She is in good company. Maria Shriver stunned an audience of 14,000 at last year’s Women’s Minerva conference with her confession about how she “lost” herself to external pressures. “As long as I was trying to anticipate what you wanted from me, as long as I was trying to fulfill other people’s expectations I was in a losing game, a game I’ve been playing since I was a kid.”
But this isn’t just a woman’s thing.

When Josh Waitzkin, the young chess prodigy from the book and movie, “Searching for Bobby Fischer” was asked why he left the game of chess he explained, and I paraphrase:

‘At fifteen, when the film came out of my life it immediately made things complicated. I was National champion in the chess world and top-rated player for my age in the country. I had a lot of momentum. But suddenly I would go to tournaments and have tons of fans asking me to sign autographs and take pictures. Slowly over the next four years I was becoming externalized. My love for the game was being challenged by external influences - I’d watch myself thinking how I looked to all the fans.’

Inner Authority is our ability to author our lives. We develop it when we shift from focusing less on what “they” think and need, and become “internally referenced”. I didn’t say selfish. Focusing on our selves too much can make our lives get small. But when we are in touch with that place inside of us that is most authentic we are connected with the totality of the universe; we care deeply about others.

Please join me at the WITI Conference in Santa Clara, October 12, 2:30-5:30 pm, for the workshop: Inner Authority: Your Personal GPS for Empowered Leadership

In this lively, interactive workshop, you’ll earn tools for re-authoring your leadership by learning to think, speak, and act from the wisest, most powerful you. Click Here For Details!

Marianne Williamson said, “Our entire three-dimensional reality is a screen in which we are projecting our thoughts. The job of the miracle worker is to extend our perception beyond the material world to what the heart knows to be true.” By authoring our inner conversation we don’t just become better leaders, we help to make the world a better and more compassionate place as well.

---