My secret…

I stand in front of a room full of people, over and over and I tell my story.  I talk about all the good, the bad and the ugly things in my life that have together brought me to where I’m at in my life right now.  I tell it all, and I honor the mistakes and the miss-steps I have taken along the way.  I talk about what I learned from them and how I am grateful for all of it because I like where my life is right now.  I like the adventures that both challenge and joy brings.

I talk about how they brought me to write my book about my Five Guiding Principles:

1. Be 100% present in everything you do; nothing else is more important then the experience of this moment.

2. We are all different for a reason; draw on other people’s strengths to make you stronger and resist the need to control others.

3. Discover your uniqueness; we all need to discover, develop and share our uniqueness, this is where our confidence lies.

4. Stand in who you are; don’t make excuses for the decisions you have made in your life.  Honor them all and believe that your life is supposed to look like it looks right now – no matter what that is.

5. There is a reason why our lives unfold one moment at at time; to give us a chance to stop, to cope and to breathe… to give us a chance to catch up.

Nothing we haven’t all heard before, I know, but these are the 5 principles that I believe once you implement them into your life, your life will be more peaceful and free.

So, I stand in front of the room and I tell my stories, the stories of the times when I didn’t follow these principles; the time in my life that I didn’t really like myself very much.  The time when my fears and insecurities ran my life and created a person that I didn’t even like.   I stand there and tell these stories that don’t always show me in my best light… and people tell me that I am courageous, that I am an inspiration and that I have motivated them to change.

What?

Courageous? Inspiration? Motivating?

Here is my secret… say it out loud.

Tell your story.

I quickly learned that every time I told my story it helped me heal, but even more surprising to me was that every time I told my story it also helped the people who heard my story heal too.

Later, after I speak, I sit in a room together with people who just heard me and one-by-one in a smaller, intimate group, they open up and tell their story.  Here they begin their journey of healing.

Because I spoke-

she decides to speak, and then-

he decided to speak too…

Soon, together, we learn that we are all the same here, we all have stories and we are all working our way through this life together.

I have learned that keeping my pain, insecurities and fears to myself made me someone I didn’t like and gave me a life that wasn’t very fun.  I learned when I started telling my story, people started telling theirs and this simple act of realizing that we are not alone brings peace, calm and healing into our lives.

This is my secret, and go ahead and tell people, it’s not one of those secrets you need to keep: say it out loud… there it is, that’s the big secret… whatever it is that is causing you pain, say it out loud.   Inside your heart, whatever you are holding in there is monumental.  But when you say it out loud and it is out in the vastness of the universe, you will realize it is not monumental at all.  So tell your story, tell it over and over and see that talking about your fears, insecurities and the ugly parts of your life will actually free you.

We all have issues and burdens and we are here to help each other carry them, not judge how we got them.

So, you see, I don’t think I am courageous or inspirational, I just learned that saying things out loud and sharing my story has brought me and the people I have shared them with healing, which leads to a more peaceful life.  Because of that feeling, because I love how it feels to be real and transparent, I will stand in front of the room as often as I can and tell my story again.  If that makes me courageous, inspiring and motivating then, okay, if it helps others to learn what I have learned, then I will take and wear those labels with honor.

Say it out loud.  Do it just once and see…

Tell me… I’ll listen.

I consider all the stories I have heard gifts. I treasure every one of them just as much as I treasure the people who felt a safe-haven with me.  Safe enough to opened up and share… simply because I shared.