Adaptive Freedom

The call to authentic living is a challenging one because it essentially means to believe in yourself and you may find this too risky. It may be easier and safer to be like others—part of the crowd, or to be what others have consistently told you that you are, to conform to the “you” that gets the approval you crave.
To answer the call of authentic living is risky because it means stepping out, standing up, and saying no, when most of your life up to this point may have involved stepping aside, standing down, and saying yes even when your inner spirit wanted to do otherwise. You may have become conditioned to stay quiet rather than speak out through the harsh lessons life has taught you. Nothing ventured nothing lost! It may appear that the safest thing is not to venture beyond the comfort zone you have created for yourself.
We find it easy to deceive ourselves. Despite its obvious shortcomings we are good at convincing ourselves that our life is fine, that we are living to the limits of our potential and see no need for change. But perhaps we haven’t counted those little bits of passion, intensity of feeling or flights of fancy that we have lost along the way. We may be secure, settled, sincere, satisfied and that may amount to a sense of a fulfilled life (in which case it is authentic) or it may amount to a barely perceptible sense of loss, unease, anguish or anxiety (in which case it is a stagnant life).

Connection is vital to living a free and authentic life and this is reflected in its central place in the 7 Pillars of the Freedom Code. A new slant on the importance of social interconnection comes from Steve Pavlina’s Personal Development Insights Newsletter #42. Steve identifies a lack of abundance in life as stemming from your beliefs about money. “Money is communication” he writes and “More often than not, the problem is that you're trying to make money in ways that could be described as socially inept.” He argues that strong social skills create financial abundance. In a compelling and well thought out ending he suggests that financial abundance stems from:

1. Your ability to proactively befriend intelligent, resourceful people and add them to your social network.
2. Your ability to inspire people to refer helpful opportunities to you (resources, leads, clients, etc).
3. Your ability to serve as a positive source of inspiration and opportunities for others (maintaining win-win connections).
4. Your ability to prune and release dead-weight relationships (avoiding win-lose and lose-lose connections).
Steve believes that people who suffer financially generally make the following social mistakes:
1. They often behave as loners and spend a lot of time alone or with the same few people (social isolationists).
2. They frequently suffer from approach anxiety and low self-esteem, which discourages them from initiating new connections and creating social expansion (social timidity).
3. They clutter their social lives with losers who have little to offer in terms of support, resources, and skill-building (low standards).
4. When they do meet intelligent and resourceful people, they act passively and fail to establish new friendships (lack of intitiative).
5. They remain loyal to a pity posse that consistently blocks good referrals with fear, jealousy, or sarcasm (clinginess).
Read more from Steve at www.stevepavlina.com