Article: Your Authentic (Business) Life

Article, “Your Authentic (Business) Life,” as seen in Aspire Magazine

“The unexamined life is not worth living.”

Socrates is credited with uttering these words as he decided his own fate, choosing death over exile for the crime of encouraging his students to challenge conventional thinking of the time and think for themselves. For him, the idea of a passive life, devoid of original thought was intolerable. Fortunately, most of us don’t have to make such a dramatic choice when it comes to living a life we can be proud of, but facing the truth about the life we are leading can lead to a certain amount of discomfort.

It’s the nagging feeling you have when you wake up to face a new day or take stock at the end of your day that, somehow, life has passed you by. It’s the sense that life is happening to you, rather than that you are in charge of your life. This discordance between how you want to live and how you actually live manifests itself in a number of ways, from a vague feeling that something is a little off the mark to a deep ache that just won’t go away. Finding out how you can shift the quality of your life begins with an examination of your values.

Each of us has a different set of values, or principles, that we hold dear above others. Losing touch with these values creates an imbalance because we’re no longer honoring our true selves. If you value self-expression, but find your attempts at expressing your ideas and creativity are suppressed at work and/or at home, you’re likely feeling dissatisfied. If integrity is important to you, but your work or personal life requires you to behave otherwise, you probably feel you’re being asked to betray yourself. We might lose touch with our values in our personal relationships, our work environment, or our behaviors. Getting realigned means being authentic to your true self. Know that when you have identified the values that resonate most with you, it’s much easier to make decisions about your professional and personal lives that you can live with – and live with happily. Think of it as your own individual recipe for satisfaction.

The values exercise in our book, The Sassy Ladies’ Toolkit for Start-up Businesses, helps you determine whether the business you want to run supports your values; however, the same exercise can be used to test whether you’re being true to yourself in other aspects of your life as well. And if you feel your intuition tugging at you to make a change in your life, it might interest you to know that the word “intuition” comes from Latin roots and means “the act of looking at;” in other words, your true self is sending you a clear signal to live a more examined life.

VALUES EXERCISE

This is an abridged version of the values exercise in The Sassy Ladies’ Toolkit for Start-up Businesses, but it will give you an idea of how to examine your work and personal life to be sure you’re being true to your self.

List the three values that are most important to you. (For example: adventure, altruism, community, creativity, ease, elegance, freedom, harmony, independence, integrity, joy, learning, risk-taking, stability, teamwork, etc.) Then write down how your job, business, or relationships honor these values. If you have trouble making the connection, you’ve uncovered an opportunity to lead a more authentic life.

How my work life supports my values:

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How my home life supports my values:

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How my relationship with _______________________ supports my values:

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The Sassy Ladies are proud to support Aspire Magazine’s “Mission to Inspire 100,000 Women” in 2010. Please visit AspireMag.net to learn more and to subscribe to their free digital edition.

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