Being Yourself

Being yourself is not about doing anything in particular.

It’s about who you choose to BE and how you choose to show up while you do whatever you choose to do.

It starts with the awareness and acceptance that who you are is powerful, loveable and valuable … because you are. Not because you did or did not do something but because you are loveable and powerful and truly okay being you.

And then it’s about accepting how you show up, how you are perceived and received by others and choosing whether to keep showing up that way or make some changes.

Being yourself is about wholeheartedly embracing the paradigm of yourself as cause … that who you are is able to choose and respond and create and manifest whatever you believe you can.

It means being willing to experience the whole of your own reality from the context of being source rather than just from the product point who feels and thinks and reacts. By letting go of valuing yourself solely for what you do and your judgements about how well or badly you do things, you free yourself to value BEING yourself no matter what you do.

It’s about owning yourself, your thoughts, your feelings, your choices and all the consequences and taking responsibility for the whole of who you are not just the bits you judge as ok but the whole.

Being yourself is the most liberating choice you will ever make and it’s not for the faint-hearted … it requires rigour and discipline to stay sourced in love when the fearful ego mind comes calling … and when you truly accept yourself, being yourself comes easy.

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"You are you. Now isn’t that pleasant?"

Dr Seuss

Getting To Be Good Enough

Not going to happen … not now … not ever.

The whole “good-enough/not-good-enough” stuff is based on a lie.

And if you are not conscious of it, it runs you.

It’s insidious and deep and sticky and in my experience never really “goes away”. The “not-good-enough” story is on a permanent loop in your ego-mind and it just keeps on playing. You get to choose whether you keep agreeing with it or not. You get to choose how to respond and you get to keep choosing.

The quest for “good enough” is really just a search for a feeling of being ok. A feeling of peace and security instead of feeling “not-good-enough” and the emotions that come with it … shame, hurt, anxious, etc.  So you seek to feel “better”, usually by doing more and more in the hope you will get to be “good enough”.

Well, getting to be good enough is a myth.

Who you are is a magnificent, powerful, loveable creative being and has nothing to do with “good-enough” or “not-good-enough”. Those are both polar opposite judgements about whatever is happening. And as soon as you agree that the judgement about what’s happening is actually about you the creator, rather than about what you have created, down the rabbit hole of fear you go.

So next time the “not-good enough” stuff arises … stop … take a breath … remind yourself this is a feeling, not a fact … breathe …allow the feeling to move through you and release … and it will when you give up your “not-good enough” stuff.

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If your goal in life is to become all that you are
give up the “not-good-enough” stuff
and realise yourself.

The Gift Of The Unconscious

When you choose to embrace: “I Create The Whole Of My Own Reality” it means that you are choosing to BE the cause of the whole of your own reality. However, it does not mean that you CONSCIOUSLY cause or create the whole of your own reality. You consciously create everything that you are aware of creating. And I bet there is a fair chunk of your reality that you do not have consciousness about creating!

Yet you do indeed create it all with love and wisdom. If your choice is to live an authentic, fully realised and self-expressed life, then experiencing the magnificence of who you really are as cause then becoming conscious of your unconscious choices is crucial.

Here’s a few simple steps to help you uncover the gift of your unconscious … what’s really going on … when you find yourself experiencing reality you did not consciously choose.

1. Accept that no matter how you feel about what’s happening, in the paradigm of cause, you did create it. And because you create everything with love and wisdom, whether realised in the moment or not, whatever is occurring is your creation and as such you can respond consciously and choose again.
2. Accept that whatever is occurring is showing you something you have been unconscious of so that you can become conscious and respond differently, i.e., make a different choice. Ask yourself: “What is this really about for me?” and pay attention to what shows up.
3. Accept that whatever you are feeling about what is happening, it’s not the truth about what is happening, it’s the truth about what you are feeling … not a fact and you can respond consciously. So breathe … and allow … and accept … and release.
4. Accept that there is a gift in whatever is manifest and choose to become conscious of how you caused whatever is happening and it’s inherent gift.

The shortcut is simply acceptance of yourself as loveable, valuable, powerful and magnificent creator of the whole of your own reality … and that’s a gift!

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"There is no coming to consciousness without pain.
People will do anything, no matter how absurd,
in order to avoid facing their own Soul.
One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light,
but by making the darkness conscious."

- C.G. Jung

You Are Response-Able

Responsibility has nothing to do with blame, shame, guilt or fault. All are derived from a context of fear - the fear that when you do something “wrong” it means that WHO YOU ARE is “wrong” and round you go again with the “not good enough” stuff.

If you want to get off the wheel of making yourself “wrong”, step up and BE responsible - Response-Able - for all that you experience, all that you do and all that you have.

BEING responsible from the paradigm of I Create The Whole Of My Own Reality means that whatever happens, the first place you go is within … the first thing you do is look inside and ask “How did I cause this to occur?” rather than react out of your feelings and blame something or someone outside of you. Tempting as it is, particularly when reacting strongly out of fear, remember to stop …take a breath and let yourself feel the feeling … breathe and allow and let it release. Then you have some space to remember that you are able to respond from love rather than just react out of fear. You are the cause and you can respond any way you choose.

It’s not an easy thing to do when you start … it takes practice and rigour and above all a consistent choice to remember WHO YOU ARE: powerful beyond measure and able to respond. And the more you are willing to BE responsible for all that you experience, the more you are willing to adopt the filter that you are able to respond to whatever shows up, the more you will experience yourself as cause rather than a victim of your fearful ego mind, your emotional reactions and the external world. 

When you remember that fear is an illusion and only love is real, BEING responsible is the key to creating the reality you choose.

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"Responsibility starts with the willingness
to experience yourself as cause…"

Werner Erhard

Choosing To Open Up

Being open is not really hard … it just feels that way sometimes … and being open is simply necessary when you choose to live authentically and boldly as yourself.

So why does it seem so hard to open up, particularly when you feel something uncomfortable?

Because when you open up, not only are you choosing to allow others to see inside you but also to let things out … what you really think and feel, what you really want and desire, beyond your fearful ego-mind’s insidious need to protect and defend by withholding your deeper emotional truth.

Opening up to yourself requires a willingness to reveal to yourself who you really are and what’s really going on at any point in time. It is a process of unwrapping the layers of fearful thinking you have used to protect yourself … usually from feeling something you don’t want to feel. Yet when you open up and let yourself go all the way with your truth, everything changes and you will discover that being open is the pathway to inner peace.

When you choose to open up be prepared to feel things that you have been avoiding or suppressing, be prepared to confront fears and longings that you have been denying and be prepared to discover that what you feared would happen when you open up, usually doesn’t!

In fact, when you open up to yourself and others, others will open up to you. And when there is openness in your communication and relationships, genuine connection and responding occur and you and the other both get outcomes you enjoy.

Choosing to open up is like anything else in the paradigm of I Create The Whole Of My Own Reality … a choice you can make moment by moment because you choose to. And when you choose to open up, you have more choices about how to BE and what to DO so you can HAVE what you truly want.

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"Openness doesn't come from resisting our fears
but from getting to know them well."

Pema Chodron

Feelings Are Not Facts

Chances are you learned from an early age to judge your feelings - and yourself - when expressing a feeling others didn’t like.  And without any real education and experience of the value of your feelings, you shut down and began suppressing, repressing and depressing strong emotional reactions and feelings, particularly the ones you judge as not okay, not appropriate, “negative”.

Yet your ability to feel and react emotionally to things is part of being human and, as such, has value and purpose and the power to transform you and your experience of life.

First let go of the old childhood belief: “Some feelings are bad and some feelings are good” and instead adopt the belief: “Feelings are neither bad nor good, they are all just feelings and exist to let me know how I feel about whatever is occurring” .

Then realise your feelings show the stories you make up in your head, the meaning you give to everything that happens, often without checking to see if what you have assumed is actually what is happening. When you decide that what you feel is the truth about whatever is happening, you have just agreed with the story you made up!

You have turned the feeling into a fact - when in fact it is not the truth about the situation or experience, it is simply the truth, the fact of what you are feeling.

Accept that what you are feeling is okay … it has purpose and value and is something you can respond to. Then let yourself acknowledge it fully … which means feel it in your body and let it go … breathe and allow and let it release (Jill Bolte-Taylor says it takes 90 seconds for the energy to move through your body and release). You will discover the freedom that comes from being the cause of your feelings and emotions rather than at their effect.

When you stop turning your feelings into facts, when you stop recycling the old painful movies (and feelings) about your “not good enough" stuff you will free yourself to consciously choose the meaning you put on everything and how you feel.

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"Your feelings exist to be felt, responded to and released …not recycled."

How To Let Go

The first step in letting go of anything is to acknowledge that you are holding on … to the stories and the movies in your head, to the stuff of the past that you bring into your present by feeling today just like you felt yesterday about whatever has occurred. Tell the truth about what you are hanging onto and then you can choose to let go.

Simple … and not easy when unresolved feelings are involved and your wounded internal 3 year old just wants for things to be “made right”.

And here it is … again. The unhealed emotional wounds from past experiences keep you stuck in reliving those experiences in the here and now over and over again … and nothing much changes.

And it won’t as long as you keep recycling those memories and experiences and all the meaning you gave with the hope of working out “why” all this stuff happened to you and how you can get a different outcome. You cannot change the past … but you can change what happens next if you are willing to consider shifting yourself from a context of “victim/persecutor/rescuer” (The Old Paradigm of Fear) to a context of “I Create The Whole Of My Own Reality” (The New Paradigm of Love).

What if nothing really “happens to you” but rather everything “happens for you?”

Being willing to accept that you are powerful, that you are the cause of everything in your reality whether you are aware of causing it or not, frees you to accept that you have created everything for your growth and benefit not for your detriment. Then you are free to choose again.

When you accept everything in your reality as yours, you are free to hang on or let go.

The choice is always…yours.

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"In the process of letting go
you will lose many things from the past
but you will find yourself."

Deepak Chopra