Living Your Truth and Walking Your Talk

Grandiose words spoken to motivate another are 100% meaningless unless the speaker actually lives the truth behind his words – in other words, unless he walks his own talk. We become very disgruntled when we hear of church ministers misappropriating funds. We don’t like it when dignitaries are trapped in public sex scandals. We seethe when public officials are involved in fraud. Why is this? Because we know they are not walking their talk.

I have unfolded the discipline and the desire and the drive to walk the talk I often speak about. I am true to the highest standards that ring true inside of me. I can also tell you that is isn’t always easy. I have chosen to follow the recommendation Shakespeare’s character, Polonious:

This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
~ Hamlet

Establishing standards by which you will live takes some thought and some maturity. When we are younger, we don’t have much internal direction, only the pointings of our parents. We may adopt some of our parent’s rules, and some, we may discard entirely. We read books and we think “Yes, I’d like that in my life” and then we imitate what we so admire. Our standards grow through family influences, education, the influence of the media, our churches, and our friends. Some individuals have very high, even noble, standards and some people don’t appear to have many at all.

I wonder what you would write down on a clean piece of paper right now if I asked you to write down the standards you have in your life? I wonder even more what you would write down if I asked you to write down the standards that you wished were in your life but they aren’t there yet? You cannot follow the advice of Polonious to be true to yourself unless you know what your Self considers to be true. I think that if you took a notebook to a quiet spot beside a lake or river and asked yourself these two questions, you might be pleasantly surprised at what your own Inner Coach might share with you.

I cannot see how your could live your truth or walk your talk until you have clearly outlined what is important to you for a life well lived. And once you know what your purpose-driven, successful life. My daily routine is as follows:

• I wake up at 6 a.m. five times a week
• A meditation hour upon waking for personal reflection
• A well-rounded, healthy diet.
• A journaling period most days to build self-awareness.
• A period of reading each day and learning something new everyday
• Affirmations or Success Statements throughout the day because thoughts are the ancestors of actions
• A weekly planning and review session on Sunday morning
• At least one conversation with an interesting person each week to keep my passion high and surround myself with big ideas.

If you want to live a purpose driven, successful life, I highly recommend creating such a list for yourself. It should not be like mine. It should be like yours. So, I encourage you to make your list of standards, create a disciplined weekly outline and then walk that talk. It takes desire, discipline and drive and I know they exist within you.