We are an item, that light and me. We have come to know each other, to look for each other and welcome each other to the day. Where would I be without that light? It is my lantern. It is my friend.

It is your friend too. Do you see it? Does it see you?

We take light for granted. It is there from daybreak to day’s end, from birth to death. Most people pay no heed to light except for the occasional sunrise or sunset that reminds us of its existence. There is more to light, however, than we can see in those book-end moments …

Light is its own form of music, infinitely variable in its tones and rhythms, capable of surprising us, if we let it. There is Beethoven light, immense in its power, which takes hold of all of our senses, causing us to shield our eyes. It is the sun, itself, in mid-summer, unrelenting in its demanding presence. There is Vivaldi light, subtle and piercing, as it brings a forest alive with lively patterns that will occur only once, because tomorrow leaves will drop and branches will bend, and the tempo of the music will alter, if only slightly. Everything will change, forever.

Children have their own light, which is not hard to see. It follows them around, stubborn and habitual in its presence. Most people would agree that the natural light children give off is a gift from them to us, a reminder of the warmth of innocence that, at times, we secretly wish we still had. It’s more than that. The light children emit is also what keeps us from nearly killing them, when they are at their worst: their bawling, defiant, uncooperative, distant, urchin-like selves.

The light of the child sparks the light of tolerance in the adult. Thank God for the light!

There are people who don’t much care for light. They live in caves, dark huts, shadowy rooms where the window blinds are always drawn. These dark quarters exist within them. They have turned out the light and have chosen to no longer see what is right in front of their eyes. Even the light of day they are forced to walk in has lost its glow. Sunsets are pretty but not moving. Lightning is simply frightening, but not beautiful.

It is hard to love the light of the land, if you don’t love the light inside yourself. The connection between these two forms of light is hard-wired; there is no way to uncouple them. Two people cross a field saturated by a thunderstorm that has just passed. The sky is painted deep, liquid pewter and late-day shards of sun make a modest, fleeting cameo. One person is bowled over by this extraordinary moment, unable to walk on. He has been captured by the light. The other person looks up, then looks down and continues on his way, hoping like hell the rain is done.

In the case of the first person, the light inside has found the light outside. It was easy; that is the natural order of things. In the other case, the light inside had been turned off and it was, therefore, impossible for him to fully appreciate the light around him. But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t there. The light inside you is always there, waiting to be found.

All may not be lost. Sometimes, remarkable moments of outside light, by night or by day, can get the light to flicker on again, inside. Standing in a river, a friend of mine had been fishing for several hours with little luck. As he packed up, he looked downstream about 200 yards to a steel bridge. The bridge looked as if it were covered with countless white Christmas tree bulbs, but it wasn’t; it was bathed in a thousand tiny, shimmering strands of daylight.

My friend laid his rod down on a rock and gazed at the bridge. His demeanor changed. His mouth softened. His shoulders relaxed. His eyes were locked fast to what could have been a mirage. Our walk back to the car was slow. My friend spoke of things he’d chosen not to speak of for a long time. Some family matters. A few bucket list items. All quite important, many quite personal, some quite urgent.

The play of light on ordinary objects can do that to a person: Make you wake up to what already shines within you.

Everyone has their Fifth Avenue.

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In short, he is not hopeful that AI’s benefits will outweigh its potential drawbacks. Murphy writes that “a fraud is being perpetuated on the American people and our pliant, gullible political leaders. The leaders of the artificial intelligence industry in the United States are rapacious in their desire to build wealth and power, comfortable knowingly putting aside the destructive power of their product, and claim that any meaningful regulation of AI in America will allow China to leapfrog the United States to control the world’s AI infrastructure.”

What is most insidious in my eyes aren’t the geopolitics of AI; it is something much more personal to all of us …

… the idea, stated here that “fake video and audio, without accountability or legal liability, could obliterate any notion of objective truth. The social isolation crisis that already exists, especially for American teens, could be set on fire by AI chatbots and ‘friendship programs’ in which Mark Zuckerberg wants to replace human friends with robot friends. (Really!) Murphy continues: The substitution of essential human functions – like composition, creativity and conversation – by machines will likely lead to incalculable spiritual atrophy.”

The title to Senator Murphy’s piece ends with these words: “…we risk losing ourselves.” The thought is positively chilling. Who are we if not, first and foremost, ourselves? The idea of being able to create a fabricated human “being,” even, if just on a screen, strikes me as a Godless act that in its own right, and multiplied millions of times, is a recipe for widespread social dysfunction. Such a wave would undermine the very meaning of trust. How can I trust you, if what I see and hear in front of me may not be true at all?

Some years ago, I wrote a newsletter entitled I am who I say I am! (Maybe not). It was my attempt to call out the emerging dangers of social media, which were leading young people to fabricate “identities” online that, unwittingly, pulled them away from their natural selves, stretching the band of credibility, sometimes to the breaking point. It was written well in advance of the AI movement, which now exponentially increases the risks I cited.

What keeps me up at night is another fact of online life, which Sherry Turkle, an MIT professor, describes this way. She says that Facebook and Twitter (now X) give us the power to “present the self we want to be,” carefully tailoring our status updates and retouching photos of ourselves. Or worse: creating identities that aren’t real at all.  It’s a slippery slope. What starts out as fun, morphs into fantasy, which may no longer be tethered to reality. And then what?

Amid all the pressing challenges AI poses to the human experience, there is good news. It is rooted in the true nature of human identity. I am not referring to your social position, your religion, sexual orientation, or gender, or parental status, or your work or any other affiliation you may embrace to help define yourself. As important as these associations may be, none of them explains who you are, at your core – your fundamental identity. What makes you, you are those unique characteristics that define your potential for making a special contribution in the world, something that springs naturally from the substance of your being, transcending the labels we use to locate ourselves in the world.

With this in mind, the only way we can “lose ourselves,” as Senator Murphy warns, is if we forget, ignore, or try to abandon our innate identities. Consider your identity to be an impenetrable fortress against the onslaught of the many and growing dangers AI brings, a sturdy keel in stormy waters.

There is no person walking this planet who doesn’t have the capacity to live through his or her identity. You are the one who matters. You are where the world begins. Remember that you are inviolable. No one, no matter how ‘intelligent’, can take your identity away from you. AI will never be able to replace, diminish, or change who you are. No one, nothing, can make you be someone you are not.

As AI complicates life – at times confusing it and at times clarifying it – know that your identity is the one true thing you can count on and that it is eternal.

Never lose sight of who you are.

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Authenticity. There isn’t much of it out there these days. Maybe there is among the animals who don’t know anything else. They never learned how to fake it. Increasingly, we humans are faced with fake almost-everything: fake news, fake images, fake claims. Artificial intelligence is only compounding the problem.

And yet, authenticity remains a popular idea. It’s written about in books by famous leaders (e.g., Bill George, former CEO of Medtronic), called for by employees who want to make a strong connection with their bosses and coworkers, advertised by jeans makers (Wrangler is “genuine”), and immortalized by soda companies (Coke: “The Real Thing”). It’s easier to promote it than to live it.

Being authentic in one’s self isn’t always a simple task. It takes insight, courage, honesty, and more – a sometimes inexplicable urge to simply be true to who you are, to the man or woman in the mirror. Being authentic with others can be even more challenging. Why? Because authentic relationships can lead to vulnerability.

Are you willing to open up to someone – your wife, husband or partner, your son or daughter, your best friend, or the person sitting next to you at the bar – and let your hair down? …

Sometimes, it’s easier to share your true feelings with the person at the bar than with your spouse or partner. It’s safer since you don’t have to be held accountable for your sentiments after you leave.

In our search for authentic relationships, we long for what we often fear: intimacy.

I was on safari in Africa a few years ago, sitting in my tent one afternoon, when my tent mate asked me if I knew what intimacy was all about. Before I could answer, he offered this idea: He said to me that intimacy really means ‘in to me see.’  That insight has stayed with me ever since. For all the dictionary definitions of intimacy, the one my friend proposed speaks volumes, for it is an invitation to share at the level of one’s soul, to “speak” soul to soul, privately, intentionally, courageously.

So, then, can we say that a search for authenticity is really a search for intimacy? And that the bridge between authenticity and intimacy can include vulnerability?

Several years ago, a major newspaper published an article describing an exchange between Jack Welch, the previous CEO of General Electric, and William Harrison, prior Chairman of J.P. Morgan that highlighted the power of authenticity.

“In addition to holding their strategic discussions, the article stated, Mr. Welch and Mr. Harrison spent significant time together honing the executive training program at J.P. Morgan. Mr. Welch was particularly impressed with Mr. Harrison’s use of a group exercise in which senior J.P. Morgan executives, including Mr. Harrison, wrote on a board the personal and professional experiences – the more painful, the better – that helped them evolve as people. “Bill was very good at it,’ Mr. Welch said. ‘It makes you become simpatico with the guy.’”

 In that experience, Mr. Welch and Mr. Harrison bonded; they got “intimate” in a way that most likely led to a more fulfilling and productive relationship. They learned that they could trust one another.

So, at the end of the authenticity trail, lies trust. How can I trust you, if you aren’t going to be real with me? And if I can’t trust you, how can I, if you’re a leader in my company, follow you?

If you’re not going to be authentic, how can I love you?  The question is as pressing for couples, friends, and families as it is for business people.

Authenticity opens to vulnerability, which opens to intimacy, which, finally, opens to trust. If you want people to trust you, you need to be authentic, to be yourself. There’s no easy formula for becoming authentic, or testing whether you are. You can’t ask someone if they think you’re authentic; they really won’t know, even if your eyes are flooded with tears. You’re the only one who knows if you’re being authentic.

Each of us must find his or her own path to authenticity and the road it illuminates. First, though, you need to decide how much authenticity is worth to you. What kind of relationships do you want to have? What kind of person do you want to be? How do you want to show up with the people who matter most to you? How do you want to be remembered?

The animals don’t know anything but authenticity and don’t have to work to get it. The buck in search of a mate is unambiguous in his hunt. The mother bear who protects her cubs at all costs makes no bones about her intentions. Being authentic is an easier path for them than for us. So, are the animals the lucky ones?

I don’t believe so. We are the lucky ones, for in struggling to be authentic, we must struggle with ourselves. In doing so, we become fuller, richer, more valuable individuals to ourselves and to others.

What does authenticity mean to you? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

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What is my message? is a question that has an out-sized impact on our lives, even when we aren’t aware of it. We are forced to answer the question in all sorts of ways. It comes up in the essays we write as part of our college applications, where admissions officers strain to figure out which candidates to accept and which to reject. The question raises its head again as we search for jobs after graduation – whether from high school, college, or graduate school – and are faced with the not-so-simple task of expressing who we are on one or two pieces of paper called a resume. 

If you succeed in your job, you come face to face with the question again, as you rise through the ranks to a supervisory, or leadership, position. What is your message, then, to the people who work for you? …

… Not, what tasks do you want them to complete, but, rather, why should they follow you, beyond the fact that you’re their boss? 

The question slips into our lives on more modest levels as well: for instance, at large social gatherings when you are introduced to people for the first time. Or, at intimate dinner parties, when you are one of only a handful of people, who are thrust together for three or four hours and need to figure out how to keep the conversation going. 

In all of these situations, you have a choice. You can try to discern what is important to someone else and tell them what you believe they want to hear. You can supply information you feel is safe and easy for others to digest. Or, you can make a point of finding ways to tell people something about who you are at your core, and risk making yourself vulnerable, if only for a moment. 

The fact is that taking the “safe” route isn’t safe at all. Most people, from college admissions directors and would-be friends, to the people who report to you at work, are searching for signs that give them reason to believe that you are someone with integrity — someone they can trust. 

This is where identity comes into play — those special characteristics that reveal how you create unique value in the world. Your identity is ‘an integrity machine.’ It expresses what makes you the individual you are. It invites people to trust you. 

Hiding what you stand for takes a toll on everyone. It may make it easier for you to navigate business or social relationships that require chameleon-like skills to maintain, but, over time, it erodes your sense of self-worth: you know you’re faking it. Moreover, keeping your true self hidden makes life harder for others by keeping them guessing; off balance, in fact. 

Until I faced an auditorium full of people who were interested in the subject of identity, I had kept my message under wraps, at least publicly. For years, I’d lived under the radar. While working with companies and individuals, I knew who I was, and, certainly, I let my passion for identity show in everything I did. Yet, I never had the courage to stand up and be counted. I had let my writings and my work speak for me. Now, I would speak for myself; I would make my message clear: I am Larry Ackerman and I am driven by the need to help people to see. As I spoke these words in that auditorium that day, I exhaled deeply. I felt completely naked as I stood before my audience, knowing there was no going back. I was finally free. 

Answering the question, what is my message? Is liberating. It frees you from the fear of telling the world who you are and doing what you know you must. It brings the self-confidence to not be deterred by what others may think of you, even in the face of possible rejection. You may also realize that you no longer have a choice: you must take a stand. 

Consider your message a personal declaration — a commitment to follow one path and walk away from others. What makes declarations so powerful is their intent, which, in short, is to remove doubt. It is to make something clear to people that wasn’t clear before. Personal declarations lift the veil of mystery. They state something emphatically about who you are, often, for the first time. 

Your identity is the source of that declaration, the essence of your message. It’s a message the world needs to hear. 

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These words from George Steiner, a leading, French-born American literary critic, struck me as perfectly fitting for how we live today. Or don’t.

We live in chaotic times that ceaselessly demand our attention in a variety of ways. We’re bombarded by 24-hour news and opinion, delivered by rival outlets, whose commentators work to out-talk, if not out-shout, one another, hoping to hold our attention for as long as possible. We’re seduced by numerous streaming channels that make it easy to binge-watch all manner of shows without interruption. We’re lured onto social media platforms that find innumerable ways to keep our eyes glued to our phones. We’re stuck. 

Or are we? 

I read an article recently by Douglas Christie, a professor at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, who studies the impact of silence and contemplation on people. When it comes to silence, Christie argues that most of us probably know the brittle, awkward kind of silence that comes up between two people after an argument. But what he’s getting at when he refers to silence, is a kind of patient attention, a receptivity that might emerge if we could simply shut up for five minutes, if we could resist the urge to fill every space with the sounds of me …

Silence isn’t social. That is, it doesn’t fit into the world of social media, which demands constant verbal as well as visual stimulation. Silence opens space for us to get to know ourselves beyond the labels we rely on to define who we are. What social media does, is cut us off from ourselves, reinforcing our attachment to those insidious labels, which put us into the pigeonholes we call identity.

Professor Christie continues by saying that anyone who tries to enter into a space of silence — meditation, sitting alone in a room, walking down a deserted path — can testify that when you begin, you soon find you’re out of your depth. You want something to happen and happen, quickly. The silence is all around you yet you can’t seem to get into it. You’re unaccustomed to silence and that’s uncomfortable. You miss the noise, which allows you to not think. Maybe even, not feel. Christie writes that the only thing to do is stay with it. 

Down with debating

Perhaps, the chaos we live in today is the result of no one hearing anyone anymore, except themselves and others whose labels make them acceptable. We debate endlessly about who’s right and wrong in terms of politics and culture. Yet, debate is often tedious because positions are already settled and nothing is going to change. The antidote to debate is dialogue, which is exploratory, provisional, give and take, opening us to new possibilities. 

Dialogue begins with silence, space in which we can learn to see who we are more clearly and others as well. It also takes courage, since dialogue calls for you to step out of well-established comfort zones, if only for the moment. Practically speaking, you learn nothing when you talk. So, silence becomes a pathway to knowledge. What you do with that knowledge is a separate question. If nothing else, silence makes you smarter.

Not surprisingly, there are countless quotes about silence. Here are five that speak to the wisdom of silence:

“What is it that stands higher than words? Action. What is it that stands higher than action? Silence.” St. Francis of Assisi

“Noise creates illusions. Silence brings truth.” Maxime Lagacé

“Silence is a source of great strength.” Lao Tzu

“The monotony and solitude of a quiet life stimulates the creative mind.” Albert Einstein

“A fool is known by his speech; and a wise man by silence.” Pythagoras

Finally, there is an expression that silence is the first language of God, words attributed to the sixteenth century Christian mystic, St. John of the Cross. I believe these words are, on some level, true and thus worth contemplating.

Let’s start a dialogue and begin by being silent, together.  

Shhhhh.

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In the 1999 movie, Analyze This, Billy Chrystal plays a psychiatrist who’s treating a mafia boss.There’s a scene with a meeting of mob bosses, where Billy Chrystal unexpectedly shows up and sits in for his patient. Surprised, one of the other bosses asks him, Who are you? He answers: “Who am I? Who am I? Oh, that’s a question for the ages!” 

Call it cosmic, unknowable, confusing, headache-inducing, or just plain tough to answer, who am I? is a question which has been asked, in various ways, by everyone from great philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle to decidedly not-so-famous people: that jumble of “regular folk” who make their lives in the far-flung cities, towns and villages we call home. Asking the question, who am I? makes kin of us all…

Today, the question has become a cultural lightning rod, touching gender, race, politics and religion among other categories we dip into to help define ourselves and others. None of these categories, however, helps clarify your identity. Instead, they distort its true meaning and power — that to know who you are is to know why you are here, and, in turn, what to do, what not to do, and why.

You might ask yourself, am I not a Jones, a Stern, a Tanaka? – the child of a good family? Am I not a loyal Christian, a pious Jew, a devout Muslim? Am I not American? Or, Turkish? Or Indian? Am I not a successful Black female ballet dancer? At least, a hard-working plumber? Is this not enough? If not, who am I then?

You may be any combination of these things. But none of these descriptions answers the question, who am I? That is because, despite their importance in how you define yourself, these labels serve to mask, rather than reveal, who you are at your core. In short, you are not your labels; you are simply you.

Answering the question, who am I?, brings with it the promise of affirmation – nothing less than the awakening of your spirit. It is no great feat to verify that you exist in physical terms. Your five senses do that for you, automatically. It is something else entirely to experience yourself as self-aware and fully awake.

Experiencing this confirmation of your self is prelude to everything else you will learn and do in relation to your life. Once you have found this feeling, you’ll be ready to discover what makes you unique as an individual and the potential it holds for how you engage with the world.

What’s the way forward?

The way to know who you are is by first defining yourself as separate from all others. Within the context of identity, separation isn’t about being physically or emotionally remote from people – physical separation isn’t especially difficult to achieve and emotional connections are essential for strong relationships.

Separation is about putting some healthy distance between yourself and other people so you can step back and see, really see, yourself within the context of your relationships. How are you different from your best friend, your brother, mother, or your boss, in terms of your personality, your values and talents? Answering these questions is an exercise in clarifying boundaries that mark turf belonging just to you, no matter how close you are to others.

What you’re looking for in separation is independence – the ability to think and act on your own and in your own best interests, despite what others may expect of you. Defining yourself as separate from others is about finding your own integrity as an individual.

What’s possible?

If more people knew their true identities, it’s likely that we’d all be better off. Families might show greater regard for one another as individuals. Teams would function more effectively, taking advantage of each member’s distinctive strengths. Organizations might hire more of the right people for the right reasons. Individuals, like you and me, might simply sleep more soundly at night.

Who are you? People want to know.

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We all love something. But, what we, at first, claim to love isn’t what I’m talking about. In fact, it may not be what you really love at all. I’ll come back to this point shortly. But first, let’s clarify why what you love matters.

Every relationship you have is shaped in part by what you love, whether it’s your relationship with your partner, your friends, your kids, or, maybe most important, the company you work for — or want to work for. What you love may seem like an innocuous idea, but it says a lot about who you are, what you’re passionate about, and what you’re naturally good at … Could be that what brought you together with your spouse in the first place was a shared love of cooking. Or, maybe you met him at a Grateful Dead concert, or in a book club. What bonds you to your son or daughter in some special way? A love of baseball, or dance, or fly fishing, where you share visceral experiences and then indelible memories?

What you love has a particularly significant role to play when it comes to understanding the contribution you’re capable of making at work. While it’s always good to find common ground with a prospective boss or your current peers based on mutual interests — we enjoy football; we like trekking on the Appalachian Trail; we like baking bread — that’s not what I’m talking about. Which brings me back to what you really love.

The talent connection

The seemingly commonplace things you say you love are the gateways to finding what it is you truly love — natural, if hidden talents that are central to your success in your job, even in your career. Here’s an example, based on a young woman named Morgan.

Morgan loves dance. Why? What does dance mean to her? Upon reflection, she realized that it’s about movement to music, body coordination, listening to rhythm. That was only step one. She continued unpacking what it was about dance that grabbed her.

Why number two: Why did she love movement to music? Her answers: it was about mental and physical alignment, synchronizing, and being keenly aware of her senses. Finally, her third why: Why, for instance, did she love being aware of her senses? Because, as she discovered, she had a deep understanding of harmony, its importance in the context of teamwork, and was skilled at achieving it.

Through this exercise, Morgan discovered that what she really loved — indeed, had a gift for — was harmony. It was there all along, but it required her taking a deep dive into the meaning of dance to be able to unearth it. This was one of several such discoveries Morgan made, which, together, provided her with a new foundation for knowing how to work most effectively with others and where she could make the greatest difference.

The activities you say you love are the tip of the iceberg. They hold the keys to clarifying your natural strengths — those innate capacities that allow you to foster positive change in, with, and through others.

What do you love and why do you love it — really?

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We struggle to hear one another, understand one another, indeed, accept one another. The lightning rod for our national bickering is identity politics and the heated divisiveness it has bred among races, ethnicities, religions and, of course, political parties.

The sharpest evidence of this divisiveness is found in extreme identity-choice polarities. At one extreme is the idea that you can define yourself any way you please, even if that definition flies in the face of conventional norms. A white person can decide she is really black because that is the race she relates to most closely, that she feels she is actually part of.

At the other extreme is group identity, whereby you associate with others who are the same as you: white, blue collar males, lesbians, Christian conservatives, Hispanics, and on and on. It is from these outward, nearly tribal affiliations that we discover an inner sense of belonging that suddenly warms us, fires us up and brings seeming clarity to our lives.

At either extreme, however – individual identity-choice or group identity association – we diminish ourselves. The need to look to others to decide who we are is the essential mistake people make. It is a reflex that feeds off of the unspoken assumption that a person is incomplete, perhaps even flawed, without the validation a social label provides.

Taken as a whole, all of the hullabaloo about identity today is detracting from the very idea of identity itself. Let’s put down our identity cudgels for a moment and take a fresh look at what identity is really about.

“Identity” isn’t a new idea

Human identity has captured the imaginations of thinkers and scholars for millennia, most notably, starting with Socrates, whose words “Know thyself” have influenced countless numbers of people over time. Socrates recognized the depth of the challenge contained in those two little words. He knew that if you don’t understand your identity, you will wind up lost. On the positive side, he recognized that if you stay true to who you are, you will have the foundation you need to make wiser decisions.

More recently, there are two people whose particular contributions to this subject amplify the inescapable impact knowing thyself has on how we shape our lives. One is Erik Erikson, the German-born psychologist who has been called the architect of identity.

Erikson helped to illuminate the roots of human identity and its impact on how we mature as individuals. In his seminal book, Identity and the Life Cycle, Erikson describes identity as the blending of two forces: an individual’s ties with the particular values of his or her family, history and heritage, and the natural-born traits that simply make each of us unique. From Erikson’s perspective, our identity is a governing force that is with us always.

Another stance on human identity was taken by the psychologist, James Hillman, who looked at identity through the lens of the soul. In his book, The Soul’s Code: In Search of Character and Calling, Hillman asserts that the essence of our individuality – what he terms, our character – is within us from birth. This “essence” can have many names: “genius.” “spirit,” even “guardian angel.” Call it what you will, it’s identity by another name.

You are more than your labels

Today, the notion of “identity politics” undermines the deeper meaning of human identity as articulated by the likes of Erikson and Hillman. For all the attention the identity politics trend is receiving, it reinforces an impression that actually devalues rather than expands upon what it means to be fully human.

Is the fact that you identify as a Hasidic Jew, an African-American, a conservative, or a gay man or woman the most important definition of who you are? I don’t believe so. What defines you goes beyond these descriptors.

Your essential identity — your distinctive, value-creating characteristics — springs naturally from the core of your being. It is a place that is blind to classifications, transcending gender, ethnicity, religion, political affiliation and every other label we adopt as a way to locate ourselves in the world. You are simply you: unique and powerful in your own right.

Sing me your song

To be clear, there’s nothing wrong with aligning yourself with others as a way to connect with like-minded people, or people who look like you. But, that isn’t enough. When your idea of personal identity is based upon a descriptive label rather than on the distinctive contribution you alone are capable of making, you short-change yourself, those you care most about, and society as a whole. Why? Because, to paraphrase Oliver Wendell Holmes, you leave your music inside.

In short, labels are about what you can get: affiliation, a sense of belonging, social definition. Identity is about what you can give: something of value to others who do not possess the particular blend of capabilities that set you apart from all others.

Having a clear sense of your identity is the key to shaping a life marked by authenticity and integrity — knowing what to do, what not to do, and, most important, why.

With this in mind, we’d all do well to resist the pull of social labels, which distract us from our larger task: Tapping into and applying our innate identities to how we live every day. Everyone would benefit: co-workers, friends, your children, your spouse or partner and, most of all, you. Indeed, America would benefit, because when it comes to hearing one another, understanding one another and, indeed, accepting one another, starting with yourself is the only place to begin.

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The good news is that the race has led me to wonder about the future of leadership, generally. What it will look like, what it will take to be a truly successful leader. Want to lead? Stay with me, here.

I let my curiosity take over and dove into a variety of resources that have been studying the future of leadership: Hay Group, The Center for Creative Leadership, Google and numerous others.

In short, what I found were a bevy of attributes, which when distilled down, sorted into five major categories: Collaboration, Individuality, Authenticity, Integrity and Communication. Consider these leadership imperatives for the future.

Taken together, they got me to see that the future of leadership is all about the personalization of work as the foundation for change. In short, it’s about humanizing relationships, honoring the individual inside the employee, tapping into the whole person (beginning with you), motivating from the inside, out.

From what I learned, I believe that the personalization of work can become the ‘new efficiency,’ driving productivity and, potentially, greater employee engagement. I like that. It flips the traditional model of assembly line efficiency on its head, by celebrating the “making” of the individual rather than the making of the product.

It’s about time.

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One of the climbers, Kevin Jorgeson said of the achievement: “I hope it inspires people to find their own Dawn Wall. We’ve been working on this thing a long time, slowly and surely. I think everyone has their own secret Dawn Wall to complete one day, and maybe they can put this project in their own context.”

I think we do, too. I know I do, although, I’m not always sure what that is. No matter. What matters is waking up to the possibility that there’s a larger purpose to our lives than just getting through the day — something that takes the courage, patience, determination, grit, vision, and passion these two guys put into their climb.

Or, maybe I’m wrong. Maybe, it doesn’t matter at all; maybe, getting through the day about 30,000 times (that’s 80+ years, if you’re interested), is enough. No Dawn Walls, but lots of dawns.

What a waste of a life, but that’s just my opinion.

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