The courage to be yourself – Alessandro Chelo

October 19, 2015 · 6:44 pm

Talent trainer, Alessandro Chelo is a coach of several successful managers and has also worked side by side with famous sport trainers.

This book is not a manual, it doesen't give you suggestions like "if you have this problem, then do this", but it lets you reason about your level of authenticity.

When are you authentically yourself? Chelo destroys a lot of myths on this matter.

First of all, you are not authentic just because you say what you think. Why the hell should you sputter each of your thoughts into someone's face? We live in a conflicts culture and in every talk show or interview we see people who offend other people, and then justify this attitude by saying: "I have been honest!"

Well, all this alleged honesty is often just lack of self control, low respect, aggressiveness, conceit.

Are we authentic when we are coherent? It depends what you mean with the word coherence. Do you mean to act and think in the same way year after year, without considering the situations changes? This is not coherence: this is stubbornness, this is laziness, this is blindness, not coherence to yourself.

I particularly liked the parts about talents.

I have always thought that my talents coincided with my passions (mainly: reading and writing). That is not true. Your express your talents throught your passions, maybe, but not always. It is hard now, for me. This revelation lets me ask myself: and now? Wich are my true talents, then??

Another revelation: I always thought that you do not fail until you give up.

Again: wrong! Failure doesn't exhist. Because failure is often the missing conformity to someone else's goals.

Is a Porsche a symbol of my idea of success? No. Although someone could think that my canary-coloured Arosa is a failure (just an example, uh!).

Considering my feeble memory, I try now to keep at least one message from the many ones I have read in this book. The true pivot of authenticity is not the question "How shall I behave now?", but " How do I really feel I should behave now?"