10 Steps to Your True Self
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Download 10 Steps to Your True Self now for only $5.95 by clicking here. Thanks for reading and good luck on your journey!
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I am a life coach. I became a life coach because I want to help people tackle the important questions in their lives. Those are the questions that get the least amount of attention, but matter most to who we are. We spend so much of our time – and our time is our lives – worrying about daily tasks such as, what to get at the grocery store, when is that electric bill due, what report do I need to get ready for work tomorrow. We end up with little to no time left to think about the most vital pieces of our lives. Am I living in a manner where I am being true to myself? Do I still have dreams for my life? The things that matter the most to us are the ones that often get the least amount of attention. What matters more than our relationships with the people we love? But how often (outside of a romantic relationships) do we think about the extent to which we are being true to those relationships? How often do we consciously put time towards nurturing those relationships because they are the things we treasure most?
My goal with this series of essays, 10 Steps to Your True Self is to help you discover your path to living a conscious and deliberate life which will inevitably lead to your truer self. I have a sense of urgency around this project. People are suffering. Too many of us feel lost because we have grown so distant from our true selves. Too many of us are off our personal paths with no idea of how to get back on. For every person in this state of being, she suffers, those around her suffer, and ultimately the world is missing out on a human being’s light shining as brightly as it has the potential to shine.
Nothing that I am going to say is new. I am a firm believer that there are few original ideas in the world. There are no earth-shattering concepts presented here. While nothing here is new, everything here has to be owned by you in order to be applicable to your life. There is no living by osmosis. You must be, “the child who’s got his own.” What I hope to give you are the words you need to hear at the time you need to hear them. And while I am glad if what I say has significance to you at this time and place in your life, reading these words is actually the least of the tasks before you. I am posting these essays one at a time purposefully. I want to read through that week’s essay, absorb the ideas, and spend the days that follow contemplating what the concepts really mean to you. How is this step applicable to your life? Is it already being played out in your life? If so, how? If not, why not? Take these steps to heart and apply them to your life. You can do that best by being patient with yourself and allowing them to build upon one another. It is for this reason that I have chosen to meter out the steps rather than putting them all up at once.
Self discovery is work. If it wasn’t so much work, we’d be a healthier society. But the beauty of life is that it is here for us to discover. Everything in life is here for us to experience individually, to be discovered for ourselves. It’s like buying a used car; it may not be brand new but it’s new to me! Someone can tell me until he is blue in the face how magnificent the Pyramids are in Egypt. But I can’t truly know that magnificence until I experience it for myself. If through these writing I can help you get that much closer to experiencing the Pyramids for yourself, then you have helped me come all the closer to my own path.
I hope you enjoy 10 Steps to Your True Self. Thank you for reading.
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Download 10 Steps to Your True Self now for only $5.95 by clicking here. Thanks for reading and good luck on your journey!
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July 15, 2009
· 
emariebpi · 
No Comments
Posted in: 10 Steps to Your True Self
Step 4:
Buy the book and read this chapter!
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August 11, 2009
· emariebpi · No Comments
Posted in: 10 Steps to Your True Self
Step 3:
…We all can have good thoughts and intentions. There is just one thing separating people who change their lives from people who talk about wanting to change their lives. That one thing is action. Sentences that start with, ‘I wish, I hope, I would really like it if…’ all these sentences are about the thought, not the action…
Buy the book and read this chapter!
Download 10 Steps to Your True Self now for only $5.95 by clicking here. Thanks for reading and good luck on your journey!
August 3, 2009
· emariebpi · No Comments
Posted in: 10 Steps to Your True Self
Step 2: Fear and Belief
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Download 10 Steps to Your True Self now for only $5.95 by clicking here. Thanks for reading and good luck on your journey!
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What would it mean to be who you really are? You are a lawyer in a big firm but you really want to be a chef. You are the Executive Director of an organization but you would be happier as a bookkeeper. Or, maybe you’re a plumber but you really want to write songs. We may not have a caste system in the U.S. but there is still an extent to which, society, even our loved ones, don’t want to let us switch gears mid-stream. And it is scary. If I’m a lawyer in a major law firm where I receive deference and respect for my knowledge on a daily basis, what will it do to my identity, to my sense of self, to suddenly be a chef? People will assume, without knowing me, that I am less educated. I will lose the kind of significance and importance I received as an attorney.
Everything has a price. You cannot make any change in life without giving up something in order to gain something else.
We human beings are creatures of habit. We like predictability. Some of us need predictability more than others, but we all prefer it to some degree. And while we are incredibly adaptable creatures, change is difficult. Drastic changes or many changes at once are especially difficult. But when it comes to realizing who you are, and subsequently accepting yourself as that person, the primary question you must ask is, what price am I paying for NOT being my true self?
From a young age I noticed that I have a propensity for being in the eye of a storm. Sometimes I find myself there as a result of my own actions, other times I end up there because of how others perceive me or what they want from me. One time I was at a conference where hundreds of people ended up walking out on a speaker. The match that lit the fire on the whole thing was a question I asked. Another time I prevented what was on the verge of becoming a melee laced with racial tension at a family reunion. I delivered part of a speech in high school where, of the 10-12 presenters, I was the only one who evoked a roaring standing ovation from the entire school auditorium. The cheers were so loud, the next presenter could not be heard speaking.
But each time I have an experience like this, after the rush of the actual event had passed, I am filled with this mixed feeling of relief and terror. I was relieved that for example, that people receive my speech well, or that a physical altercation was averted or, that a speaker ill-suited for his audience was not allowed to continue to do a disservice to the people in the room. But it scared me beyond belief that I could be the catalyst for such strong reactions. The thought that strong I could have so much power and consequently, so much responsibility, was a daunting fact terrified me.
The incident with the conference speaker is the perfect example. After his presentation was abruptly ended, some people came up to thank me for speaking up and saying what they were thinking. They felt I held him accountable. But others who came up to me were angry and offended. They thought I was rude and told me I should be ashamed for having treated someone who came to present in such a manner. These people blamed me and held me responsible for all 500 or so people walking out of the room. This really troubled me. Had I done something wrong? Should I have just sat there and let the man drone on, indifferent to his actual audience? What’s worse, I wasn’t trying to speak for everyone in that room. I only asked a question for myself. Of course I was glad if the question I asked was one that others had also. I understand that people are sometimes afraid to speak up in crowds. So I am glad when others can benefit from the questions I ask. But truthfully, it was my question, no one else’s. Do I not have the right to speak up for myself if what it does is provoke others to act? Or is it just the opposite? Is that exactly why I should speak up?
For every four people who were appreciative for my question that day, there was one person who was furious with me. All I’d done was ask one question!
So what terrifies me? It’s the idea that I have to ability to move people into action with my words. What do I do with that? How do I handle the ire that inevitably comes with the praise of such incidents? What if I’m wrong? What if I don’t want to be anyone’s leader by vote or by default?
I responded to these questions as many people would: I ran. In a variety of ways I ran away from the reality of my strengths. Over time I have been forced to accept these traits because no matter how hard or far I ran, I would always find myself in the same situation. Eventually I just stopped trying to I run, stood still and listened. I listened to what these events were telling me about myself, and equally important, what they were not telling me.
Over time, a few things have happened as a result of my eye of the storm propensity. First, once I finally began to accept it – and I stress began to accept it because I still struggle sometimes – I found it easier to control it. If you have a strength you are denying, you are not necessarily conscious of when it will be evoked or not. Subsequently, you cannot control the use of your power. Once I began to accept the reality that this was simply part of me (no matter where you go, there you are), I was able to make conscious decisions about when to turn it on and off. It also allowed me to analyze situations better. Knowing what could potentially happen as the result of my intervention, I began playing out scenarios before speaking. Sometimes I made the decision it was best for me not to speak, knowing what could potentially (and based on past experience, was highly likely to) happen. Other times, I still spoke up but I was prepared for what happened next.
Once you begin acknowledging your fears and accepting who you are, you can start believing in yourself and your abilities on a whole new level. It is amazing what we are capable of as individuals. Look at someone like Gandhi. He was this slight, understated man and yet he managed to lead a movement to remove the British Empire from his land. How amazing is that? But he was just one little man with all the normal needs and desires of a human along with all the little eccentricities of any individual. Do you think as a boy or a young man Gandhi thought, “Yep, one day I going to lead millions of people and also inspire democratic uprisings in other parts of the world long after my death?” How could he have possibly known? And the truth is, Gandhi did not set out to lead millions of people. He wanted to practice law and probably hoped to make small dents in justice. But in doing what comes naturally to you, in following your inherent strengths, in finding the path towards your true self, you can end up doing amazing things you could not have imagined in your wildest dreams.
I’m not going to sit here and try to tell you how to believe in yourself. What I will say is that, as you start to accept who you are and acknowledge your fears in order to work through them, believing in yourself will come naturally. Understanding what you need to do in life will be an outgrowth. And who knows where that could lead you!
Buy the book and read this chapter!
Download 10 Steps to Your True Self now for only $5.95 by clicking here. Thanks for reading and good luck on your journey!
July 27, 2009
· emariebpi · No Comments
Posted in: 10 Steps to Your True Self, Step 2:
Step 1: Accept Who You Are
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Download 10 Steps to Your True Self now for only $5.95 by clicking here. Thanks for reading and good luck on your journey!
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When I moved to Minneapolis, I remember thinking how wonderful it would be. I had lost my anonymity in Milwaukee. That is to say, my public persona had grown to a point where I could not expect privacy when out in public. The day my daughter took her driver’s test, a woman stopped me and insisted on having an in-depth conversation about the television show I hosted, of which she was a regular viewer. My daughter was nervous and sweating bullets, in need of moral support from her mom, and this complete stranger was dominating my time and attention. I apologetically told the woman I had to get back to attending to my anxious child. The sad fact is, this type of scene played itself out time and time again; at restaurants, the grocery store, at the movies… you name the venue and I was bound to run into someone who wanted to discuss something with me. My daughter was gracious about the interruptions. I know that it made her proud to see her mom as someone who people thought well enough of to want to stop and talk to her (me) all the time. Lis handled the intrusions better than most people I dated.
Being a person without anonymity is hard on relationships. The other person can often feel as if he or she is required to take a back seat to everyone and everything else. I remember trying to convince someone I was dating that I could take myself out of the public work and live a quiet solitary life. The response I received to this declaration was basically, “Who are you kidding? If we landed on an isolated island, in short order you’d become the most popular person there too.” To say my public obligations impacted my personal relationships would be an understatement.
I sometimes wished I was a different kind of person. I wanted to be that person who could be content with the same routines, week in, week out. I wanted to feel okay watching what was happening in the world without being so concerned with it to be driven to take action. I wished people wouldn’t be so quick to have confidence in what I could accomplish. I just wanted to be left alone to try and live what looked like a more normal life.
As I moved to Minneapolis, I was elated by the prospect of regaining my anonymity in a new city. But before long, the anonymity I thought I’d gained quickly evaporated. Here was the isolated island scenario in action. I wasn’t trying to and yet I’d managed to still end up as a public person with public demands in Minneapolis just as I was in Milwaukee. It wasn’t on the same scale. By the time I went to Minneapolis, I was exhausted from over-commitment. I could not drain myself the same way again. When I saw the road I was headed down in Minneapolis, I did put the brakes on several things so as not to find myself in the same circumstance. Nonetheless, there was a reality staring me in the face that I had to acknowledge: No matter where you go, there you are.
I could change the landscape over and over again and end up with the same result. Now of course, a natural response to this statement is, “well you put yourself in similar circumstances so obviously you are going to end up with a similar result.” But I didn’t put myself in similar circumstances. The problem is, I thought that if I changed were I was, what I did, who I had around me, and took myself out of some activities, I could be someone else… someone other than me. Changing all of those things did not change who I am. And ultimately the “thing” that gets me into what I used to refer to as, “these fixes” is who I am, not what I’m doing or where I’m doing it. I was having difficulty accepting who I am and what it means for me to be me. I fought against the reality of who I am for years because I didn’t like it. I wanted to be someone different. I wanted to be someone who could be okay with having dinner with the same people every week. I wanted to be someone who every once in a while could be the forgotten or overlooked person in a room. It all felt like such a burden to be me. Today I’ve come to terms with who I am. I am at peace with being myself…most of the time.
We all are susceptible to longing to be different from who we inherently are. Some of us want to be more courageous, some want to be meeker, some people wish they spoke up more, others wish they spoke up less. He wishes he was taller, she wishes she was shorter. The fact is, what I had to do – which is what every person must eventually do in order to be true to one’s self – is accept who I am. I can’t change who I am. I can continue to try and run away from it, taking cover from reality whenever it suits me or I can just, “man up” and get comfortable in my own skin. All running away does is waste time…running from yourself is a waste of precious and finite time. There are certain things I will never be. I will never be a person perceived as meek. I will never be a person who goes unnoticed in a room. Others will always be looked to by others for guidance. That is simply who I am. If I cannot figure out how to accept those fundamental things about myself, how can I ever expect to make progress toward being truer to myself and realizing my full potential? Until I accept these basic pieces, I will constantly try to find fixes and solutions that are ill-suited for who I am and what I need to do in life.
Some of you may ask, “How can I accept who I am if I don’t know who I am?” Good question. And for this, I have a simple answer. Ninety percent of the time, if you feel as if you don’t know who you are, it’s because you’re not listening to the cues. Everything around us – people, events, things that strike us as interesting – give us clues and insight into who we are, what is important to us, and what are our passions. But we’re so distracted! We get distracted from who we are by trying to be who we think we should be, by the frenetic and hectic pace of life, by putting too much stock in who others think we should be, we end up ignoring the signs telling us who we actually are. But what if you start to listen to the signs showing you who you are, and the true you is in conflict with the persona you have built for yourself? What do you do then? Now that’s a scary question!
Buy the book and read this chapter!
Download 10 Steps to Your True Self now for only $5.95 by clicking here. Thanks for reading and good luck on your journey!
July 19, 2009
· emariebpi · No Comments
Posted in: 10 Steps to Your True Self
Self Discovery
The first two steps in discovering your true self have to do with conquering personal obstacles. Until these obstacles are addressed, they will continually stand in between you real and progress towards your true self. Through these first two steps, you need to get to know yourself more intimately. I know this sounds strange, but I mean exactly what I say.
Often times, we spend years raging against being who we inherently are. You fancy yourself as a tough-talking, no nonsense negotiator when really, you are a sensitive person who is not at his best when put in alpha male, do or die, situations. I didn’t say you are not capable of handling such situations, I said, not at your best.
At the same time, we allow things like fear to stand in our way. It’s easy to think you don’t cower to fear in your life but of course you do, we all do at times. If you stay at the job that is sucking the very life out of you, you are staying out of fear: fear that you won’t be able to earn the same kind of money if you leave, fear that leaving will hurt your career goals, fear of the loss of prestige, fear of what people might think of you. These all seem like more or less sound reasons to stay in your job. But they are based in fear of the unknown, unpredictable, future. This kind of fear will get in the way of your ability to realize true motivations in your life – more on this later.
In order to carry out the affirmative steps that follow, you must spend time in these first two steps getting to know yourself better as a person. That means, not the person you are telling yourself you have to be, not the person you wish you were instead, but truly the person you genuinely are underneath all the societal pressure and snow jobs you may sell yourself on who you are and why.
Be patient with yourself as we go through these steps. This is a process. So be conscientious in your efforts but give yourself time to allow revelations to unfold. Let’s get started.
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Buy the book and read this chapter!
Download 10 Steps to Your True Self now for only $5.95 by clicking here. Thanks for reading and good luck on your journey!
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July 15, 2009
· emariebpi · No Comments
Tags: advice, coaching, life coach, life coaching, personal development, personal growth, personal journey, professional coach, self empowerment, self help · Posted in: 10 Steps to Your True Self
Getting Started: Simple and Easy
Some things are easy and simple. Others may be simple, but they are not necessarily easy. Take boiling an egg for example. We tend to think of that task as easy and simple. But I once had a friend call me from her kitchen to ask, “Do you put the egg in before or after you boil the water?” Walking seems like a simple task. And for those of us who are fortunate enough to have the use of our legs, walking is simple most of the time. Walking is no big deal, right? What if, rather than walking from the car into the grocery store or mall, you had to walk miles at a time, day after day? A friend and I once walked 150km over a span of two weeks. The task was simple enough: get up each day and walk. But I promise you, it was anything but easy!
The simplest things can sometimes be the most difficult to do. Take lying for example. The idea is that we should never lie. What a great idea. If you have never told a lie, please contact The Guinness Book people immediately. They need to know about you. Of course you have, at some point, told a lie or said something you knew to be less than the complete truth. It’s the simplest rule in the world; never tell a lie, always tell the truth. Yet it is virtually impossible to stay true to this principle through a lifetime. The saying goes, “Don’t ever lie. It’s that simple.” But is it really? And is it that, not lying should be simple or, is the implication that not lying should be easy? What constitutes a lie? If you tell a woman with a fresh butchery of a haircut that it looks nice, is that a lie or are you just being compassionate?
I will always answer my mother’s phone calls. I will never eat another Krispy Kreme doughnut. No matter how big or small the absolute resolution is, you set yourself up for failure because, you are human and absolutes leave no room for error. You can’t possibly control every circumstance and situation. Since you cannot control for every situation in which you may find yourself, you cannot for certain be true to your absolute pledge. And if you are determined to be absolute in your pledge then you are setting yourself up to (a) beat yourself up or feel really bad about yourself for eating that Krispy Kreme doughnut at the going away party or, (b) be well on your way to buying a one way ticket to crazyland as you try to pick up every single phone call from your mother. You will beat yourself up or drive yourself crazy if you do not allow yourself room to come up a little short on your aspirations from time to time.
Now, that’s not to say you should take the route of the, “mary jane loving herbalist,” and be an under-achiever with no expectations for yourself. There is a middle ground. Just as there is a middle ground between, being honest to the point of a mental disorder, and being a pathological liar, there is a middle ground between trying your very best and giving yourself a pass for being human and unable to always control everything you’d like to control.
As we go through these steps towards your true self, you may feel an urge to hold yourself to an absolute because the steps are simple. Fight the urge. Do not put yourself in that position. The steps to a truer self are simple but they are not easy. At times, you may carry out the ideas in the steps to perfection. When you do, take a moment to be pleased with yourself and acknowledge your accomplishment. When you come up short, take a minute to acknowledge that you fell short of your goal. But take only a minute on this thought, not a millisecond more. Simple, is not easy. In fact, some of the simplest things in concept are the most difficult or sticky in realization. Look at Communism.
Be happy when your resolve holds strong and afford yourself the proper forgiveness when you come up a little short. 10 Steps to Your True Self is a process, not a panacea. Got it? Good. Now let’s move on to the first steps.
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Download 10 Steps to Your True Self now for only $5.95 by clicking here. Thanks for reading and good luck on your journey!
July 15, 2009
· emariebpi · No Comments
Posted in: 10 Steps to Your True Self
An Introduction
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Download 10 Steps to Your True Self now for only $5.95 by clicking here. Thanks for reading and good luck on your journey!
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We are all trying to be the best person we can be. What that “best person” looks like is different for each of us. Some people are more concerned with whether they appear to be successful and can create an enviable life. For others, the best person standard is met by how well they can model the life and acts of someone such as Mother Teresa. And then still for some, it is as simple as being the best parent, partner, or spouse possible. Whatever the standard, we all want to be our best self.
The problem is that self discovery – as with any other endeavors worth undertaking – is not free. In modern day life, there are 1001 things to distract us from the task of digging down into who we are, who we can potentially become, and how to get from point a to point b. And honestly, fulfilling your full potential can sometimes mean letting go of long held beliefs of who you think you are supposed to be. The prospect of reinventing yourself is a scary proposition.
My goal with, 10 Steps to Your True Self is to help you come closer to realizing your full potential and to move you towards living a more conscious and deliberate life. Life is short and precious. Every minute counts. That’s not to say that a minute, or even several minutes, cannot be spent lying on the couch staring into space without a care in the world. In fact these kinds moments should happen frequently! But do not allow time to be your master. To live conscious and deliberately is to demand control of your time by not allowing life to slip through your hands minute by minute.
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Download 10 Steps to Your True Self now for only $5.95 by clicking here. Thanks for reading and good luck on your journey!
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July 9, 2009
· emariebpi · One Comment
Tags: advice, coach, coaching, life coach, life coaching, personal development, personal journey, professional coach, self help · Posted in: Introduction
