“I’d rather be a fake somebody than a real nobody.” — Tom Ripley, The Talented Mr Ripley.

I love that film. The irony is acted brilliantly. Duplicity or authenticity? As a leadership coach and business owner leading my own team, I have spent my life mastering authenticity — a truth based on personal daily and long-term intentions. It involves living by respectful human values and embracing a congruency between my inner thoughts and feelings, as well as my actions. I don’t get it right all the time, but there’s merit in trying.

Screaming out for accurate information

We all seem to be drowning in bad data and misinformation. We live and work in the fake-news era, and sometimes we feel like we can’t believe it all. We question its validity, and rightly so. I know I have.

There have been some prominent — and very public — fallings from grace in the news recently. In the past few months, ex-Fyre Festival CEO Billy McFarland and ex-Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes have been ousted for spreading their own, fraudulent narratives of misinformation to investors, consumers, and even the US government. They’re wonderful examples of the very best fraudsters. Inauthenticity in action. They epitomize voodoo leadership. They are able to sail through lie-detector tests because they don’t believe they are lying.

They have tapped into the golden age of the con — using social media to drive a brand that seems worth investing in. It’s the illusory truth effect. The more you repeat a lie, the more people will believe it to be true. We’re all guilty of this to some degree, but why do leaders who might posses genuinely game-changing ideas go this route?

We live in a world where success is defined by achievement

My perceived status in the world, the people I know, the wealth I have created, the degree of influence I have, the number of followers, likes, and shares I get on social media. All of this is imaginary, right? It isn’t real.

Yeah sure, having that fancy house in the south of France is real. Or the Aston Martin in the driveway, too. But the perceived idea of success – the status – isn’t real. Knowing yourself, trusting yourself, and being yourself — that is real — and a sign of true leadership.

Putting on a show to grow your business

In business, I sometimes hear that you have to fake it ’till you make it. “We must create the right brand online,” I hear. “We must become a ‘thought leader.’ A self-styled guru.” I don’t disagree with this if the intention is right. But to what extent are you being truthful? The real you? And how does this public persona feed into your leadership style? If you tell everyone that you can revolutionize blood testing or host the most luxurious festival the world has ever seen despite knowing these claims aren’t possible, it won’t suddenly make these things possible. What happens behind the scenes counts.

So can you set the tone for your specific industry by being real? Or are you just good at marketing spin?

How can leaders make themselves future-proof, if at all?

When I work with leaders, I’m not in the business of trying to turn them into something they’re not. I certainly don’t suggest ways to portray themselves as a thought leader, or a voodoo leader.

Instead, I aim to help leaders discover their truth, speak it and then live it. To uncover their authentic selves and their essence in every circumstance. Leaders must discover and believe in their unique creative power to influence. That’s how you’ll become a leader that stands the test of time. Being mindful, respectful and (it sounds obvious) lawful, will future-proof you and your business. Not just because you think you should do these things, but because they’re the right way of doing things.

By leading intentionally, you live truthfully — serving others by understanding human nature and embracing the combination of your thoughts, feelings and actions.

The hard way, but the right way

Being an authentic leader isn’t easy. That’s why so many Holmes-type leaders exist. It’s easier to lie your way to the top, but the faster you rise, the easier it is to fall. Instead, it’s all about the long game. You have to be observant. You have to notice how you are feeling and thinking and how you are responding to this. Crucially, you must become aware of the feelings, ideas and actions of others. This allows you to serve with intent. It’s an ongoing process and everyone is capable of doing it.

When we do this, we can let go of duplicity and embrace authenticity. We can let go of our attachment to status and perceived ideas of success. We can embrace a knowing of ourselves, trust ourselves, and stop portraying ourselves as something we are not.

Think of intention as an attitude of mind. Let your purpose drive your behavior, the way you communicate and how you engage with others. Ensure your intentions are underpinned by respectful human values.

Create a vision for yourself. Live this vision purposefully each day. Visualize how you’ll act each day. Then, take note of how your inner state of mind or attitude (your intention) matches your thinking and doing. Help others to do the same.

Duplicity or authenticity? Voodoo or truthful leadership? You choose.

It sounds like a complicated idea, but the unintended consequence of consequentialism is what happens when people value outcomes over methods…or worse yet, when they completely lose sight of the method in pursuit of the outcome.  

The recent news announcing the widespread college cheating scandal involving, what is potentially, hundreds of parents over more than a decade raises an interesting juxtaposition…and it got me thinking. When powerful, influential and successful people – many who are inarguably effective leaders in their own realms – simultaneously have a complete moral collapse in their value system, you have to wonder why. How could so many people have fallen prey to what most people would see as having a serious lapse in judgment at best and going morally bankrupt at worst? 

To answer this takes me back to my days at Reed College, where I majored in Philosophy. One of the more memorable debates was in an Ethics class on the concept of intentionalism vs. consequentialism. The fundamental question we were asked to consider was this… if you save a drowning man while trying to steal his watch, is it a moral act? The consequentialist would argue that the outcome is what counts—you saved a life, which is a moral act. The intentionalist would say that your intention was to steal – an immoral act. 

Here’s the thing. We live in an increasingly consequentialist world, where results matter over anything else. And when we are all focused on the outcome, then the process gets lost in pursuit of the goal. For consequentialists, the ends justify the means. Many great atrocities have been committed based on that premise.  

I would suggest that what got these leaders and parents into trouble was an over-rotation on outcomes and a lack of internal clarity all exacerbated by the sense of entitlement that wealth can bring.  

The parents in this case were blinded by their pursuit of a seemingly moral goal. They didn’t care HOW their kids got into a good college—they only cared that they did. The irony is that most of these same parents spent their children’s formative years teaching them right from wrong… good from bad… moral from immoral and that if asked whether they would rather have their child win by cheating or lose honestly, most would have chosen the latter. Yet in this case, their commitment to an outcome blinded them to their own sense of morality. 

This happens with business leaders and CEOs all the time. They have to report results every quarter and are often faced with choices where they have to violate their own values in pursuit of that goal. Admittedly this is a real quandary – even for the most morally clear among us. 

Neither a consequentialist nor an intentionalist be.

Perhaps this situation has created a moment in time for each of us to reflect internally. Am I an intentionalist or a consequentialist? Where do those come in conflict for me? Does one feel more “right” than the other? In a world that is out of balance and at odds, in my opinion it is up to leaders to find their own moral compass first. And for me – and perhaps for these people facing serious criminal charges – that means that there needs to be a balance between the two.  

We can only create lasting change in this world when we start with ourselves. Know where you are coming from and why… but take heed in seeking only outcomes. Yes, we need to produce results. But how we produce them matters as much as the results themselves. The world may not be black and white, but in this case – with these decisions – the world wasn’t grey either. To be an effective leader is to navigate these with great attention and balance process with outcome – and that isn’t always easy.

Perhaps Edward Deming said it best, “If you can’t describe what you are doing as a process, then you don’t know what you are doing.” If these parents had taken the time to do that, they would have noticed that their process wasn’t sound – that at some level they had no idea what they were doing – and as a result, produced some very unintended consequences. 

Is it time to start valuing ourselves and others more effectively? Once upon a time – in an epoch before social media followers, annual salaries, KPIs and student grades – personal success was a matter of meaningful action and invaluable participation: a young hunter with extraordinary agility and prowess; an old crony with an uncanny knack for healing; a stoic leader with the strength of character to hold a community together through great challenge.

Through these early human millennia, success was intrinsically linked with contribution — and the value you added to your community, your family, or your tribe.

However, as our lives and mindsets have become more mechanized, so too has our concept of success. These days, the inherent value of personal contribution (and personal exceptionalism) is often overlooked. “Success” is only obtained if, and when, your talents and achievements can be quantified, and when they compare favorably to others’ performances and/or meet an accepted standard.

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The modern definition of success is often solely reliant on superficial numbers and benchmarks: KPIs, ROIs, exam marks and school grades, social media followers, viewers or readership, money earned, money spent, votes gained, profit margin, or monetary value added. All of this ignores the immeasurable (yet often more profound) impact our personal contribution has on our businesses, our community and our world.

Of course, this move toward calculable success keeps things nice and tidy for the authorities, statisticians and those keeping score. But it completely misses the boat in terms of our actual value as human beings and the traits that have genuinely made humans succeed and flourish through the centuries. Here are some modern concepts of success:

1. Encourages a focus on breadth and superficial accumulation, rather than depth and authenticity. A brief interaction with 50,000 Twitter followers is considered more successful than an intimate relationship with three clients. A sprawling mansion full of loneliness and despair is considered more successful than a humble trailer brimming with love and laughter.

2. Devalues and belittles those whose daily contributions are impossible to calculate; i.e., full-time parents, caregivers, the unemployed and retirees. Those who don’t earn or study often struggle to determine their personal worth and find it difficult to recognize and celebrate the value they add to society. Additionally, this mindset drives many parents to seek validation through the actions and achievements of their children — successes that can be measured numerically — and to compare and compete with other parents.

3. Reduces the opportunity to seek purpose, meaning and inspired action in daily activities. In many of life’s pursuits, we are given a set of numbers to attain or aspire to, and we are somehow supposed to be inspired by these meaningless digits. There is no purpose in the quest or the result, and therefore most employees, students, and citizens are inherently uninspired and disengaged.

4. Rewards conformity over contribution. Seeking to be validated in socially-acceptable ways, many people ignore their personal desires, intuition, and talents in favor of accepted or ‘proven’ processes, methods, and practices. Individuality is diluted, and innovation is avoided for fear of perceived failure.

5. Perpetuates the illusion of control. Almost inevitably, the leading indicators of modern success are entwined with the actions and decisions of others. If we are to meet our sales targets, become a best-selling author, secure that dream gig, garner the promotion, make millions off our investment, and so on, we need to have the full support, agreement or cooperation of others. Sadly, we are conditioned to believe that we can control any situation; if we follow the right process, pull the right strings, behave the right way, say the right words, we will bring others onside and succeed in our quest. If we fail (we are told) it is because we didn’t try hard enough, or follow the right procedure. The concept of success based on external validation is deeply flawed in this regard; we may be in charge of our lives, but we are never, ever in control.

6. Ignores the most important qualities humans possess: cooperation, innovation and resilience. An employee’s ability to calm conflict and offer sound advice can easily be overlooked if they regularly miss their sales quota. An imaginative and inquisitive child may be counseled if they do not read or write to an ‘acceptable’ level. A courageous and hard-working single parent may not be widely appreciated if they cannot earn enough to rent their own home. Cooperation, innovation and resilience are the three most important characteristics in human evolution, and yet they are often overlooked and undervalued in modern society, for the simple reason that they cannot be easily quantified.

The need for measurable success is ingrained in our modern psyche and fulfills a purpose in our ongoing need for societal structure. But it is time to acknowledge that there is more to life — more to the value of any human being — than pure numbers can express. If we can expand our concept of success and remember the importance of non-numerical contribution, we can inspire people in more innate, natural ways to be a valued part of their workplace and community.

Importantly, if we begin to celebrate the multitude of intangible successes in society, we offer everyone an opportunity to recognize the real value they offer the world, no matter how isolated or indefinable that contribution may be.

Here are 10 questions you should be asking yourself to achieve authentic success:

1. How many times did I genuinely smile today?
2. How many vulnerable and honest moments did I have today?
3. How and who did I inspire today?
4. How did I allow myself to be inspired?
5. What did I change about myself today (beliefs, perception, behavior)?
6. What did I do better today than yesterday?
7. What can I forgive myself for today?
8. What can I forgive in another?
9. What action did I take today that honors my current dream/goal?
10. What have I done today that I can be proud of?

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Working with one eye on the future is never easy, especially when the weekly and monthly pace of change demands your immediate attention.

With CEOs spending an average of 62.5 hours a week at work, according to the Harvard Business Review, that doesn’t leave much time for strategy — which the same report shows is only 12 hours of a CEOs working week. YPO, the preferred partner organization of Real Leaders, recently published a series of articles to help inform and assist the busy CEO and entrepreneur — from future trends, to the value of mentors and strategy tips. 

Megatrends Shaping The World Beyond 2020

Every leader wants to know what the future holds. Many ask: “What’s after what’s next?” EY (Ernst & Young), one of the largest professional services firms in the world and one of the “Big Four” accounting firms, put together a Megatrends report in 2018 that took a deep dive into the key disruptive trends that will shape our world beyond 2020. The report suggests that the next waves of technology and demographics will result a concept called “multipolar” — different countries becoming increasingly connected, regional rebalancing and huge infrastructure programs spurring it all on. Read More

93% Of CEOs Believe Business Should Create Positive Impact Beyond Profit

The annual Global Leadership Survey by YPO received more than 2,200 responses from chief executives in 130 countries. A staggering 93% of respondents said that business should have a positive impact on society — beyond pursuing profits and wealth. More surprising was the fact that these executives now rank shareholders fourth in importance, after employees, customers and family. Read More

Stepping Into The Shoes Of A Mentee

Most people seek out a mentor because they typically have an issue that needs to be resolved. Catherine Hodgson, the co-founder and CEO of The Hodgson Group in South Africa, reckons that being a mentee is not defined by age or work experience. Her personal story demonstrates how becoming a mentee brought fresh perspectives, an enriched self-awareness and instilled new communication skills for her professional — and personal — use. Read More

Five Strategies To Help CEOs Grow As Leaders

Ongoing professional renewal and development is critical for success in leadership roles. Yet education takes a meager 3% of CEO time and even that tends to fall prey to grueling schedules. CEOs are expected to have all the answers. Unfortunately, this expectation can create a fear of failure or lead to over-reliance on past successes, which in turn creates blind spots as they are unable to acknowledge to themselves that they have a need for learning new skills. Here are some ways leaders can adopt to learn and grow. It will not only help them, but also their organizations to grow. Read More

The challenges facing the current U.S. president and congress is unlike anything in living memory. In case you haven’t noticed, the citizens of America are angry, and our patience with the dysfunction and corruption in Washington DC has run out.

This election campaign in 2016 may have been a warning shot over your bow, your last chance to take action before a more violent revolution takes hold in the most heavily armed nation on the planet. We ignore these signs at our peril.

Fast-forward to 2019 and with elections looming in 2020, it’s time for our elected leaders to stop misleading us and become real leaders, who address the real problems facing real Americans. How do leaders solve these problems when citizens disagree on so much? That is the biggest question!

Things to consider: Start by avoiding the temptation and tradition of playing to your base, which would further alienate half the country. Instead, bring the country together by identifying and acting on the issues that most Americans agree on.

Stop playing to your base and talk respectfully with each other, not at each other, and most importantly, listen for areas of agreement on which to build compromise. There are many areas that most Americans would gladly address, such as:

• Taking the money out of politics and making us feel as if you actually represent us – not the lobbyists, special interests and rich donors.
• Ending the dysfunction and doing your jobs (your job is to work together as Americans to do what is best for Americans, NOT to get re-elected or put yourself or your party over our country).
• Revive the American Dream, where hard work assures us a good life. Invest our tax dollars in the real issues to improve life for all Americans, not in foreign wars.
• Rebuild America’s infrastructure.

Show us that you can work together on important issues and prove that democracy can work for all of us, and that our institutions will have a future. If you fail then the great American experiment will be replaced by something else. We have no reason to believe that this “something else” will be as good as what you might have saved. And that’s something that we can all agree on. Let’s rise to the challenge, embrace our common interests and be real leaders.

Despite all the focus on engagement tools to better motivate employees, evidence shows they fail to spark a real sense of belonging. Although 87 percent of organizations listed engagement as a top priority in a recent study, a mere 15 percent of employees report actually feeling engaged in the workplace.

For employees to perform at their highest levels and be dedicated to the collective success of the organization, they need to love where they work. They need to feel an Emotional Connection (EC): a motivating sense of satisfaction and intellectual alignment that can only come from feeling appreciated and part of a shared and worthy purpose.

When employees see how their work positively affects organizational outcomes, and that it matters to their managers, colleagues, and the wider world, that’s an emotional connection. It requires something deeper and longer-lasting than financial incentives. Increasing salaries, offering huge bonuses and other perk-based plans will not create legitimate, long-term buy-in from employees, despite the cost. Neither do engagement efforts, as they are often executed by HR departments, which keeps leadership in the dark and detached from the process and from employees. Employees want the opposite: they want to feel aligned, and connected, with leaders.

When employees feel supported by leaders and able to be themselves, and profoundly connect to each other, it shifts their perception of their workplace to being “In Great Company.” It’s a positive dynamic: you’re in a place you love, you want to give more of yourself, and you choose to add value. As a result, you are more willing and able to achieve your business goals.

Not only is the state of emotional connectedness possible, it’s instrumental to organizational success. “Emotional connectedness undoubtedly inspires discretionary effort and passion from our employees and our customers,” says Bob Maresca, CEO of Bose Corporation. Dozens of other CEOs, including Hubert Joly, Chairman, and CEO of Best Buy, concur.

Leaders need to tend to five critical elements to spark emotional connection and improve workplace engagement and productivity. These elements are ubiquitous, implementation-focused, and together create a great workplace in which everyone is inspired to perform at their peak:

1. Respect: Feeling genuinely respected is the prime reason people love their work and are happy to be there. The sense of emotional connectedness is far deeper in environments where respect is established as a type of social currency and exchanged reciprocally. Making respect a part of the organization’s ethos and talent management processes, as Starbucks and Wegman’s have—is essential to applying this dimension. Respect is the element that catalyzes all the others to drive peak performance, the match that sparks the flame.

2. Alignment of values: Employees thrive in organizations that place emphasis on higher-order qualities such as honesty, integrity, and resonance with personal beliefs. The emotional connection is established when leaders and peers all embrace common values, and everyone holds each other equally accountable. Granular practices may be as simple as doing what you say you are going to do, or speaking a truth instead of avoiding it. More conceptually complex methods include living the values and ethics the company espouses, such as what happens in Patagonia and Johnson & Johnson.

3. Positive future: Employees thrive in progress-focused cultures that foster innovation and passion. Since positivity is a cultural contagion, emotional connectedness is achieved when individuals use it in a unified way to move forward together to achieve results. Although positivity may seem like a by-product of emotional connectedness, it’s also a powerful catalyst for creating an emotionally connected culture — as happens in WD-40 or Big River Steel.

4. Systemic collaboration: Employees feel part of a great company when true and functional collaboration becomes a part of the inner workings of the organization and its decision-making processes. Working in small teams, they co-create results using open communication channels, where information and advice for being better in the future are shared freely and frequently. Companies such as KeyBank and Atlassian observe several specific practices to co-create a sustained connection that drives results.

5. Killer achievement: Killer achievement delivers a combination of financial and emotional upside that amplifies the effect for everyone. Employees need to be empowered to focus on the customers and critical goals, with extraneous minutia, eliminated. Objectives should be simply stated, with the system removing competing interests that block the path to success. This entails identifying and measuring the elements most important to the organization, and allowing easy options for leadership, organizational development, and executive coaching. Companies like Best Buy and Netflix ensure their people can create killer outcomes, keeping the organizations relevant, strong, and innovative.

It takes leadership buy-in to establish these five elements, that makes aligned values, collaboration, co-creation, respect, and a focus on achievement all intrinsic parts of the organization. Frequent measurements should be made to gauge the changes happening in the organization. Establish a consistent pattern of follow-up, and make sure everyone in the company stays involved. When this dynamic is set into motion in a workplace, everyone is aligned — and willing to do whatever it takes to preserve and grow the business together. In that scenario, everyone wins.

Conventional wisdom says there are two kinds of leaders. Transactional leaders solve immediate problems: they make expedient deals, please people and keep the enterprise moving. But they falter at complex problems where the solutions are uncertain and the parameters are murky.

For that, you need strategic leaders: people who can transcend limits and achieve extraordinary goals, not once or twice, but routinely and repeatedly.  

The times clearly call for that kind of leader. And it’s becoming clear, from studies of the mind (the locus of mental activity) and the brain (the physical organ) that there is a way to train yourself to make decisions more strategically.

Imagine any complex moment of choice facing you as a leader. It could be an ethical dilemma (whether to fudge numbers or pay a bribe), a recruitment for a complex position (or a layoff), or an investment opportunity that could either solidify the enterprise’s future or squander it. How do you ensure you make the right choice this time – and build your capacity to make the right choice in the future?

The way you think about other people, at that moment of decision, makes a difference. You could focus on what you want, what they want, and giving everyone what they want. Psychologists call this type of mental activity subjective valuation; it activates and strengthen the “low ground,” as we call it, of your mind and brain. The low ground is essential for anyone in an accountable role. But it’s limited.

To influence effective change, in your organization or the world around you, you need to activate the “high ground” of your mind and brain. Instead of thinking about what people want, you think about what they are thinking, and what they’re likely to do next. Psychologists call this “mentalizing,” and for many people, it’s a bit uncomfortable. Indeed, it’s associated with people of low status. But when you’re an executive leader, thinking in this way, you galvanize your influence and effectiveness.

So the next time you have a major decision, don’t just think about how to make people happy – including yourself. Think about what has led others to the position they hold. That will help you strengthen the high ground of your mind and brain, and thus to build strategic leadership into a habit. The experience of this type of leadership can be compared to listening for a voice within yourself: a kind of “wise advocate,” seeing you as others do, but also looking out for your deepest fulfillment.

The more prowess you gain as a leader, the stronger this voice becomes – and the easier it is to take on a similar voice of strategic influence in the organization around you.

This is an adaption from the book “The Wise Advocate” by Art Kleiner, Jeffrey Schwartz and Josie Thomson.

Kleiner is the editor in chief of strategy+business, the management magazine published by PwC. Schwartz is a research psychiatrist at UCLA School of Medicine and a leading expert in neuroplasticity and Thomson is an award-winning executive coach, speaker, author, and two-time cancer survivor. 

Human potential is the only limitless resource in the world. Not time. Not money. Not skill. Not fame, beauty, or charm. I don’t care if you’re jaw-droppingly gorgeous, at the top of your vocational game, or have more money than you know what to do with, at some point, those wells may run dry.

Wrinkles will show up, and your vitality will begin to wane. The needs of the marketplace may shift. The stock market might plummet, leaving you with an empty or depleted portfolio. But that is never the case with human potential. Who you might become is forever before you, beckoning you onward. What you might accomplish keeps whispering your name. However much of your potential you unleash, there is always more, just waiting to be tapped into.

We have all heard stories about children whose potential was recognized early – as a dancer, a chess master, a debater, or a lawyer – and who grew up surrounded by people who helped them realize their potential and live a full and fulfilling life. But for most of us, life isn’t like that. If you’re like most of the women and men I have worked with, this process of realizing your fullest potential will feel like something inside of you is being unlocked.

We’ve all had the experience of feeling “locked up.” Perhaps nothing has improved my prayer life quite like running for president. Let me tell you, all those cross-country flights on mini-me airplanes that require you to duck your head as you make your way to your seat, lest you crack your skull on the ceiling, force a deep faith. When we would hit turbulence, I would reflexively flatten my palm against the window, as if I could single-handedly keep the plane aloft. Just get this thing on the ground safely, I would silently will the pilot, who was seated only six feet away. Locked up is precisely how I felt.

Or what about when you’re stuck in bed sick while others are out having fun? I was due to fly to Chicago one time for a series of meetings that mattered greatly to me, and yet on the morning of my departure I awoke with a bad case of laryngitis. When I tried to greet my husband, I sounded about as smooth as a Texas bullfrog. Wanting to verbalize but having no voice? Yes, that’s a bit like being locked up.

And then there’s dieting. If you want to experience a certain locked-up sensation, give the Whole30 plan a try. No bread. No cheese. No ice cream. No fun. But to the diet’s creators’ credit, at least it’s only thirty days.

Indeed, what helps us move through these experiences of feeling locked up is the realization that it’s only a feeling; we’re not actually locked up. We know that eventually the plane will land, the sickness will abate, and we’ll eat bread and cheese once again. But what about being endlessly locked up? How would we cope with that?

Consider those who suffer a life-changing event – a stroke, a traumatic brain injury, a devastating car accident – that forever alters their mobility, their personality, their ability to function. When I went through treatment for breast cancer – the chemo, the hair loss, the ensuing surgeries and infections and pain – I wondered about things like permanence. Would I ever feel whole again? And then when Frank and I lost our younger daughter, Lori Ann, at age thirty-five, only eight months after that devastating diagnosis, it made my darkest days even darker.

You and I both recognize these two types of being locked up – the temporary and the permanent. And yet there is a third, and most tragic, form of paralysis that we often overlook – that is, the locked-up states we choose for ourselves.

Just off Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco Bay, between the Golden Gate Bridge and Treasure Island, sits Alcatraz Island, where, between 1934 and 1963, the most hardened criminals in the country were sent. Yet, even within the walls of this notoriously tough prison, there was a place where even the roughest, toughest prisoners admitted defeat: D Block.

D Block was where the solitary-confinement cell was located, a soul crushing “time out” for prisoners who misbehaved.

Known as “the hole,” solitary confinement was a soundproof, six-foot-by-eight-foot space outfitted with only a bed frame, a toilet, and a small sink. Prisoners who were viewed as an imminent threat to others, or who violated prison rules, were placed in solitary confinement for up to nineteen days, during which they had no human contact and no exposure to light, except for during the three-times-daily check-ins by a guard. During those meal breaks, the heavy outer door would open, allowing a shaft of light to stream through the room’s inner metal bars, and a tray of food, all lumped together, would be slid through a special opening. After about twenty minutes, the tray was returned, and the doors were closed, casting the cell back into pitch darkness.

Still today, if you visit Alcatraz, you can experience one of these isolation chambers for a few minutes. After being ushered into the cell, you are given a quick overview, and then the heavy door is slammed shut. There is nothing quite like the sensation of being in a space so dark and desolate that you can neither hear the outside world nor see your hand directly in front of your face. Whatever good you might bring to the world around you fades to black as you stand there hopeless, helpless, and afraid.

Now, imagine choosing this fate not as an hour-long tourist attraction, but as a way of life. Real life. Your one and only wild and precious life.

Whether we’re talking about an introvert in a sea of Type A personalities, a thoroughbred trying to survive in a donkey-paced work environment, an imaginative dreamer tucked inside an accountant, a willing friend who finds herself friendless, a contributor who questions her ability to contribute, a would-be success story needing assurance that she won’t fail, nobody in their right mind stays locked up voluntarily. And yet this is exactly what I see countless people do each day, in every imaginable vocation, location, and walk of life, when they forfeit the freedom that can be theirs. To keep your potential locked up is to look at the offer of all-encompassing liberation and say, “Thanks, but I think I’ll pass.”

May this never be said of you – or me. May we instead be the kind of people who welcome our better, stronger, sturdier selves with arms opened wide – no excuses, no apologies, no regrets.

This is an adaption from Carly Fiorina’s new book “Find Your Way: Unleash Your Power And Highest Potential,” releasing in April 2019 from Tyndale House Publishers. Find it on Amazon