Seeking Authenticity

Have you ever stopped to ask yourself:

Why am I doing this?

When you find yourself frustrated from endless social media scrolling …

When you feel as though your actions don’t reflect the person you want to (and could!) be …

When you’re disheartened by your current path in life and want to meet the challenge of your potential …

Sometimes all you need is a change in perspective.

Initially written as a declaration intended for an audience of one—following in the footsteps of former Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius who journaled the meditations that would encapsulate Stoic philosophy—Seeking Authenticity dives into what it means to live an authentic life guided by action and driven to adventure.

Flint Mitchell interlaces philosophical principles with personal accounts from his year-long surfing and hiking adventure from Canada to Australia. Through sometimes poetic, sometimes sarcastic, yet always honest expression, Flint helps you reorient your current life toward your ideal one through your most powerful perspective: the lens of your values.

Seeking Authenticity calls you to reflect on:

• Who you are and what you stand for
• If your actions are genuinely tied to your intentions
• The strength of the connections you form with your loved ones
• The positive or negative habits impacting your life
• How resilient you are toward conflict, big or small
• Where your current value system is taking you and what a future with those values looks like

Seeking Authenticity began as a modern stoic’s journal dedicated to distilling the time-tested ideas of some of the greatest literary figures of the past several centuries into actionable information. Despite initial skepticism of his friends and confidants' desire for these essays and narratives to be formally published, Flint paid beta readers to offer explicitly honest feedback.

One of the readers responded: “This book positively changed my life. These essays are amazing… and I truly believe that I should be the one paying YOU for letting me read them.” And then he refunded Flint’s money. This was the spark that catapulted this modern day curation of timeless wisdom and pithy insights into a published format, which has already been proven to impact lives and is waiting for you to dive into.

If you like your truth sandwich with a side of humor, if you enjoy the musings of Viktor Frankl, Ralph Waldo Emerson, or David Goggins, or if you are distressed about the amount of time you spend doing inconsequential bullshit, then this book will help you steer away from anything you deem trivial, focus on your ambitions, and set yourself on a path toward meaning.

Flint Mitchell is a young research scientist and outdoorsman from the Bay Area, California. He has a degree in electrical engineering from Southern Methodist University, a couple of published patents, and a podcast. He is a self-proclaimed expert of several things: overanalyzing the minutia of the natural world around him, watching sunrises, and smiling. In his free time, you'll find Flint paddling in the ocean, reading a book, hiking his way out of cell service, or sitting next to a grill.