When I Was Me...

Life was full of awe and wonder.

I was free to dream.

I was bold and brave.

Strong and magical.

Creative and kind.

I believed in myself and all my magical powers.

I saw beauty in the world even on the cloudy days.

I spent hours in the shelter of the trees dreaming of worlds only I could see.

I doodled and wrote poems without a care if they were good enough.

I saw possibilities in all people.

I believed I could do anything.

I wasn’t afraid of trying. Or of failing.

And then one day I was.

And so I stopped doing the things that brought me to peace.

I worried what it would look like to others.

I put myself into a safe little bubble to protect against the hurt.

Soon that bubble grew stagnant. Stale. Grey.

I grew farther away from me.

When I sought to bring back the color, the spark, the imagination of life, I mistakenly looked outside of myself for the answers.

I began to emulate others. I attempted to fit in. I tried hard to measure up to my own impossible standards. I looked for others to assign me worth, to show me the way.

Believing they would know the path I needed to take to help me rise to my full potential.

Instead, they rose to theirs. I faltered.

I tried again, another way. Maybe this time I hung on way too long thinking it would all become clear, and ruining whatever it was really supposed to be; a stepping stone, a launch pad, a place to rest.

Until I slowly began to realize the power was within me. Inside of me. Mine to use or to ignore. It had been there all along.

I played with it for a while. Taking a small step here and a bigger one there. I had some success, got a little braver….and failed often. Not seeing that I was moving forward I began to judge myself. And when being judged, I freeze. The what ifs began to take over, until I was stuck again. In a prison of my own making. Too scared to bust out.

Yet there was a tiny quiet voice inside that waited patiently for me to listen.

She kept dreaming, kept believing in me, because she knew I would work my way back.

One dark day I lost my way completely. Too exhausted to continue the uphill battle within myself, I fell to the cold, hard floor. Tears began to fall, and I could no longer hold them in.

After the falling apart came the eye of the storm. Calm. Peace. The quiet space where I began to hear again.

And I heard her say: welcome home.

And when she was told it was time...

she grew up.

And she forgot who she was deep down inside. It didn't happen slowly, that would be too painful, she just packed up all the little things that made her whole and happy, and uniquely her, and stuck them in the attic.

For someday when...

she could breathe again. Or when her grandchildren would go through the boxes containing the pieces and parts of the real her she'd saved for later, and set her spirit free.

She stopped believing in magic.

Because magic wasn't in the rulebook for becoming a grown up she was reminded many times. Good girls are responsible, safe, determined, and productive. There was no longer time for collecting rocks or watching butterflies, there were more important things to be done.

She stopped saying what she meant.

For a long while she remained quiet. There were so many unwritten rules that didn't make sense to her. Rules about what, when and how to say things so as not to stand out in all the wrong ways. Rules about pretending not to notice certain things and having to  acknowledge things that really didn't matter. Rules about impressing people with questionable intentions and being nice to people who were mean spirited on the inside. The worst was pretending not to know when people said one thing and thought another.

She got confused.

She was almost afraid to participate in her own life, in case she did it wrong. So she watched and waited for the time to be right to speak her mind again. Only years went by and her natural talents faded. Her dreams disappeared. And her light dimmed.

She gave up.

There was so much to worry about trying to do right that she became scared to say anything important at all, in case she might be wrong. Or ridiculed. Or deemed unworthy. But that felt wrong, too. Because deep inside remained a small burning need to understand everything, to be wildly curious, to right wrongs, to speak up, to make a difference. To stand out in all the right ways.

Years went by and she completely lost her way.

She had stopped writing, reading or even creating. She gave up the thought of ever losing herself in the magic of life again. There was no spontaneity to her movements, and little  joy. She never allowed herself the luxury of just being. She heard constant noise. And she listened only to the mean voice within. In an attempt to outrun it, she stayed in constant motion. Others saw her as tightly wound. Ridiculously planned. Inflexibly judgmental. She became exactly the kind of person she never wanted to be.

And one day she woke up a hot mess on her basement floor and realized she had hit rock bottom. She had become a grown up.

And as a grown up she was slowly doing to her children what had once been done to her. She was sucking the magic out of them. Her body and soul suddenly felt the effects of years spent attempting to be perfect, the times she tried to please, and the utter devastation of realizing even if she got there, it would never be enough. Especially for herself.

So she stopped.

Nearly cold turkey. She stopped doing all the things that had once been done to her. She stopped correcting. She stopped protecting. She stopped smoothing the road ahead for them. She stopped pushing. She stopped comparing. She just stopped. And she began the hardest thing she's ever done.

She let go.

Of everything. The rules. The disappointment. The worry. Her mean voice. The constant swimming upstream. All of it. Piece by piece. And a funny thing happened. She started healing. She began to believe in herself again.

She started believing that she could change the world, just by being herself.

She stopped trying to prove, strive, achieve and she started to become something better. She not only remembered the magic within, she began to rely on it. And she showed the world that it is never too late.

The magic is forever within.

It lived in her and it lives within you.

There is no time like right now to Believe in the power of you.

It is never too late.

You know how thinking back over time you can recognize life changing moments, doors that you went through that changed your life forever?

I had one today.

Someone I love (but haven't seen for a while) asked me how I was doing via a short text conversation.

And I immediately answered back: I'm the best I have ever been.

And damn if I didn't mean it. Wholeheartedly. Honestly. Joyfully.

I am doing great. I feel good. NO, I feel great. I feel at peace. I feel purposeful. I feel loved. I feel happy. I feel at ease with me.

It is the best feeling in the world. It is like I got new glasses with a stronger prescription and I can finally see the leaves on the trees again.

Everything is beautiful. Everything makes sense. Everything is going to be okay.

Just needed to share this so I never forget. And so you'd know there is always hope that you can make changes for the better, too.

If you had a good friend who was all ready to move forward on something, something they believed strongly in but were holding back out of fear or self-doubt, would you do something to help them get started?

Of course you would.

Most people love to see others succeed. It inspires them to move forward with ideas and dreams of their own. And it sparks courage -- have you ever given yourself the pep talk that goes like this "well if so-and-so can do it, then so can I"? Unfortunately, most times the pep talk is as far as we get before our own doubts, fears, anxieties or over thinking creep in and stop us dead in our tracks.

Go back to my original question and imagine that the good friend I asked about was actually YOU. Would your answer be the same? Would you do something to help yourself move forward? Or would you hold back and throw up roadblocks in order to keep yourself "safe" ?

Ah ha!  If helping a friend is easier than helping yourself....a reassessment is needed.

You have to be willing to do at least as much for yourself, if not MORE than you would do for a  good friend, to get moving in the direction of your dreams. Focusing outward, on others and helping them take risks but being unwilling to take your own means you are living vicariously through them. In essence you aren't believing in yourself. You are keeping yourself stuck in order to keep yourself safe from failing. This can eventually lead to dark feelings of self-doubt, anger, guilt, depression, and hopelessness as you watch others around you succeed -- sometimes even succeeding in areas that you also could excel at. The results of keeping ourselves "safe" can actually result in the outcome we fear most ---failure.

So why do we so easily get distracted by others, offering assistance to them via our supporting words or a new connection that will further their ideas, instead of focusing on our own ideas and dreams? Because in helping a friend, we have no ownership of the outcome. We don't have to worry about feeling any shame or stress if they fail, so we can be brave for our friends at no risk to ourselves.

What we really need to do is be brave for ourselves.

So start believing in YOU. Trust in YOU. Support YOURSELF.

I do not say this lightly and I know from experience that this is also not an easy thing for many people to do: you need to put yourself first. It is necessary for our own well being and for those who depend on us to put ourselves at the front of the line. I spent years assisting others, watching them achieve what I wanted to achieve, watching them take risks I was too scared to take....because I was afraid (deep inside) that I might fail. And if I failed, I feared I would come unglued. But I have learned that I wasn't giving myself enough credit. I am strong, I can overcome failure. I can survive it. In fact, it doesn't render me helpless -- it did the reverse, it made me stronger. I am still learning to undo the patterns I once developed to keep myself protected so that I can begin to live life fully and not just go safely through the motions.

I realize now that being stuck on safe made life an uphill battle for me. In essence it made life so much harder than it needed to be. Are you doing the same?

What is stopping you from moving forward?

Are you afraid of failing? Are you stuck in your comfort zone? Or are you listening to the negative people around you, the ones who discourage you because they are afraid of pursuing their own dreams?

Your time is now. Stop thinking about it. Lead by example and DO IT.

I saw this post on RebelleSociety.com this morning and it “spoke” to me. Since it did, I felt the need to share it so you could learn from it also. More people than you might think suffer from self-sabotage, and until you learn to believe in yourself, to shut down the inner critic, you will remain stuck.

Hope this speaks to you as well.

P.S. I so want to go surf with Bartholomeus.

How to get out of your own way?

Stop judging yourself.

via Rebelle Society on Aug 28, 2013

{Photo credit: crankygoat.com}

By Bartholomeus Nicolaas Engelbertus.

We have met the Enemy and He is Us." (Pogo - Walt Kelly, Cartoonist 1913-1973 US)

Getting out of your own way is simple. What is it you do that is stopping you from doing what you really want to do?

I used to be a master at staying busy doing tasks or jobs that prevented me doing what I really wanted, or needed to do.

You can spend much time working on your sales pitch, getting your website content ‘just right,’ instead of getting out there and asking folk to buy your product.

You can spend much time sorting out little problems, rather than starting with the ‘biggie.’ What about dealing with other people’s problems instead of your own?

When this looks familiar, something is in the way. Now let me save you heaps of time; it is you. You could call it ‘mindset,’ but I still think that is you. For me, it’s me, every time!

How do you get out of your own way? Easy, stop looking at yourself. Do not see yourself from a perspective which is outside of you, the perspective of the narrative. If you are not looking out from your own perspective, ladies and gentlemen, you have left the building, not Elvis!

Notice when you judge yourself. Notice when you compare yourself. You are really looking from the outside in, then take some kind of position of judgment. Stop being your own judge, leave that to other people.

Judging yourself, looking from the outside in, reinforces the belief-systems that previously stopped your aspirations. Be brave, look from the inside out.

Come from the deeper natural side, let the gut, heart, and instinct rule! Use reason to guide it, not the other way around. This way you are beaming a new kind of signal into the shared realities of your roles. Do this long enough and the world responds.

It is nature’s way to evolve, and people respond mostly to ‘why’ you do things, and not to ‘what’ you do. It is the ‘why-drive’ as I like to call it. By mixing in new ingredients in the shared reality you have with others, the recipe changes and the food will taste different. A new thing has been created, and when there are new ingredients there is new opportunity.

What I mean is not like manifesting from a perspective of influence: what power hungry manipulative freak came up with that anyway?

No, this is evolution baby! Working with nature’s way (change), and by doing so, driving its change. Next time you see yourself from the outside in, have a little laugh at your own expense.

You can only fly with the winds of change when you are looking out of your own eyes with love.

You only have your own perspective, so stop pretending, stop judging. Come back home, and if you do not know where that is; it is where the heart is — remember?

Featured in international media, like The Saturday Times, and MSN Extras, Surf Life Coach Bartholomeus Nicolaas Engelbertus’s unique personal growth approach (subtraction of ‘the undesired’ — instead of telling a person ‘what to do’) is the driving force of the anti-conventional Natural Self System. The Epiphanies found from his near death surfing accident, and overcoming dark times resulting from undesired personal life change, are the source and inspiration of this unique approach. Bartholomeus is the creator of The Natural Self System, and runs Life Changing Surf Life Coach Retreats in Cornwall, Portugal, and Mexico. His latest book — ‘Waves of Change’ — focuses on Thriving on Change, by Unleashing your Natural Self. You can connect with Bartholomeus via surflifecoach.com and Facebook.

Reposted with permission. Actual link here.