Chapter I : The Ego


WOW! So after my revolutionary post and decision to change my life, I was absolutely astonished by the amount of anonymous appreciation, support, and encouragement I received. Well, dear readers, it’s washed over me like a veil of love and I am floored and endlessly grateful. My heart is full and the gears are cranking and turning to pull out a lot of new projects. This first week of new living has been liberating, a little nerve-racking, and filled with a lot of planning, executing, and cleansing. I’ll be honest, the first three days were a complete torpedo of whirlwind cleaning house – I believe you are a product of your environment, and when I actually had the time to examine my environment, I started seeing ways of how I could make it a more productive one. Cleansing crystals, tossing out things I don’t need, reorganizing desk space, pulling some old books off the shelf, scrubbing walls, floors, and laundering every couch cushion in sight, I began to feel a shift in the household energy. This freed up the space for me to focus on next-steps: the first copy of my children’s book is currently being typed, the brain is working to come up with a storyline for the Novel, and of course, I’ve not forgotten about updating this blog and all of my beautiful readers. And now I feel as though I have a duty to you (and to my Self) to continue to encourage you, and push you, and be that little nudge of reasoning as to why you can do exactly as I just did, and why you can have faith and confidence in yourself to quit living a life that doesn’t bring you anything but personal success and happiness on every level.

I’m going to make a book recommendation (and a hundred more moving forward), and if you’ve not read it, I strongly urge you – Hell, I am going to go ahead and beg you, to pick up, borrow, or re-read The Power of Now. So go ahead, pop over to Amazon and Prime ship it to yourself right now. I’ll wait…. There – 1 click ship? Finished? Right, we can continue. The Power of Now is a brilliant, awe-inspiring book filled with advice on how to re-structure your entire way of thinking (change your thinking, change your life) to step outside of your Mind and Mindfully yet Objectively, observe that little voice in your head – whom Tolle refers to as the Ego – and witness the train of thoughts and its way of operating and filling you with negative thoughts, instead of surrendering to them blindly and allowing them to control your life. This Ego…Does it instill panic? Fear? Worry? Does it present road-blocks? Obstructions? Doubt? Think about it. Anytime you’ve set a goal, had a day-dream, wanted to do something: It will give you a hundred reasons why Not to do something, and I will give you one reason why you should: because you can.

How is that published author any different than you? They are a person, are they not? They are human, they are a breathing living being, they have goals and fears and worries and problems and an Ego just like you do – they just said “fuck it” and took the next step. They made the jump and they made it happen.

If they can do it, you can do it. A wise person (and well published author) once told me, “If I can do it, you can do it. Write the fucking book. Prove them wrong.” And I think the bigger lesson here is, Prove yourself right. Then go ahead and Prove yourself wrong. If you have that belief in yourself, follow it. And if you have that self-doubt, shut it up, and go for it anyway, damnit.

I’ve learned one thing about myself in this development: I am not afraid of failure. I’ve failed before, I’ve failed hard – and I’ve shifted that belief that there IS such a thing of failure and substituted that F word with Learning. There is no failing, only learning. If you can take those experiences where you expected an outcome, went for it, and received a different outcome – how is that a failure? It’s a learning, nonetheless. So how can I be afraid to learn? No, I’m not afraid of failure. I am afraid of success. I have this innate fear of “What if it DOES work? What will I do then? How will I be able to compete with myself and raise the bar even further to produce more success?” That is the problem with "What If" - it's a product of the Ego, and it's there to make you doubt yourself a hundred times and it's a product of fear. Fear of failure, or fear of success, I know it sounds silly, it sounds silly to me – but whether you’re afraid of not making it, or making it, you are still afraid, and you will still create reasons to not do something and to not succeed, or to not fail. And all that time you spend sitting in your own head rationalizing, mapping, planning, worrying, wondering, thinking thinking thinking and thinking, you could instead be DO-ing. You could have a fucking book written by now! (Feel free to substitute that feat with any other career goal you have on the backburner)

At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter how many inspirational quotes you’ve posted or have been moved by. If you read something while rapidly scrolling through the feed of your Pinterest, Instagram, or Facebook, and you stop to take a moment and say “Fuck yeah, Absolutely!” Stop.

Take stock of that moment, harness it, and let it propel you forward.

Do something.

Prove it.

Not to anyone besides yourself, because nobody else matters at the end of your life, nobody else reflects back on how you lived, what goals were ticked off the list, what travels you took, what experiences you had, except for you and you alone.

Go for it.

Reach for it.

Then take it, unafraid. What’s there to be afraid of? It’s all learning. And that’s what I’ve realized: Whether it’s “failure” or “success”, it’s a learning, through-and-through. There can be nothing threatening about more learning.

Why wait until tomorrow when you can do it right this moment?

Make the time.

Prioritize yourself.

Quit thinking “I should do that”

“That sounds like a good idea”

“I want to do that”

Shake yourself awake and actually MAKE A STEP.

Make a list.

Make a list of things you don’t like, and things that you do. A list of things you don’t want to do, and things that interest you. Then expand that list – add: jobs that may fall into the category of things you like doing.

Research it.

Visualize it.

Do something to advance yourself instead of wishfully thinking about it and comparing your life to the girl who seems to have her shit together through a filtered lens. That girl has her own demons, her own inner battles, her own little ego telling her a million ways why she can’t and road blocks to keep her from DO-ing. But she does it anyway, and that is the only thing separating you from them. The action. I have complete and total faith in you, darling readers. You can fucking do it.

If I can do it, you can do it.