Human beings do a lot of cool things.
We attempt to run marathons (and complete them!). We create new technology and solve problems. We raise a family while holding down a job and taking care of our elderly parents.
We push through our fears. We write poetry. We sing arias. We sign up for acting class. We work on ourselves. We get healthy. We leave destructive relationships. We give up smoking. We volunteer to feed the homeless.
We do a lot in our lives and contribute significantly.
But we have a very difficult time acknowledging how much we’ve accomplished.
Our positive qualities are just as real as our negative ones. But we don’t believe in our positive attributes because we have so much history and meaning invested in our negative aspects of self. That’s because they’re usually the stories we hear ourselves repeating.
How often do you say to yourself, “I’m doing amazing”?
Cricket. Cricket. Probably never!
Our eyes are so on the prize of not only what we want – but what we haven’t yet achieved in order to arrive at what we want – that we forget what we have. We judge ourselves on what we have not yet accomplished or “failed” at experiencing.
We forget to acknowledge what we’ve done to get us here today. Right here. Right now. We don’t celebrate where we’ve had openings or victories or pushed through fears or how we’ve really transformed our lives.
Any kind of dialogue that contains a more truthful (and loving) expression of who you really are not only improves your life, but it simultaneously helps you in actually getting what you want.
It’s the difference between expansion and contraction. What do you want more of?
When you think in terms of negativity you contract. Contraction collapses in on itself, it shrinks, it hides, it retracts our energy. Often in our acting (and auditioning) we doubt, we second-guess, we apologize for, we get scared to take the leap.
Expansion, on the other hand, radiates outward. Hello world! It magnifies, it energizes, it multiplies, it reinvigorates. It has a ripple affect and the pure physics of expansion means that we more positively influence greater numbers of people.
We’re like icebergs. Two-thirds of our enormity is hidden under the surface. What if we flipped it so our enormity could be seen? And acknowledged. And shared.
Love enormously. Encourage enormously. Risk enormously. Share enormously. Laugh enormously. Create enormously. Act enormously.
That’s expansion.