Be True to Yourself – Book Giveaway!

We are giving away three copies of The Five Secrets You Must Discover Before You Die by John Izzo. Check out this excerpt and leave a comment for your chance to win a copy of the book!

The First Secret: Be True to Your Self

“The greatest tragedy in life is to spend your whole life fishing only to discover that it was not fish you were after.”
–Henry David Thoreau

Talking to several hundred people about the meaning of their lives was a great gift to me personally and a challenge as well. The stories we heard were profound, interesting, and often poignant. We did not provide the questions ahead of time to the interviewees, so there was a wonderful sense in which the people we were interviewing were often discovering things they knew at a subconscious level while they were speaking. At times it was as though I was witnessing wise people uncovering the secrets of their own happiness. At other times it was obvious that the truths these people were sharing with me were not new to them; they had not only learned these things long ago but had been sharing them with others in some form for many years.

The challenge we faced was finding the common themes in the many stories we heard. People described the same things using very different words. I was reminded of the childhood game whereby a secret is passed down a line of people, each whispering to the next, until the original message is hardly recognizable. I had to listen carefully beyond the particular words and stories to uncover the common core of wisdom.

An obvious question was whether there was one thing that stood out most clearly, one sure secret to contentment and happiness.

I believe there is one such secret, and it is the first thing we must discover about life if we are to live wisely.

There was a set of words and ideas that came up again and again. People kept saying such things as “you have to follow your heart,” “you have to be true to your own self,” “you have to know who you are and why you are here,” and “you have to know what matters to you.” What separates those who live well and die happy from most of us is that they continually asked themselves whether they were living the life they wanted to live and following their heart toward the answer. The first secret is to be true to you, to your self, and live with intention.

Choose to Life Life Awake

If we are to follow our hearts and be true to ourselves, we must first make the choice to live our lives awake. But what does it mean to live life awake? Socrates said that the unexamined life is not worth living. There is another way to phrase that: Unless you are continually examining your life to make sure it is on target, there is a very good chance that you will wind up living someone else’s life, which means coming to the end of your life and realizing that you had followed a path that was not your own.

I learned from these people that wisdom means reflecting more, asking again and again (and again) whether your life is going in the right direction, and making constant adjustments to move closer to the life you desire to live. In contrast to the people we interviewed, many people live completely unreflective lives, simply experiencing and rarely asking how they might move closer to the path they desire.

One woman, a 72-year-old woman named Elsa, summed up the point of reflecting, of being awake. When I asked her to give me one sentence of advice to those younger than her on finding happiness and purpose (a question we asked every person) she said: “I cannot do that. In order to tell a person the secret to happiness I would have to sit down with them, look them deeply in the eyes, find out who they are, find out what their dreams are. I say this because the secret to happiness is to be true to yourself.” Each of us has a path that is most true to us and if we follow that path, we find happiness. The question that happy people ask is not whether they are focusing on what matters but whether they are focusing on what matters to them!

Excerpted from The Five Secrets You Must Discover Before You Die by John Izzo. Published by Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc.

WIN THE BOOK! Enter a comment below and you will automatically be entered to win one of three copies of The Five Secrets You Must Discover Before You Die by John Izzo. Winners will be announced March 1. Good luck!

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Please email Samantha at samanthas@care2team.com to claim your new book. Thanks to everyone who entered!