Conversations For Transformation:
Essays Inspired By The Ideas Of Werner Erhard
Conversations For Transformation
Essays By Laurence Platt
Inspired By The Ideas Of Werner Erhard
And More
The Fundamental Inauthenticities In My Life:
The Possibility Of Being Charismatic
San Jose, California, USA
August 18, 2002
I get I'm being inauthentic when I don't take responsibility for my
life. I'm a guy who co-invented "being responsible". Yet when I
look, I see areas in my life where I'm not being responsible. I see
islands in the splendid tropical seas of my life where responsibility
is completely not present.
It's not just in the big aspects of my life where I see it. I see it in
the small aspects of my life as well (it's sooo
pernicious!). It's said "Don't sweat the small stuff". But it's
all small stuff!
For example:
I wake in the morning, early - intent on making the most of my day -
around 6:30am. Then I doze a bit more. Then I get up and check my
e-mail. Then I get drawn in while the "world wide
wait" downloads the daily news. And I sit there doing nothing
while something I'm not even on purpose with wastes my
time. Then I look out of the window while I eat a bowl of cereal and
daydream. Before I know it, it's now 8:30am and an entire two hours of
my life has been wasted doing ... well, nothing!
Then the rest of the day has to be kickstarted in a rush, and I'll be
complaining I don't have enough time. After I waste two
perfectly great uninterrupted hours, I complain
life is hard
because I don't have enough time. I really get how irresponsible I am
with regard to managing the time I have to live my life.
When I want a snack, I go to the refrigerator. I could reach for a
peach, and some yogurt. But do I? No! Gimme some icecream and a
chocolate chip cookie! Gimme a metabolic rush instead of the physical
possibility of health. And then I go and stand on the bathroom scale
and I berate myself for carrying a few extra unnecessary pounds, and I
bemoan that and I wonder why ...
I get I'm not being responsible with regard to managing my body's
health.
What being irresponsible costs me is energy, alacrity, connectedness,
and credibility. The effect it has on others is they're thwarted,
not gotten, unappreciated, and incomplete.
The possibility I'm inventing for myself and my life is the possibility
of being charismatic.
How did I get to this possibility from that inauthenticity?
My life is given that whatever I be, do, or have, will inspire people.
I live that whenever people get from me whatever they get from me,
they're inspired.
Therefore I've got a million possibilities: the possibility of
inspiring friendship, the possibility of inspiring wealth, the
possibility of inspiring parenthood, even the possibility of inspiring
time management, and the possibility of inspiring health. You know, the
list goes on and on and on.
Charisma is that quality which when you have it, people may not even
know what it is you have, but they're inspired by it and they know they
want it ... whatever it is.
So when I said "The possibility I'm inventing for myself and my life is
the possibility of being charismatic", it just fell out of my mouth,
and I said: "Hello! Hello! Now that's interesting
...".
The possibility of being charismatic includes all the other million
possibilities, and it calls for the vanquishing of inauthenticity.