Inspiring Your Authentic Week

Posted: 02 Sep 2010 10:41 AM PDT

It is easy to get caught up in the importance or our lives, our moment in history and our species. Occasionally it is important just to check in with the bigger picture and hold the vitality of our own experience in the context of the whole.

We have somewhere between 50 and 100 trillion cells in our body. We have been evolving separately from other apes for about 6.5 million years, on a planet that formed 4.5 billion years ago and is expected to support life for another 500 million years. We are thought to have been "modern" humans for about 200,000 years, we have lived in cities for around 10,000 years, we made the first really useful steam engine 300 years ago.

We are currently one of nearly 7 billion humans on this planet and one of well over 100 trillion living things ranging from bacteria to trees that weigh over 2000 tons.

Our earth is one of 8 planets that orbit our Sun. Our Sun contains 99.86% of the total mass of the whole solar system. The Earth is about 150 million km from the Sun, to give a sense of scale; the equator of the Earth is about 40,000 km around. The furthest full planet from the Sun, Neptune, is 4.5 billion km away from it.

Our Solar system is part of a galaxy known as the Milky Way, visible on a dark night as a pale cloud of light. The Milky Way Galaxy is 100,000 light years from side to side, a light year is the distance that light travels in a year, just under 10 trillion kilometers. So the width of our Galaxy is 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 km (a Quinitillion)- about. Our Sun is one of between 200 and 400 billion stars in our galaxy, it is not easy to count them all.

We are 25-28,000 light years from the centre of the galaxy. Our closest neighbour star, Alpha Centauri, is 4.4 light years away or 44 trillion km.

The closest galaxy to our own is known as Andromeda, with over 1 trillion stars, it is about 2.5 million light years away (remember, a light year is the distance light travels in a year, it travels 186,000 miles in a second). The Milky Way and Andromeda are a binary galactic system and part of a larger system of 50 galaxies that form what is known as the Local Group, a part of the Virgo Supercluster.

Our universal address would be Earth, Sun, Orion Arm of the Milky Way Galaxy, Local Group, Virgo Supercluster. The Universe is thought to be 13.75 billion years old.

So we are a flash, on a speck, on a dot, not more.

And yet...

...we and our small blue/green dot are all we have.

We are on a life raft in a vast and hostile ocean. If we bet, and it is a very big bet, that there is an available and habitable planet within half the width of the galaxy, then our situation is the equivalent of being on a life raft, 0.0024 of a millimeter long, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

On a cosmic scale our survival is inconsequential, the loss of humanity or of the earth as a whole would be no more significant that the loss of single cell is to our own bodies.

To us however the loss of humanity would be more significant. If we want to prolong our existence on our life raft we have to figure out a way of living together with our co-dependents.

As a species, after 200,000 years we are still behaving like teenagers. Like teenagers we are still primarily motivated by fear. Fear of embarrassment, fear of loosing out, fear of difference, fear of loosing control. Our fear leads us into conflicts, war on everything, including nature and each other.

Like a teenager we are at risk of living fast and dying young. We need to grow up before we kill ourselves. Growing up means replacing fear with love, replacing conflict with peace and replacing greed with responsibility.

Authenticity is the key. We are born good. Fear, greed and conflict are all learned. We could equally learn love, responsibility and peace. Adults need to unlearn and relearn authenticity, kids just need to be allowed to stay authentic.

Through Authenticis and our Authentic Business Radio Show we would love to help businesses, projects and individuals to succeed through their authenticity. If you would like to share your business, project or story on the show please let me know.

I am planning an Open Authentic Leadership event in Mallorca in October, with 15 - 20 places available. You can find out a lot more about the course here. If you are interested please let me know so I can gauge numbers for the hotel.

Join us on our Authentic Business Radio show every Thursday at 5pm UK, 6pm Euro or 12.00 EST. This week we will be discussing "Context and perspective"

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With love

nx

Neil Crofts
Neil Crofts
authentic business

+34 646391384
neil@neilcrofts.com
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