Choices have consequences, Choose authenticity!

As published in the Express Woman Magazine October 3rd 2010 as part of the Women In Leadership Series where Dr. Marcia Reynolds and I explore the barriers that are still in the workplace and the world at large and help women confront their inner demons before they can find the peace they desperately seek. If they do this, their burdens can become joys and their restless spirits can become the passionate energy that helps them find, explore, and achieve their purposeful path.

Making choices will bring consequences, whether good or bad. This is obvious — I know. But why do people fail to grasp the magnitude of this reality? Why is it that we live our lives as if the choices we make have nothing to do with the results we are experiencing? We all know that we will reap what we sow – whether it is physical, financial, mental, emotional, or spiritual — it will come back to us multiplied. This increase can be incredibly good or terribly bad — depending on the seeds sown. Yet why don’t we pay more attention to the seeds?

Part of the reason is that we live unconsciously. We operate without thinking through or for that matter stopping to think why we make the choices we do. Of course not all consequences are bad and those are definitely consequences for making right choices.

Yet we’ve all experienced minor choices having a major impact on our lives.

The thing is you never know how large the impact may be from a seemingly minor choice. Like the little ones we make that are not in keeping with who we know we are, but yet we make them anyway because that’s what everyone else is doing! We don’t really like to go liming on a Friday and would prefer to stay home and work on our book project but we go anyway. We don’t really like being aggressive at work but that’s what is required to get the job done — so we’ve been told. We really like how the new hire in accounting is thinking and would like to get to know her better — perhaps become friends but mixing friends and business never works so instead you come across cold and aloof. You are about to sign a huge contract that could help your business through a particularly rough patch when some information regarding the reputation of the investor crosses your desk, and it’s not good. In fact it makes you feel uncomfortable yet you sacrifice your values because you feel that this is your only ticket out of the financial mess that you’re in.

How disciplined an individual are you? The rise and fall of discipline in your life, is really the rise and fall of you. Whenever you begin to display discipline in your life you get opposition. Ever tried quitting alcohol consumption for lent or “just because”? Most times someone will be all too willing to let you know that one drink won’t hurt. What about announcing that you would like to start writing from seven o’clock every morning? Why be so regimented some may enquire? Life needs variety — why don’t you relax a little?

The only things that do not require discipline are bad habits. It’s easy to follow this path of least resistance — we all have at some point in time in our lives. Every one of us has been given gifts and talents that no one else can do but us. It may seem humble to you and may appear as if anyone ought to be able to do it yet only you can do it in that particular way and do it supremely well. Sadly many of us get talked out of our dreams, or talked down from our goals because they are too lofty and settle for less because we choose to live a less than authentic life.

At the base of every building is a foundation. Were it not for a strong foundation the elements of the weather would bring any structure eventually to its knees. Similarly if you build your life on a foundation of integrity it shows in the long-term. Integrity includes taking 100 per cent responsibility for everything in your life, keeping your word, being honest, standing your ground for what you know to be right, never blaming others for your circumstances, and making conscious right choices.

When you choose authenticity then you choose to live with integrity. Think about all the times you thought you lost by choosing integrity only to realise that you did not lose anything in the long run. The truth always surfaces and what’s done in the dark always comes to light. When you compromise your authenticity and ultimately your integrity whatever you gain might be temporary at best but will bring you long-term hurt in the end. Being authentic and living with integrity is like the bedrock upon which anything can stand, no matter how high you go. Choose authenticity!

Giselle Hudson is a speaker, author, and master mind coach™, planting possibility seeds and unleashing the greatness in people who’ve never seen the greatness in themselves. If you want to learn more about the ideas written in this article or would like the FREE report “Standing at the Junction – How to Become your ‘Next’ Self”, send an email to womenleaderseries@gmail.com