When Rick and I (and many others) were tossing ideas around for this blog, Rick found Robert Rabbin's Six Principles of Authentic Living. I might be scooping him, but I wanted to write a few thoughts about the first idea on Rabbin's list: Live your own life.

The first principle is: Live your own life. It would be a shame to get to the end of your life--and who knows when that time will come--only to discover in the last moment that you did not live your life, but the life that someone else wanted you to live. It takes a lot of strength and courage to live your own life, because so many people want you to live their idea of what your life should be.

This might mean (and has meant for me) a long and winding road. My road to this new role doing internal communications has included a degree in Chemistry, time living in Argentina and London, study abroad administration, college student housing, ice cream parlor manager, waitress and, most recently, as a Conversation Analyst at Edelman. It's also included a lot of extra-curricular activities including studying the Djembe, learning Hebrew for an adult bat mitzvah, improv and stand-up comedy, writing groups and blogging.

Lots and lots of blogging.

So what? What does that have to do with PR? How can a company live it's own life?

I've also been flipping through Authenticity: What Consumer's Really Want by James H Gilmore and B. Joseph Pine II. I'm being honest, I haven't been able to dive into the book and really read it, but it is on my list.

In chapter six, the authors introduce the Real/Fake Matrix to help the reader discern if something is Real-real, Real-fake, Fake-real, or Fake-fake. "I'm sorry, Leah, what does that mean?"

These are the quadrants on the matrix, determined by answering two questions. Is the offering true to itself? And is the offering what it says it is? Lucky for us, the pair have made an abbreviated lesson in using the matrix on the site AuthenticyBook.com.

We can be true to ourselves and then help our clients shape offerings that are true to itself. As I dig into this book, I'll try to pull more gems out, but I think you should add it to your to-read list as well.