Enacting Your Own Agenda

By George A. Boyd © 2022

Q: It seems a lot of people I meet live unsatisfying, inauthentic lives. Do you have any insights for them?

A: If someone is living an inauthentic life, it suggests they are carrying out someone else’s agenda for their loves, and not their own. They are following the life prescriptions of:

  • Their parents
  • Their romantic partner
  • Their employer
  • Their religious minister or clergy of their faith
  • Their commanding officer in the military
  • The leader of a criminal gang, a terrorist cell, or a hate group
  • A political leader
  • A spiritual leader, a Guru or spiritual Master

We invite you to notice whether you are following the agendas of these other people in your own life.

When you follow someone else’s agenda, that other person dictates the guidelines for:

  • What you should do in your career
  • What you should believe about other people, about yourself, about God, or about politics
  • What you should think
  • What you should do with your life
  • Whom you should marry, or whether you should not marry
  • To what you should dedicate your life

As you examine your own life, in what ways are other people setting the guidelines for your beliefs, thoughts, values, and behavior? If this truly is your life, what guidelines will you set for yourself instead?

What’s going on here? You are allowing other people to program your beliefs and behavior, and doing what other people tell you to do. Now, certainly it is not a good idea to not do what your employer or drill instructor tells you to do, as the situation requires that you obey them—except when what they tell you is illegal or immoral. But in many other situations, you are following the guidance of other people without honoring your own essential truth—your dharma—and this is why you feel inauthentic.

To begin to emerge into you own authentic life, questions like these will help you get into touch with what your life is about:

  1. Who am I?
  2. What are my values? What do I know is true apart from what other people tell me?
  3. What do I want to do with my life? What would bring me fulfillment?
  4. What is the purpose of my life? What is my deepest nature attempting to bring forward in my life?
  5. To honor that vision of what I am meant to become, to what do I need to make a commitment? What actions to I need to take to make that vision real?
  6. What is holding me back from stepping into my authentic life? Whom do I need to remove from my life to embrace my true calling?
  7. What specific steps will I need to take—and in what time frame—to extricate from my inauthentic life and step into my genuine one?

If you take this step, certain people in your life will not be pleased. They will criticize you. They will argue with you. They will tell you your judgment is flawed… that you are crazy… or perhaps, that the devil is seducing you.

But if you do this, you will discover the reason you were born. You will unearth your passion. You will uncover your truth. Your will connect with your Soul and the Divine in a new way. You will change in ways that you could not have imagined.

When you re-establish your link with your Soul, you reconnect with your true agenda—not someone else’s agenda…but what you were meant to do. It will feel real… authentic… genuine… and true. You will emerge from your cocoon as your inner butterfly.

Those of you who are in need of support in moving from the fake you to the real you, we offer you coaching. If you are attempting to empower yourself to begin to live your authentic life, we offer you Life Coaching. If your mind has been programmed in a religious or political cult, we offer you Cult Recovery Coaching. If your inauthentic life arises from experiences you had growing up a toxic family or in an abusive relationship, we offer you Dysfunctional Family Coaching. If addiction has warped your beliefs, values, and behavior, we offer you Addiction Recovery Coaching.

If you have been leading an inauthentic life: stop! Make a new choice. Take a new direction that leads you to reconnect to your truth and your Soul. This will redeem your life and give you back what was stolen from you. You can do this, if you choose.