Have you ever had this experience? You’re driving on the highway, and you’ve decided you need to move over to the right lane in order to exit. But wait, there’s that pesky car riding just behind your blind spot, and THEY WON’T MOVE. You speed up, they speed up. You slow down, they slow down. You’re getting a little annoyed, and if you don’t get over soon you’ll miss your exit. So then you put on your signal only to find out that they were trying to get over to YOUR LANE and they hadn’t signaled either. You signal, you both move over, and everybody’s happy. Wasn’t that easy? Declaring yourself. It’s so simple, yet so profound. Many of us go through life hesitant to make a bold statement about who we are, or what we want in life. Sometimes it’s because of pride. Sometimes we are afraid to lose options. Sometimes we are afraid we are wrong. Sometimes we are afraid of what “they” will think. Sometimes we are afraid to do the work that we know must follow.
This is a completely legitimate way to live. You have security, familiarity, and routine. If this is what you want, this is what you should work to keep. If, however you are uncomfortable with this way of being but haven’t figured out how to change it, then your path is different and it is imperative that you begin to walk into your calling in order to help others find theirs. Declaring yourself also frees people to be themselves. Just like on the highway, you will find that the goals of others around you complement your own. You will also find that those whose goals are not in alignment with yours will gradually move away. And it’s fine. Here’s the thing. You must know who you are in order to declare it. You must look inward to know. You must refocus to really look inward. This is where our work together at Lift begins. I have been doing this work for years: Neurosciences and Cardiology research, teaching, mind-body work, meditating and creative visualization, some of it since childhood. Realizing that this was my calling, declaring it to myself and professing it to others were all surprisingly more difficult. It took a tremendous amount of courage, especially since I still work within the context of a western model of medical care. So much has opened up since my declaration, making it easier to close those doors to which I knew I’d never return. There just wasn’t enough room for all of it in my life. The more I empty my life of all unnecessary things, the fuller it becomes.
So, what do you have to declare?
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