Being authentic means expressing yourself congruently. The person you project on the outside is the person you truly are on the inside, whether you’re communicating with an intimate friend or someone you just met. When people say, “Just be yourself,” they’re emphasizing the importance of authenticity. When you communicate authentically, you speak your truth without holding back. This helps others perceive you accurately and connect with you honestly and lovingly. Authentic communication empowers us.
As you interact with others, neither exaggerate nor downplay what’s true for you. Be completely real. Your honesty won’t always get a positive response, but allow others to have their reactions without feeling you must pretend to be something you’re not. If you try to slant the truth in order to tell people what you think they want to hear, you disconnect from your true self, and you encourage others to live in denial of their own power. Denying your power is a disservice to everyone. The best course of action is to be completely honest and accept that others are free to react as they choose. You needn’t agree with their reaction; just allow it to be.
When truth, love, and power are harmoniously aligned, they produce the paramount principle of personal growth: intelligence. This encapsulates every idea discussed thus far into a single unified whole. When we perceive the beautiful union of truth, love, and power, we intuitively recognize intelligence.
Truth is intelligent. By embracing truth and shedding ignorance, falsehood, and denial, we create the ideal conditions for lifelong growth. We learn about ourselves by exploring physical reality, continually predicting consequences and gradually refining them for greater accuracy. As we accept each new level of truth, we progress to ever higher levels of awareness. There can be no intelligent growth without truth.
In addition to connecting you with your power, courage also brings power to your connections. When you exercise your courage, you feel more connected to your true self. Your bonds with others grow deeper as well because your interactions are centered in truth, love, and power, not in falsehood, apathy, or timidity. Over time, these connections become so strong that they elevate you to a new level of awareness. At this level, you consciously commit yourself to a principle-centered life. This commitment is called honor.
Honor is not loyalty to an individual or group. Such allegiance comes from superficial bonds and familiarity, but honor connects with genuine unconditional love in a way that transcends individual identity. Honor is the place where power and love reconnect with truth.
The guiding force of honor is your conscience, which is your intuitive ability to discern right from wrong. Right actions are aligned with truth, love, and power. Wrong actions are out of alignment with these principles. A sense of honor enables you to perceive the difference.
People often take circuitous paths to their goals to minimize the risk of rejection. For example, they’ll send out feelers through their social network to try to determine in advance whether their future requests will be accepted or rejected. What will happen if they ask for the sale, the promotion, or the date? The idea is that if they can sniff out a negative response in advance, outright rejection can be avoided. On the other hand, if a positive result seems guaranteed, then action can be taken with minimal risk.
At first glance, this approach seems reasonable. There’s really just one problem with it: it’s stupid. It’s a completely ridiculous plan for getting what you want in life. It’s weak, dishonest, and manipulative.
People who go out of their way to avoid rejection only weaken themselves in the long run. They expend enormous amounts of thought and energy trying to manipulate circumstances, meanwhile allowing golden opportunities to slip through their fingers. All of this can be avoided with a few seconds of courageous action.
Courage is an active, present-moment virtue that waits for nothing. It’s always ready to take the initiative, to make the first move, and to set things in motion. Don’t wait for a new career, a new relationship, or other opportunities to come to you. Go out and actively create what you want. Life is waiting for you to make the first move. Use your power.
It’s a great idea to consciously intend what you want, and I (Steve Pavlina) highly recommend you do that, but if you don’t want something badly enough to take direct action, then what does that say about your intention? Doesn’t that suggest you aren’t really committed to it? When you’re really hungry, will you wait patiently for food to arrive, or will you get up and make something to eat? When your intentions are important to you, direct action becomes part of the manifestation process. The best instruments of the Law of Attraction are your own hands and feet.
The word courage derives from the Latin cor, which means “heart,” and this is precisely what courage is. It’s your connection to your core self. When you succumb to fear, you live unconsciously and disconnect from your natural power. It’s only through courage that you embrace the powerful being you truly are.
Before you embark on [any path] ask the question: Does this path have a heart? If the answer is no, you will know it, and then you must choose another path.
Does your path have a heart? Do you know deep down that your path is the right one for you? Castaneda also wrote: “When a man finally realizes that he has taken a path without a heart, the path is ready to kill him.” I (Steve Pavlina) have seen this happen repeatedly to people who set their dreams aside in order to pursue a path with no heart. Some make fame and fortune their top priorities, assuming that external success will eventually make them happy. It doesn’t. Some settle for unfulfilling relationships, thinking that security will substitute for love. It won’t. Others drown themselves in idle entertainment, hoping it can restore passion to their lives. It can’t.
Courage is the principle that combines love and power. The power element is perhaps the more obvious of the two. When we think of courage, we imagine someone taking bold actions, and action is an expression of power. However, the love component of courage is equally important. Love is the motivational force behind courage. It’s our deepest connections that inspire us to be courageous in the first place. When we feel disconnected, there’s no desire to be courageous, no reason for risk taking, and no call to action.
When your mind predicts a positive long-term outcome but a negative short-term outcome from a course of action, courage is required to bridge the gap. If you want to leave unfulfilling relationship, quit an uninspiring job, or restore an unfit body to a state of health, the long-term outlook may be wonderful, but you can also expect short-term challenges as you transition. Courage is the application of power to break through short-term challenges in order to achieve long-term goals.
People of authority focus on what really matters to them. They don’t waste time and energy on trivialities. They recognize the truth that power can be applied to meaningless pursuits, or it can be channeled toward significant achievements. Such people consciously choose the latter, sometimes for the simple reason that it’s the path that yields the most growth.
What’s important to you in life? What’s a relative waste of your time? While these are decisions you’re empowered to make freely, the truth aspect of authority reminds you that you can’t escape the consequences of your actions. In order to stay aligned with both truth and power, you must carefully consider those results. When you choose a course of action, you also choose the consequences.
