When Something Doesn't Sit Well - Authenticity Rules
Something doesn't sit well. And, when something doesn't sit well, you can feel it, right? It goes against the grain. It can wake you up in the middle of the night. Why is that?
That happened recently, believe or not, when I posted a photo of the new Mars skyline on the Thought Changer Facebook page. A friend sent it to me and I was so blown away by the awesomosity of it that I just had to share it. The photo went viral with over 3300 people seeing or sharing my posted photo over the course of a couple of days. What I loved about it is that it brought new visits and members to Thought Changer, the place where we share authentic views and ideas to expand the mind. Very cool!
Then, I found out the photo is counterfeit. A fake. And, I didn't remove it from my page. And, it didn't sit well. And, it woke me up in the middle of the night. And, then it hit me. Keeping the photo up on my page became about something other than what Thought Changer, and me for that matter, stand for. It became about being popular or more well known. It became inauthentic.
It got me thinking again about core values, standards and principles that guide our lives. Your core values are the lens through which you gaze when making decisions, large or small. It's intrinsic and organic.
Authenticity is one of my most important core values, as is Transparency. This incident went completely against both of these core values, and it just didn't sit well.
So I did some investigating, looking through my authenticity and transparency lenses because I wanted to address this in a way that opens and expands the mind.
Authenticity and transparency are cut from the same mold, they share the same DNA. Transparency is the mother of authenticity. Interestingly, I would say that transparency is also the mother of inauthenticity because transparency shines a bright light on both.
Boy, when you see the authentic and counterfeit photos next to each other it becomes transparent very quickly which is which, like the good and evil twin. The counterfeit suddenly looks really fake, too colorful, too perfect, too cartoonish. And, the real one looks multi-dimensional, mysterious and full of possibility, way more cool than the fake in my opinion.
I'm certainly no planet expert, but iDigital Magazine did an informative piece on how to tell the difference between the fake and real photos, as did Discovery Magazine writer Phil Plait, who first broke the story about the shameful counterfeit. The authentic photo came straight from NASA, where you can check out more Curiosity Photos from NASA.
Whew! Now, I can sleep better. The lenses are clear and the mind expanded!
When something doesn't sit quite right for you, take a moment and examine the feeling. Look beyond the face value of whatever is in front of you. Look at it through the lens of authenticity when deciding what works for you. What feels right.
Pretty soon it will become clear what to do.
Cindy Yantis is the Thought Changer Blog owner & curator. She is a writer living in Los Angeles. For more info: CindyYantis.com
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