Authenticity:

    In all the reading and studying I have done to learn how to reach my dreams and goals in life, there is a theme that we should find someone that is living the life that we want and then we should copy them . This is generally presented as copying success, and it is a sure path to living an unfulfilling life. So why is it presented as a great idea?

    The reason that it is presented as a great idea to reach success is that is does produce results. By copying the actions of someone who is successful, you are following a path that has proven to get to a certain point, though you will find it won’t get you where that person you are modeling is at. So, as with many things in our culture today, it is an easy, quick fix for people to use to see results along their way to their dreams. In that regard, it can be a very good motivational technique, but it isn’t going to create a life that is fulfilling for you, even if it does produce a life that is successful on paper.

    The actuality of it, is that those people we are aimed at modeling are where they are not only because of their strategies and techniques, but also because of their passions. It is their passion for what they are doing that really drives them and creates their success. Since their passion is not my passion, I can emulate some of that success, but I can never reach the fulfilling life that they have. I might get a life I find better than the one I am living now, but that life has very little chance of actually being fulfilling because I am following someone else’s passion instead of my own and I haven’t learned how to produce results with my own passion as I have just walked a predetermined path. I will find myself in a trap that looks good, but it stifling, a gilded cage.

    The real key and lesson from this is to study those people that you would have modeled. Learn what they do, how they do it and why they do it. This will give you vast insights into the actual reason that they are successful and happy in their lives, the methods they use to live a fulfilling life. That study is going to give you the tools needed to follow your path to a fulfilling life. Instead of adopting someone else’s passion, you can use the tools you learn to follow your own passion and reach the levels of success that you see in those models. This will result in living a life that is not only successful, but also fulfilling.

    Anybody can copy the actions of someone else and, if they do it well, can achieve similar results as the person that they are copying. It is a rare and driven person that sees someone and attempts to learn the how and the why of that person and where that person is and then applies those traits to their own dreams and passions. The first set of people is those that we see in big houses with nice cars and bad tempers and unfulfilling lives. The second set of people is those that we see indulging in their lives, those people that have a soul deep smile even in the worst times in life. I don’t know about you, but I will be the second sort of person. And maybe I can even be a model for you.