Twenty years ago, I wanted to die. Desperately. No one knew. Except me. No one even suspected. From the outside looking in, everything looked fine. Actually, better than fine. I had a chiropractic office in Santa Barbara. I was getting ready to open a second one. I was engaged to a girl that everyone thought was perfect for me. I was the guy most people wanted to be. And yet, I was miserable.
In an attempt to fix me, to make the depression and sadness go away, I tried everything. Modality after modality. Self-help and personal development books, workshops, seminars… you name it. I tried it. Nothing worked. Nothing would ease that continuous nagging of desperation and dissatisfaction.
One day I woke up and decided, “That’s it! I am done. I am not doing this anymore.” I told the universe, “I am out of here! You have 6 months to change something or I am killing myself.” I meant every word I said. I set the date. I made the plan. Six months from that date, if nothing had changed, I was ending it all.
Apparently, my demand was heard. I asked for change. Little did I know that literally everything was about to change. And even less did I know how it would show up.
For me, that change was something called Access Consciousness. A set of tools and processes that empower you to know you are not wrong, you never have been and that you know what you know!
Twenty years later, I am still here on the planet. Not only am I alive, but every day is an adventure! Every day I wake up and choose to be more of me. Well, most days! I still have cranky ones and times when I wake up with a sense of wrongness. But now I know I have the tools to change it. I know that something else is possible. And I know that under all that crankiness is a happy being — me.
That makes all the difference. I know what is true about me, and that is the energy I keep choosing to be and create from.
What have you always known was possible? For you. For others. For the planet. Have you given up on what you know is possible because it is so far beyond what you see in the world and often challenging to put into words so you stopped believing it could exist?
You are an energy that is unique to you. When you are being you, this energy is available to the world. When you are not being you, we all miss out!
So what does it actually mean to “be you”? Let me start with what it is not about. It is not about defining you. It is not about deciding what the ‘real you’ looks like and acts like and then trying to be that. You are too big for any definition. You are too big for any box. You are an infinite being; without limits. You have capacities and gifts that others do not. You perceive possibilities that others are unaware of.
Being you is about committing to you and embracing and inviting those capacities, gifts, and possibilities even if no one else gets it. Even if no one understands. Being you is an invitation to others and the space that invites them to it.
Many of us grow up without being acknowledged for the gift that we are. Few of us were celebrated for our difference. Going beyond this into truly choosing to have and be more of who we truly are each day is a choice – a choice that takes some courage.
So how do you choose to be more of you?
The very first step is to stop… JUDGING YOU.
When was the last time you judged yourself for something? Five minutes ago? Maybe less? What if you are not wrong? What if you have never been?
There is an idea in society that we navigate the world with the help of judgement — what is right and wrong and good and bad. And, the idea is also that if we stop judging ourselves, if we stop making ourselves wrong, that somehow, we will be mean and unkind. Judgment supposedly keeps us in line. This is a lie that keeps us in a constant state of judgment of ourselves. People who are mean are mean because they are mean. Not because they stopped judging themselves.
What would be possible for you and for the world if you never made you wrong again? Would your life get better? When your life gets better, will you create more? When you create more does the world get better?
If judging you is something you do on a daily basis, one way you can stop is to ask this question, “What is right about me that I am not getting?”
It is not about looking for what is right about as in creating a list of positive judgments. It is about finding gratitude for you, for what you are that you may have never acknowledged.
Gratitude and judgment cannot exist at the same time. You are choosing one or the other. Also when it comes to you!
The second step to getting out of judgment is realizing that you are very, very aware of everyone around you, and of their judgements. You’re like a big psychic radio receiver picking up feelings, thoughts, and emotions from everyone around you!
And since you’ve been taught from an early age to use judgment to navigate the world, those judgments feel real, they feel right and you buy them as yours.
Here is the issue: 99% of the time those judgments are not yours! They belong to someone else — which means you can not change them!
So how do you know what is yours? Ask: ‘Is this mine?’ for every judgment that comes up. If your world lightens up just a little bit, it isn’t yours. Let it go, return to the sender (you don’t need to know who it is) and choose something different.
The path to being you is about disrupting the autopilot of judgment and discovering the potency of gratitude for you. What if there truly is nothing wrong with you? What if every wrongness of you is actually a strongness?
What if, just for today, you tried an experiment? Ask: ‘What is right about me that I am not getting?’ and ‘Is this mine?’ for every single judgment that comes up.
Then notice if anything changes, within you and around you.
What if our world didn’t have to have to function according to right and wrong and good and bad?What if you could perceive everything about a person and embrace it all with no judgment? What if that person were you?
Well, that person IS you and when you choose to BE you, you truly do change the world.
Dain will be presenting a special, Being You, Changing the World online class on July 3rd, based on his best-selling book. This is an open invitation to join this unique event! This online class has no prerequisites and is uniquely created by the people who choose to join remotely from all over the world!