiencing anger and frustration, I know I’m not being authentic.
Further, I know that if I look under the frustration, I’ll see a hurt or a wound that needs healing. As soon as I heal that wound, I’m back to loving, enjoying and caring for myself and others.
When I get frustrated, it’s usually because I focused on the results, not on the process.
Complete authenticity is realized when thoughts, feelings and actions are in alignment with yourself. There is nothing in authenticity that points to results. Instead, authenticity points to the process of thinking, feeling, and acting.
Being inauthentic is easy to do in the workplace because we’re often driven by results.
So how can we focus on results and keep our authenticity?
Split results into two categories, dreams and goals:
- Goals are desires that you have control over.
- Dreams are desires that you do NOT have control over.
In other words, goals are thoughts, feelings, and actions that we can execute simply based on our free will. For example, I can set a goal of writing and self-publishing an article every month. A dream would be to have 100,000 people read an article I wrote and discover something about themselves.
The process of how you get to your goals and the result of achieving your goals is within your control.
It’s natural to stay authentic when your process and your results are aligned with who you are and what’s important to you. Minor disturbances, setbacks, and missteps may result in minor frustration, but can easily be returned to authenticity by remembering the process and results are in your control, adjust course and keep going.
By contrast, if you’re focused on your dream becoming realized for feedback and self-evaluations, while ignoring or downplaying your process and goals, authenticity can quickly be lost and hard to regain. For example, you’ve fallen into the illusion that you have full control over your dream of having 100,000 people read your article.
The bottom line is that the process of working is where you find authenticity, not the results of working.
This makes the difficult challenge of being completely authentic simple: focus on your process and what is in your control at work, leaving the rest as a desire that you curiously move toward.
If you’re not sure what first steps to take in moving forward, Authenticity Academy’s team and individual workshops provide the proper framework for taking inspired action. Explore your options here.
