good morning {04.04.12} | under the dogwood tree by Lori Paquette

It's not who you are that holds you back, it's who you think you're not.

Author Unknown

How often we look outside ourselves in search of a sense of completion... Believing we are too much of this, not enough of that. Believing the praise of another to be a critique of ourselves. Believing we are defined by our shortcomings.

What if we shifted our focus away from all that we aren't, and began an intimate walk alongside the One that we are?

Nurturing, developing, and loving ourselves — wholly, sacredly — cultivating the kind of confidence that only comes from realizing and embodying our own unique brand of brilliance?

Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.

Albert Einstein

Consider this your freedom declaration:

You no longer have to make yourself small and civilized, in the hopes of seeming more palatable.

You no longer have to judge your weaknesses by the strengths of others.

You no longer have to embody every desire in your lover's mind.

You no longer have to have everything figured out.

You no longer have to walk in a straight line.

You no longer have to feel embarrassed about your weirdness.

You don't have to be everything to everyone... you don't even have to be everything to anyone. That isn't your mission.

You can make the choice, in this moment, to release yourself of that burden and accustom yourself to the unique light of You. The wild, untamed animal spirit of You. The strange, irrational, totally absurd and magnificent beauty of You.

Own it. Breathe deeply into it. Walk in it.

Choose confidence, even if it feels shaky at first. Confidence is a journey, and it is work. It is freedom and brilliance. This is yours.

And when you lean forward into it, you'll see that all those little things about yourself that you missed before, are actually pretty damn amazing. It's OK to like those little things, and even to love them. This is how you will shine like a radiant jewel.

So show me who you are. I promise that I will do the same. And we'll light up the Universe.

Seeds of intention by Debbie Friedrich

Act in a way that assumes + activates bigness in everybody around you. Including yourself.

Fabeku Fatunmise

Own: Acknowledge, admit, allow, avow, come clean, concede, confess, declare, disclose, grant, own up, recognize, tell the truth.

There's this myth in our consciousness that the closer we stay to the baseline of "normal", the better off we are.

When I was a young boy, I remember my teachers asking me wearily, "Why do you have to do everything differently from everyone else?"

In my early 20's, my work supervisors and co-workers implored me to "stop bucking the system" and "stop trying to change the way we do things".

The thing is, I never set out to do things differently or buck the system — I only did what made sense to me. I've been hardwired since birth, it seems, to embody a perspective of the world that is challenging, questioning, and perhaps a bit weird.

Sound familiar?

Glorious Day :: Sunshine and Floral Bits by Lori Paquette

The greatest day in your life and mine is when we take total responsibility for our attitudes. That's the day we truly grow up.

John Maxwell

In a sense, we each live in our own private Universe — a world uniquely experienced by us.

This unique perception of the world around us is a direct projection of our current state of consciousness.

If you find that life is constantly happening "to you" (and often in spite of you), this is a signal that you aren't taking responsibility for your experience of life. It can be more subtle than this, however. Do you complain a lot? Do you find yourself criticizing people and systems on a regular basis? These are also signals.

All of these signals essentially point to the same thing: victim mentality.

Neil Degrasse Tyson Vs Mr Piper - The Most Astounding Fact by James Piper

Life is beautiful, painful and surprising – it is so many things. Often we think we are too small for our own life – including the painful parts. But that doesn’t have to be the case. We can be big enough for our own life.

Elizabeth Mattis Namgyel

Sometimes the roads all disappear and the maps stop making sense. We find ourselves in the wilderness.

In the wilderness, we have a choice: We can focus on the oppression, the darkness, and the fear, or we can use the experience to know ourselves more profoundly.

Where is the intensity being felt? Where is the epicenter of it? What deeper pain is it re-awakening? There lies the wisdom. We find ourselves in the wilderness because something has triggered our own darkness to cry out, wanting to be known, wanting to be embraced, wanting to be healed.

Beauty Freedom & Light by Daniel Collinsworth

No single event can awaken within us a stranger totally unknown to us. To live is to be slowly born.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

There is a tendency in all of us to search for what we feel is missing in our sense of Self. Many of us have a concept of an idealized, perfected Self, which we set as our standard. We then spend our entire lives searching for ways to fill the emptiness of what is missing — searching for happiness because we aren't happy, searching for beauty because we aren't beautiful, searching for freedom because we aren't free.

Yet we keep coming up short – always flawed, always incomplete, never content with who we are.

main building peeling paint by Matt Johnson

We only become what we are by the radical and deep-seated refusal of that which others have made of us.

Jean-Paul Sartre

Lately I've been exploring this idea of transformation as letting go. Letting go of what I no longer resonate with, and nurturing the deeper "me" underneath all that, instead of trying to patch myself up in an attempt to become something new and improved.

Scraping the layers of paint and dirt off of the mirror, so to speak.

I think we lose sight of who we are when we find ourselves identifying with the paint and the dirt. We think all those layers of "stuff" define us, and then we feel defective. So we try to become less of this, and more of that.

In this way, we continually create a distorted, unsatisfying sense of Self.

Reflections by Danny Plas

It is better to conquer yourself than to win a thousand battles. Then the victory is yours. It cannot be taken from you.

Buddha

Who is your enemy?

The one who talks down to you and criticizes your work? The one who treats you carelessly? The one who puts obstacles in your path and makes your life more difficult?

Perhaps you sometimes see an enemy in your friend, or your lover, or your co-worker. The distinction can be blurred, at times. We can all be many things to many people.

We can even be an enemy to ourselves.

Sunrise by Tones Photos

Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.

Andre Gide

As I sit here at my laptop with a steaming cup of peppermint tea steeping beside me, only a few days remain in the year 2011. It has been a beautiful year.

I started this blog on January 1st of this year. I had no idea how much it would change my life – the lessons I would share and explore here, the amazing people I would connect with, the dreams that would take root in my heart and mind.

I didn't go into 2011 with any particular themes in mind, but as I look back and reflect upon the year, I can see that self-love was a major theme. Healing, too. Release. Life purpose discovery & alignment. Gratitude. All of these.

For me, 2012 will be a year of mental, emotional, physical & spiritual development, stepping out of comfort zones, and taking my message beyond the pages of this blog.

I'd like to share my goals with you today.

One Mum by Care_SMC

One way or another, we all have to find what best fosters the flowering of our humanity in this contemporary life, and dedicate ourselves to that.

Joseph Campbell

We all have something that lights us up inside.

Service to others. Creative expression. Travel. Exploration of nature. Science. Spirituality. And on and on.

None of these are mutually exclusive of each other, either. It is natural for our individual passions to overlap and synergize with eachother, in ways that feel vast and limitless.

But we don't always devote our lives to our passions, do we?

Well... what if we did?

Paria Plateau view from Bryce Canyon National Park by Ed Coyle

Don't worry about what people think of you.
Think about what people experience through you.

Bridget Pilloud
{ Intuitive Bridge }

Have you ever noticed how much energy we spend attempting to show the world a puffed up, idealized version of ourselves?

Certainly, we have good reasons for doing this. Fear of rejection. Fear of losing. Fear of showing vulnerability or weakness. We build up these gigantic thoughtforms in order to justify our fears.

What if we shifted our energy from unconsciously supporting these thoughtforms, to consciously examining the growth potential that our fears are indicating?

Your Choices Will Change The World by Lori Paquette

A handful of pine-seed will cover mountains with the green majesty of a forest. I too will set my face to the wind and throw my handful of seed on high.

Fiona MacLeod

As I sit down to write this post, the news of Steve Job's passing is only a few hours old.

I have been greatly inspired by Steve's philosophy of using one's short lifespan to change the world. He has said it in countless ways, but he summed it up best when he said this:

"You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart."

Path That is Led by Light by Bruce Martin

I would like my life to be a statement of love and compassion – and where it isn't, that's where my work lies.

Ram Dass

We humans have this tendency of defining ourselves by our character flaws and failures.

We shine a harsh, critical light on ourselves when we succumb to triggers or temptations, doing things that aren't in line with our core principles.

What's worse, is the way we lie to ourselves afterwards. Thinking things like That wasn't me, how could I have done that? or That person brings out the worst in me, or the infamous I'm just not good enough.

Dark Blue by The Infamous Gdub

Live your beliefs and you can turn the world around.

Henry David Thoreau

Imagine, for a moment, how different the world would be if we all put action to our beliefs.

Beliefs like... All beings deserve unconditional love and compassion... I also am worthy of unconditional love and compassion... My health and well-being are important... Waking up an hour earlier would benefit me greatly... Patience is a virtue... and others.

Now, imagine again, how different YOUR world would be if you put action to YOUR beliefs.