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Dedication
To my first love: Thank you for guiding me back home to the real me. It was always about the mission.
To the reader: May you use your power to come back home to the real you.
Introduction: The tug-of-war in your spirit
The real truth behind the smile
Sometimes you feel like no one understands the real you or the tug-of-war that is going on inside of you. On the outside, everything looks perfect. Good job, check. Nice house, check. Recognition in your profession, check. A constant chorus of people telling you how great you are, check. Yet your inner voice rings louder and louder with every compliment, “you’re not living up to your full potential, why aren’t you using your gifts, why are you running?” You know that you want to live up to your full potential, but you can’t seem to take the leap. Deep down inside you want to listen to your inner voice and ditch the neatly manicured life. Yet each time you try to take the leap towards living up to your full potential, you get pulled back into the vortex of your status quo. It's gotten to the point where you don’t know what else to do because your old bag of tricks is not working. The scriptures, mantras, and daily affirmation texts seem to have lost their power to kickstart your momentum. You want to change, but you can’t. You feel stuck.
Everyone in your circle looks at you and sees a picture perfect life, yet inside you feel a lack of peace from your invisible inner voice constantly reminding you of your stagnation. The reality is, this isn’t your picture perfect life because you are not living as the highest version of yourself. The highest version of yourself is the real you. It is a state of being that stems from the belief that you are enough and fully capable of using your unique talents and gifts for a greater purpose. For some, this greater purpose could mean changing careers, becoming an entrepreneur, or maintaining a healthy lifestyle. While individual motivations may differ, pursuing the highest version of yourself results in living from a place of comfort, trust, and love, where your mindset, emotions, and behaviors coexist peacefully. This internal harmony allows you to freely use your talents without second-guessing yourself. Your spirit feels at rest because you're channeling your power towards trusting yourself, rather than living from the routinized fear-based expectations of others.
You may have written about the highest version of yourself in your journal or shared it with a few friends and family. You may also have some regrets about sharing it with them, because their reactions to your vulnerability exacerbated your lack of peace and loneliness. The very people that you thought would support you, may have misunderstood why you would disrupt your picture perfect life, or misjudged your calling to live as the highest version of yourself. The negative Nancy comments like, “Why do you believe that you have this calling?” or “You’ve changed, you are not like us anymore,” plant seeds of fear and doubt in your mind that trigger your stagnation. So when people ask you, “how are you doing?,” you choose to suppress your inner voice, smile and respond, “I’m doing good,” all the while descending deeper into a lonely sunken place.
Despite these feelings you persist in your ability to come up for air, and choose to find out what’s preventing you from taking action towards living in the highest version of yourself. That’s the reason you picked up this book, to get support with figuring out what’s going on within you.
This is YOUR time
You picked up this book at the right time in your life. You will overcome the fab four of fear and figure out the root of what’s actually holding you back. The shouldas, couldas, wouldas, and can’ts of your mind form the foundation of fear-based thinking and self-limiting beliefs that keep you trapped in a cookie cutter life and stifle your voice and potential. Lately, you’ve felt called to ditch the fab four of fear and jump on a new train, one that leads you to a greater sense of purpose and fulfillment, one that allows your gifts to manifest the real version of you that you’ve been dreaming about. Together, we will hit fast forward and pass the powerlessness that fills your mind and spirit with fear of the many things that could go wrong. No more being confined to doubtful thoughts that keep you bound to living as a lower and less happy version of yourself.
Are you ready to free the real you? I think you are. Want to know how I know? You bought this book which means you are ready to get unstuck. Here’s a little trick: if you find yourself getting distracted and wanting to close down, ask “why is it important for me to be present with this book at this moment in my life?” Use that answer to ground you and reset your focus. Write down the answer on a post-it note and stick it inside of the book. Use the post-it messages to help you stay motivated along your journey.
Your road to discovering the power within you
You have everything you need inside of you to manifest the highest version of yourself. Power begins on the inside, and you are about to tap into yours in this book. Each chapter will guide you through a consciousness-raising process to discover and reclaim the power within you. Be sure to have your journal handy as you make your way through the book and be ready to write and reflect on any revelations that come up for you.
First Stop: Promise to Be Honest
This book is about breaking up with fear and doubt and walking in your full power. It’s about using your mindset, emotions, and behaviors to live as the highest version of self, releasing the lower vibrations that keep you trapped and playing it safe. In order to let go of the lesser version of yourself and bring out all that beautiful power buried down inside of you, you have to make yourself a promise. Promise yourself that you will be honest when you answer the questions in this book, every single time. To be dishonest is to cheat yourself, stifle your growth, and waste your money. The golden rule of this book is: no judging yourself. View your honest moments as learning moments, too. Judgement will send you back into a corner, leading you to close the book and wind up back at square one. We ain’t got time for that; lives depend on you moving forward in your gifts. You chose to investigate your inner voice at this time for a reason, so don’t waste your headspace living in negative energy. Every time you want to judge yourself, reframe the thought to, “what am I learning about myself?” This signals a gentler way for your mind to accept new information.
Second Stop: Know the Road Map
In your journey through this book, I will walk you through how to use consciousness-raising strategies to get unstuck. This experience will allow you to get to know yourself on a deeper level and be more thoughtful about how you interact with yourself. The 4-step consciousness-raising process involves choice, presence, self-awareness, and intentionality. Developing a deeper consciousness starts with:
1 The choice of how you want to use your power;
2 Your decision then creates a level of presence to listen to the voices in your mind and find out what’s stopping you from moving forward;
3 Using this self-awareness, you can dig up the roots of what has you stuck;
4 And finally intentionally using hands-on techniques can help you to remove anything that stands in the way of your progression. If it takes you away from the highest version of self, it has to go.
You’ll put this process to use in each section of the book as you journey towards reclaiming your power. You will begin in Phase I by Asking: “What’s going on inside of me?”; Phase II is about Assessing: “How am I using my power?”; and finally in Phase III, Accepting: Owning the power within me.
Third Stop: Meet Your Companions for the Ride
Personal work is often done alone. This sometimes creates the feeling of isolation and shame as you peel back the layers to unveil the core of your authentic self. There is power in collective vulnerability and healing that occurs within a community. To ensure that you experience