“Little Me” Syndrome

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

I’ve inserted this famous quote from Marianne Williamson because that bit about “We ask ourselves, Who amI to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be?…” echoed my experience of this morning: I needed to write a blurb and a piece for the local paper about my upcoming talk and I’d got stuck in ‘little-me’ syndrome.

So I got some paper and started conversing with my Future Self. She took me to my talk in November and we discussed why people were there, how much they enjoy it, how much fun I have and so on. My Future Self also reminded my of a previous blog about self-doubt (see “A new one for the list“). In that blog I realised that a great antidote for self-doubt is to remind mysel to stop takeing myself so seriously! How can I have fun with this instead? What does it look like to have a ball at the talk?

So what if only 2 people came? It would be great practice, I love doing talks anyway and I could have a great time with those 2 people!

Much better! The first draft of my blurb and article got written and I left to go pick up the kids, Soweto String Quartet full blast, sun shining through the car windows, feeling ‘brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous’!

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBABMxn9W70?rel=0&w=420&h=315]