Owning It
If you’re like most everybody else on the planet, there’s a gap between who you know yourself to be inside, and who you’re allowing yourself to be in the world. Between who you really are and how you’re showing up.
What you know is that you’re passionate. You’re deep. You’re curious. You’re powerful. And you want more.
What you’re expressing often falls far short of the mark.
At the heart of the gap is a fear. It’s the fear of vulnerability. The fear to be open and engaged and real. You feel the potential, the impulse, the call. You feel the desire to be more than you’re currently being—but you’re hiding from it. You’re repressing it. Because acknowledging it feels scary and challenging. It feel like too much of a leap.
Who are you to have such ambition? Who are you to reach so high?
You think you’re not worthy. That you’re playing out of your league. You’re afraid of criticism or rejection. Afraid to be thought naive. Afraid you’ll look foolish when you inevitably fail.
The fear keeps you from fully inhabiting your truth. From living it, and from expressing it.
- You wont tell your lover that you’ve outgrown him.
- You wont tell your parents that they’ll just have to accept you the way you are.
- You wont tell your peers that you’re throwing it all away in the name of freedom.
- You wont write your book, or travel the world, or stand on that stage and rock the arena.
You put a bottle on your truth: the source of both your power and your vulnerability. Power because the emotion fuels your determination. Vulnerability because you’re forced to confront yourself: naked, essential and alive.
No masks. No pretense. No posturing.
Only you.
Truth is where the passion lives. Truth is your desire, your fear and your grief. The truth will challenge you before it sets you free.
The truth is you have goals and dreams that you’re afraid of sharing because you don’t believe you deserve them. You have goals and dreams that wither on your lips because you lack the conviction to declare them.
The truth is you’re offering only a fraction of what you’re capable. Only a fraction of what you have. You’re not stretching yourself. You’re not feeling your emotions deeply. You’re not being real.
- Do you really believe that you can quit your job and live the Internet lifestyle?
- Do you really believe that you can do what you love?
- Do you really believe that you can find your power, rock the stage or change the world?
Maybe you don’t.
Wanting something when you don’t believe you can have it is painful. So you resolve the dissonance by muting the desire. But that’s tantamount to denying yourself. Denying your truth. Denying your self-expression.
You shut down. You switch off. You hold back. You hold back who you really are and settle for a half-expressed shadow of yourself.
No one can hurt a shadow.
But eventually you get something worse than hurt. You get numb. You get stagnated. You start to forget what it’s like to have a purpose in your life. To be inspired. To be in love. You start to forget what it’s like to have something worth hurting for.
And you start to think that this is normal.
And it is.
But it’s not good enough for you.
Because you demand more from life. Because you demand that life demand more from you. It’s not about deathbed regrets. It’s not about success or failure. It’s not about beach side condos or four hour work weeks.
It’s about making it count for the sake of today. It’s about living as fully and as truthfully as you can. Being present in each moment. Knowing that you’re true to you. That you’re walking your path with trust and courage and authenticity; and that when you inhabit that truth fully and authentically that fear ceases to have any meaning because there’s nothing you need that is apart from you.
But you have to step up. You have to claim it.
Until you can own the idea how are you going to own the result? Until you can own the idea, how are you going to take the first step?
Own the desire. Be present with it. Not consumed by it, just present with it. Acknowledge its energy—the way it moves you. The way it wants to move you.
Now stop telling the story about why it can’t happen.
Doing anything remarkable, creating anything in your life begins not with an action…
Not even with a belief.
It begins with allowing yourself to want it.
So do that, okay?
Ready to take it to the next level?
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> No one can hurt a shadow.
> But eventually you get something worse than hurt. You get numb.
If that ain’t the truth! And it’s almost impossible to realize you’re choosing to live in grayscale while you’re doing it, but that’s what you’re doing. It’s blowing me away how different it feels to chase my dreams and do all this stuff I never thought I could do. Color, baby!
Technocolour
Lach,
Love the post… “Stop telling yourself the story of why it can’t happen.” I really like that because we do tell ourselves stories, or over-arching narratives that tell us why we can’t do something. I find that these over-arching limitations don’t go away in one fell swoop, but can be cut down to size by decisive action, and perhaps the help of a coach, as you are offering here. However it may happen, we have to remove the limiting core beliefs and express our own true voice. Cheers, man!
It’s a step at a time, but it’s also amazing how quickly things shift sometimes when you actually begin taking those steps consciously and deliberately. Thanks for sharing, Ryan.
This really resonates with me.
I’m sad to say that in some areas I never even gave myself a chance…. even when I was a teenager.
It’s insane to think like that at such a young age!
Anyway… I’m not dead yet, still time for everything!
In many ways we grow up inside boxes that we didn’t have the self awareness to realize we were creating around ourselves. It’s the legacy of our “upbringing”. But now you do have the self-awareness, you don’t have to buy into it anymore. Stop telling the story.
“The truth is you have goals and dreams that you’re afraid of sharing because you don’t believe you deserve them.”
True for 99%, if not 100%, of the human population.
There’s a gap for every human being. The gap is actually healthy because it indicates expansion. Question is: how conscious are you about closing it? Thanks for the input, Annie!
Wow Lach, way to nail it, my friend! This should light a fire under some folks to claim their own freedom!
Owning your desire is worth every excruciating second of self-examination and discovery. Because what you find at the bottom of all the nasties in Pandora’s Box is the beautiful creature called Hope. And once you feel that, there is absolutely no stopping you.
I would not trade this journey for the world.
Love how you articulate it, Laurie. Looks like you’re getting the world thrown in as a bonus.
This is the desire I’m owning today: I want to never have to put up with another friggin Canadian winter ever again. I want to live somewhere else for the coldest third of the year.
I guess now I have until November to figure out how to make it happen, as opposed to all the practical reasons why it can’t.
Which end of that equation are you owning, Sylvia? Are you owning “Canadian winters suck”, or are you owning “I would so love to live somewhere warmer”? The former is a good launching pad. The latter is what you want to inhabit.
So true! Allowing yourself to fulfill your potential and diving into your own brilliance.
ok so i get the owning part of life and knowing your goals and getting them. and also know who i am emotionaly and intelectually, now what i dont know is if i know all of this and am reaching my goals my way that others around me who care about me think that i dont care and have conviction to get the goals i want in life, my only reasoning is my way of doing things is not there way of doing it and they dont see the results of me doing what i want as ending in the same goal as how they would aproach it to obtain it. who are they to say i am doing it wrong or that it wont work my way why do peple always want to try to change someone so that they believe in the same ways of life. i do believe i am my own person and i do things to get what i want in my way, who is to say i am doing it wrong. of course i am open to there approach but does that meen it should be mine do i believe that there way should be my way who knows except there way there is not pasion or want cause rationaly it creates a worse outcome then my way.
your a great writer and make a person think very deep and i love it thank you
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