In this journey you’re starting, authenticity is everything.
Social media audiences—the ones you want, at least—have become highly sensitive to dishonesty.
If you want to make money in the digital economy, you must make a positive difference in people’s lives. And if you want to do that, you must be—or become—someone worth listening to.
But don’t worry—that doesn’t mean you need to be the second coming of Tony Robbins with his high energy and well-rehearsed sales speak. A huge number of people don’t even want that. (Of course, a huge number of people do, too. Remember the scale of the audiences we’re dealing with here—billions of people.)
Authenticity is what this first “I” of Freetirement—*Identity—*is all about, and it’s what I’ll be teaching you in this section.
If Tony Robbins is your spirit animal, great.
If Joaquin Phoenix is your spirit animal, great.
In this section of Freetirement Foundations, we’re going to answer the single most important question in the entire course:
What, exactly, is identity? (And why is it the bedrock of your purpose-based business?)
…is that it’s made up.
In other words, it’s a *construct of the mind—*shaped by thoughts, beliefs and perceptions. This is easy for you to confirm when you consider how your identity has changed over time.
But if identity is made-up, how can you be authentic?
You’re authentic when you drop all notions of who you think you are (or think you should be).
What I’m talking about is known in some spiritual circles as ego death. This sounds scary, but I assure you it’s much safer and much more pleasant than creating and maintaining a false personality. More importantly, ego death, though it sounds like an event, is actually just a realization. It’s a recognition of what’s already—and always been—the case.
Consider how rapidly your personality shifts in many circumstances.
For example, when you’re at a party and meeting a lot of new people, you likely give a different answer to each person who asks who you are. (Of course, most people don’t explicitly ask “who are you?” but that question is the context of any social introduction.)
If a work colleague from another branch is meeting you for the first time, you’ll talk about yourself as you exist in your work role. But when you meet someone who knows nothing about your industry you’ll relate to them instead as a sports fan or a parent or—if you’re really desperate—someone who complains about the weather.