What if it’s all true

Screen Shot 2014-02-17 at 8.43.04 AMWhat if it’s all true?

What if every bad thing someone has ever said about you is true? Or has some truth to it.

What if you let it in? Consider it? There is truth in all of it. Might not be my truth, or yours, but there is some truth there. The choice to believe it or dismiss it, that’s what’s up to you. I most times want to go on the defense when I hear something negative about myself, but what if I let if sink in? What harm could that do? Am I obsessive? Am I micro-manager? Can I go with the flow or do I always need a plan? Am I contrary just to be contrary?

On the flip side, what if all the good things anyone has ever said about you is also true. Am I ambitious, tenacious, smart?

That’s the balance of life. We are both – and – only we know the real truth about who we are, but everyone else sees it every day. You can hide the good or the bad, but people see it and so do you. And maybe it’s not “BAD” of “GOOD” at all. Maybe it just is. Maybe our strengths can also be weaknesses.

What if I let the comments in?

Freedom. Freedom from trying to be someone, freedom to be yourself. The good, the bad, the best. We’re all of it.

Write YOUR OWN MANIFESTO

Knowing who you are and communicating that to the world is essential to being in the world.

How you communicate it defines who people think you are and how people respond to you. It can even shape how you think about yourself.

Right after I was fired from my job, I wrote a manifesto and it was empowering for me to see myself on the page in TRUTH and not apologize for it. To see in myself things that maybe no one else could see, to hear from myself instead of someone else what I was worth.

How does one go about writing a Manifesto?  Take the answers to the ten good things about yourself from my be your own patriot post and put them into action.  Write about those ten good things – BE BOLD about it, although a manifesto is usually a public declaration, no one ever has to read it if you don’t want that. BE BOLD. 

Start your sentences with CONFIDENCE – I AM, I WILL, I DO, don’t use I think or I feel. A manifesto is not about thought or surface-level feeling, it’s about getting down into your gut, that visceral reaction. The thing you want to shout, or maybe at this stage just say into the mirror in your bathroom and believe just for you.

It’s about inspiration, what would you say to yourself to inspire yourself if you could actually form the words to encourage yourself.  For some it might be words you’d like to hear come from someone else’s mouth about you. However you get there doesn’t matter, but getting the words on the page in honor of yourself is a a step toward freedom, knowing yourself, putting yourself out there, believing.

It’s not about writing pages about yourself, it’s not your story, it’s short powerful sentences. Yours may end up taking a different direction form eventually. Be creative.

Someone asked me after reading my manifesto, “I’m wondering why you think you can say these things about yourself?” I replied with confidence “I believe them and I am that good.” And that was the truth. There is sometimes a small part of me that says, that’s not true and I just allow that in too. We all have doubt, it’s what we do with it that matters. TRUTH.

BE BOLD, no one else is going to be bold for you.