The real truth behind the smile

Sometimes you feel like no one understands the real you or the tug-of-war that is going on inside of you. On the outside, everything looks perfect. Good job, check. Nice house, check. Recognition in your profession, check. A constant chorus of people telling you how great you are, check. Yet your inner voice rings louder and louder with every compliment, “you’re not living up to your full potential, why aren’t you using your gifts, why are you running?” You know that you want to live up to your full potential, but you can’t seem to take the leap. Deep down inside you want to listen to your inner voice and ditch the neatly manicured life. Yet each time you try to take the leap towards living up to your full potential, you get pulled back into the vortex of your status quo. It's gotten to the point where you don’t know what else to do because your old bag of tricks is not working. The scriptures, mantras, and daily affirmation texts seem to have lost their power to kickstart your momentum. You want to change, but you can’t. You feel stuck. 

Everyone in your circle looks at you and sees a picture perfect life, yet inside you feel a lack of peace from your invisible inner voice constantly reminding you of your stagnation. The reality is, this isn’t your picture perfect life because you are not living as the highest version of yourself. The highest version of yourself is the real you. It is a state of being that stems from the belief that you are enough and fully capable of using your unique talents and gifts for a greater purpose. For some, this greater purpose could mean changing careers, becoming an entrepreneur, or maintaining a healthy lifestyle. While individual motivations may differ, pursuing the highest version of yourself results in living from a place of comfort, trust, and love, where your mindset, emotions, and behaviors coexist peacefully. This internal harmony allows you to freely use your talents without second-guessing yourself. Your spirit feels at rest because you're channeling your power towards trusting yourself, rather than living from the routinized fear-based expectations of others. 

You may have written about the highest version of yourself in your journal or shared it with a few friends and family. You may also have some regrets about sharing it with them, because their reactions to your vulnerability exacerbated your lack of peace and loneliness. The very people that you thought would support you, may have misunderstood why you would disrupt your picture perfect life, or misjudged your calling to live as the highest version of yourself. The negative Nancy comments like, “Why do you believe that you have this calling?” or “You’ve changed, you are not like us anymore,” plant seeds of fear and doubt in your mind that trigger your stagnation. So when people ask you, “how are you doing?,” you choose to suppress your inner voice, smile and respond, “I’m doing good,” all the while descending deeper into a lonely sunken place.

Despite these feelings you persist in your ability to come up for air, and choose to find out what’s preventing you from taking action towards living in the highest version of yourself. That’s the reason you picked up this book, to get support with figuring out what’s going on within you. 

This is YOUR time

You picked up this book at the right time in your life. You will overcome the fab four of fear and figure out the root of what’s actually holding you back. The shouldas, couldas, wouldas, and can’ts of your mind form the foundation of fear-based thinking and self-limiting beliefs that keep you trapped in a cookie cutter life and stifle your voice and potential. Lately, you’ve felt called to ditch the fab four of fear and jump on a new train, one that leads you to a greater sense of purpose and fulfillment, one that allows your gifts to manifest the real version of you that you’ve been dreaming about. Together, we will hit fast forward and pass the powerlessness that fills your mind and spirit with fear of the many things that could go wrong. No more being confined to doubtful thoughts that keep you bound to living as a lower and less happy version of yourself.

Are you ready to free the real you? I think you are. Want to know how I know? You bought this book which means you are ready to get unstuck. Here’s a little trick: if you find yourself getting distracted and wanting to close down, ask “why is it important for me to be present with this book at this moment in my life?” Use that answer to ground you and reset your focus. Write down the answer on a post-it note and stick it inside of the book. Use the post-it messages to help you stay motivated along your journey.

Your road to discovering the power within you

You have everything you need inside of you to manifest the highest version of yourself. Power begins on the inside, and you are about to tap into yours in this book. Each chapter will guide you through a consciousness-raising process to discover and reclaim the power within you. Be sure to have your journal handy as you make your way through the book and be ready to write and reflect on any revelations that come up for you.

First Stop: Promise to Be Honest

This book is about breaking up with fear and doubt and walking in your full power. It’s about using your mindset, emotions, and behaviors to live as the highest version of self, releasing the lower vibrations that keep you trapped and playing it safe. In order to let go of the lesser version of yourself and bring out all that beautiful power buried down inside of you, you have to make yourself a promise. Promise yourself that you will be honest when you answer the questions in this book, every single time. To be dishonest is to cheat yourself, stifle your growth, and waste your money. The golden rule of this book is: no judging yourself. View your honest moments as learning moments, too. Judgement will send you back into a corner, leading you to close the book and wind up back at square one. We ain’t got time for that; lives depend on you moving forward in your gifts. You chose to investigate your inner voice at this time for a reason, so don’t waste your headspace living in negative energy. Every time you want to judge yourself, reframe the thought to, “what am I learning about myself?” This signals a gentler way for your mind to accept new information. 

Second Stop: Know the Road Map

In your journey through this book, I will walk you through how to use consciousness-raising strategies to get unstuck. This experience will allow you to get to know yourself on a deeper level and be more thoughtful about how you interact with yourself. The 4-step consciousness-raising process involves choice, presence, self-awareness, and intentionality.  Developing a deeper consciousness starts with:

1. The choice of how you want to use your power;
2. Your decision then creates a level of presence to listen to the voices in your mind and find out what’s stopping you from moving forward;
3. Using this self-awareness, you can dig up the roots of what has you stuck;
4. And finally intentionally using hands-on techniques can help you to remove anything that stands in the way of your progression. If it takes you away from the highest version of self, it has to go.

You’ll put this process to use in each section of the book as you journey towards reclaiming your power. You will begin in Phase I by Asking: “What’s going on inside of me?”; Phase II is about Assessing: “How am I using my power?”; and finally in Phase III, Accepting: Owning the power within me.

Third Stop: Meet Your Companions for the Ride

Personal work is often done alone. This sometimes creates the feeling of isolation and shame as you peel back the layers to unveil the core of your authentic self. There is power in collective vulnerability and healing that occurs within a community. To ensure that you experience the benefits of community throughout this journey, your two new friends, Amina and Grace are here to ride along with you and exemplify the power of the consciousness-raising steps and techniques in each chapter.

Amina

On the outside, people see Amina as someone full of love and inspiration. She is everyone’s go-to girl and mentor. She’s always making time to care for and support her friends and family. Amina is also an avid social media scroller, constantly posting religious scriptures into her IG stories to motivate her growing number of followers. No one would think she has a deep internal struggle with believing the motivational mantras that she shares with others. Yet, Amina finds herself shying away from the bold dreams and revelations she’s received about her calling. Some of her inaction comes from online distractions and her habit of secretly competing with those on her Facebook timeline. Another part of her stagnation stems from the experience of being judged when she shared her hopes and dreams with family. Their judgement planted the seeds of doubt that turned into a forest full of trees by the time Amina turned 30. Perhaps one of the most detrimental seeds that grew was a practice of self-deception; she was secretly living one way, (in a lesser version of herself) and telling herself and others something different (putting on the mentor role for the outside world). Amina didn’t want her family to think she was “doing too much” or “trying to live a big life,” so she let the seeds grow. Her weight also grew along with the seeds from the use of food to suppress the nudges from her inner divinity, whispering the call to live as the highest version of herself. The more she ignored the whispers to live out those bold dreams, the more her weight became a see-saw of losing and gaining pounds.

Over time, Amina’s belief in herself became so low, that her only comfort came from food and being a mentor to others. Mentorship allowed her to deflect the focus from herself and show up as the self-sacrificing servant to others. Food was the one and only thing that made her feel full; it didn’t judge her, and she always felt good when she was around it. But Amina can’t even think about living any of her dreams to their full potential because the number on the scale has diminished her inner light. Because she got a high from mentoring people, Amina was able to convince herself that she could bypass digging deeper to understand how she ended up living as a lower version of herself. If she focused on others, she wouldn't have to explore the deeper reasons for her weight fluctuations, fears of judgment, and feelings about living from a place of doubt. Since Amina didn’t want anyone to see her sweat, she intensified her inspiration of others so people wouldn’t figure out her personal struggles. Now approaching 35, she’s tired of lacking internal peace, battling with her weight, and secretly feeling like an imposter. She’s ready to get unstuck. Amina woke up one day and decided, it’s time to let the real me out. This was her inner dialogue:

“I want to let out the part of me that’s dying to adopt a lifelong healthy lifestyle so I can live out my dreams as the highest version of self, the part of me that has a lot to offer the world but can’t because of my health concerns, the part of me that wants to prove to everyone that looks down on me because I’m overweight, that I can do it. I need to prove to myself that I can tackle this weight, that I can be who I want to be and live from the same light that I give to others. I am tired of the ups and downs. I want the stability of living as an authentic version of myself that is committed to a healthy lifestyle.”

Grace

Grace is the friend and colleague you call when you need to think of something new. She is a closet creative who would never use that word to describe herself, despite the natural talent propelling her career. With each move she made across the country, she collected more and more accolades and bolstered her reputation as a powerful woman for innovation. While Grace loved moving around to launch new initiatives, she often struggled with accepting her gifts, a struggle that dates back to her childhood when kids called her the “teacher’s pet” because she won many of the class contests. As she aged in her career, similar echoes came from her colleagues who often loved her to her face, but felt threatened by her talent. For every achievement, she dealt with the growing distance between her and her friends. This caused an internal conflict with her ability to fully accept the power of her gift. In Grace’s words, 

“I speak the new ideas and catchy phrases that I hear from my spirit and it sticks with people. Those words lead my supporters to believe that I can heal, design, and sell to any audience. I can’t help who I am. It comes naturally to me.”

As her career progressed, Grace grew more interested in using her skills to serve her inner purpose: using her words to be a change agent. She realized the positive impact that words had on her, from those spoken by her mentors, to those by her favorite authors who guided her through life’s transitions. She started to feel a tug to share her lessons learned and innovation strategies in a blog. However, she doubted that people would read her work because she was not a trained journalist or an established writer. Besides, she felt like she didn’t fit the “creative mold,” with no quirky style, cute thick-rimmed glasses, or familiarity with social media. Still, Grace’s friend encouraged her to take the baby step and create a blog. As serendipity would have it, at the end of several meetings, colleagues also began to ask Grace, “did you ever think about writing a book?” Many of them told her “you’ve been in the game too long, and it is time to share your secret sauce with others.” Even in the midst of their encouragement, it was hard for Grace to silence the voices from the childhood taunts and old co-workers’ gossip. 

A year ago, Grace managed to bypass the sea of doubts and fears to start a blog that helps entrepreneurs pitch new ideas to clients. However, she continued to let the doubts keep her bound to the worries of what others would say and stopped short of calling herself a writer. The revenue generated from her blog and freelance coaching almost superseded the salary of her day job. She still struggles to admit that she loves her blogging and coaching business more than her day job. As more clients ask her, “when are you going to write the book and call yourself an entrepreneur,” she brushes them off with, “I’m not a writer, I do this on the side.” Grace feels stuck between what she wants to do and what others will say about what she does. Feeling unsettled about her next steps and the growing whispers from her inner voice to be true to her calling of using her words to be a change agent, Grace knew it was time to get unstuck. She was tired of being controlled by everyone’s voice but her own, saying one thing and doing another. She knows that if she gets underneath her own block, it will deepen her blogging and freelance work with clients. She has so much to say to the world and is ready to let it out. If she can only get past the sea of doubts...

Now it’s your turn 

You’ve met your passengers, so now introduce yourself. Take a few moments to write and reflect on your story using these prompts: 

1. What is one area in your life where you feel stuck? You will apply the 4-step consciousness-raising process to this area at the end of each chapter.
2. What would success or positive change in this area mean to you? Achieving this goal will allow you to manifest the highest version of yourself.

Ultimately, the tug-of-war is about the power of choice

The motivation for this book came from being surrounded by many Aminas and Graces, very talented people on the outside who looked like they had everything all together, yet internally struggled with the crippling effects of fear and doubt. Like you and many others, they grappled with stepping into the highest version of themselves to let the real me out. Remember this: you are not alone. Keep this in mind when fear tries to eat away at your courage to stay on this journey. 

Fear wants you to continue using your power and choice to erect inauthentic versions of yourself. Somewhere along life’s journey, we developed these self-protective mechanisms to feel safe when we received messages that being our real selves was not enough. Famous Harvard psychologists Bob Kegan and Lisa Lahey described this process as developing an immune system to protect oneself from perceived harm. The-tug-of-war in your spirit seeks to take your self-protective systems off autopilot so you can redirect the current you back home to the real you. Throughout this journey, you’ll have a plethora of opportunities to use your power and choice to align with the highest version of yourself which is the real you. The moment you start to consistently use your gifts while living in the highest version of yourself, things start shifting to align with your bold purpose. When this happens, do not apologize for what you do well or hide your abilities. You were born to share your talents with the world. This is the reason the tug-of-war hit you so strongly, your spirit could no longer handle you living below your full potential. It could no longer handle dimming your light out of fear of other’s thinking that you are “doing too much” for wanting to be a better version of yourself. When you let your light shine, you give others permission to shine, too. That’s why we’ve got to get behind what’s going on inside of you. We’ll start with a topic that everyone shies away from: what to do when your daily affirmation texts, instagram memes, and New Age mantras stop working. There is a reason why they are shooting blanks...getting unstuck is an inside-out job.

“No matter where you are on your journey, that’s exactly where you need to be. The next road is always ahead.”

Oprah Winfrey

When the old bag of tricks stop working

Many of us love our daily affirmation texts and self-help Instagram accounts, but let’s be real, they do not always give us the swift kick in the butt that we need to get going. Do not let guilt or shame overwhelm you if you read your religious scripture or affirmations, but do not feel moved to change.  When that happens, I’m challenging you to honor yourself in that moment and get curious about the real reason why you’re not moved by the message. Your immobility is a sign that you need to pause and go within. It is a sign that your spirit (aka the divinity within you) is blocked. When your spirit is ignored and needs to get your attention it issues a “stuck order.” A “stuck order” calls out the internal struggle that occurs when you are not paying attention to your inner voice; it is the cry of your spirit to shake you out of stagnation and the cycle of poor, un-affirming choices. Before starting the excavation process to figure out what is going on within, you first need to acknowledge your spirit’s “stuck order.” Don’t panic. You are right where you’re supposed to be for this part of your life’s journey. Together, we will get you unstuck. But first, let’s look at how Amina tried to address the same issue.

Amina's road led to a dead-end

Amina is the motivation queen. From the inspirational messages hanging throughout her home, to the affirmation texts, daily quotes, and self-help Instagram memes popping up in her notifications, she lives in mantra overflow. She hoped the diversity of daily reminders would keep her spirit centered and uplifted to live as the highest version of herself. Well, that didn’t actually come to fruition. I wish I could tell you that everytime Amina walks through her house or scrolls on her phone that she swells up with a burst of inspiration. The honest answer is, she barely looks at them for self-motivation, but she readily uses the messages to motivate others. Amina’s perpetual doubt in her ability to overcome her weight challenges created a mental block that prevented her from internalizing the multiple sources of motivation. Her attempts to override her mental block failed to work because her internal validation bank account, her ability to believe that she is enough and capable, was already too low. Years of fear and doubt had chipped away at her confidence and eroded her ability to believe she could conquer her goals. She looks at her “Believe in your Dreams” iPhone wallpaper over 30 times a day yet stops short of taking action to bring that message to life. Why can't she take the full leap? What’s blocking the mantra overflow from working? What specifically is preventing her from taking action when she reads the memes from her favorite Instagram self-help guru? Amina is growing tired. Her bag of tricks no longer works. She is ready to dig deeper to find out why she is stuck.

Instead of feeling encouraged to bring the affirmations she read to life, Amina’s “stuck order” from her doubtful mindset caused her to scroll past them or share the message with others instead of use them for their intended purpose, to spur her into action. Rather than be present and look at her “Pray More & Worry Less” sign while using the bathroom, Amina scrolled on her iPhone to see the number of views on her latest Facebook stories. The strength of her fear-based mindset prevented her from shining her light on herself. Now that we’ve learned more about Amina’s story, let’s use the 4-step consciousness-raising technique to understand how a “stuck order” may have led your own inspirational plan to a dead-end.

Now, it’s your turn

You have to choose to use your power

You have power and choice in every situation. It’s up to you to decide if you want to use them.  Power comes from within and waits on us to unleash it. We unleash it in two ways, internally and externally. Unleashing internal power is the process of raising your consciousness to purposefully choose mindsets, behaviors, and emotions that lead to the highest version of yourself. It empowers love and trust. Externally we can give our power to others in two ways. The first way is by granting someone formal authority to act on our behalf (for example, the power we give to elected officials). The second and more detrimental way is by handing our power over for external validation, so that we can only feel powerful when an external source affirms us. This is an ineffective use of power. The key to releasing the power within is to know that you are enough without the need for anything outside of you to affirm that truth. The way you make internal meaning of your emotions, mindsets, and behaviors shapes how you see the external world. How you respond to those interpretations determines whether you act from your internal power or give it away to external validation. I’ll say it again, you always have power and you always have choice. The first step is to realize that you have the power within. Choosing to use it brings you further into consciousness.

You have to honor the present moment

The next step requires “presence," a “being in the moment,”  that allows you to honor that this is exactly where you are supposed to be. The whispers of your inner voice act as signals from the divinity within you trying to get your attention. It’s saying, “hey Sis, it’s time for us to have a talk.” Many block out the signals by, self-medicating the uneasiness away with alcohol, food, drugs, relationships and other avoidance techniques. Choose to investigate the signals. Once you make that choice, don't feel bad about the disconnect between what an affirmation calls for and your lack of movement, it happens to many, including Amina, you, and me. This presence of mind generates honesty within yourself that allows you to get to the heart of the matter. 

You have to increase your self-awareness

We are all wired both similarly and differently. There are a variety of reasons that contribute to what happens when you read a religious text or affirmation and do not feel moved to act on the message. Self-awareness helps us to understand our reactions. One of the main causes of inaction is that your mind doubts what you see. The moment your eyes register a motivational message, you say “I don’t believe that can happen for me.” One layer deeper your subconscious mind is saying, “I don’t have the power to make that happen for me.” We use affirmations, religious texts and mantras to motivate us to act. No one intends to look at them and not feel motivated to do something different. Anytime you don’t take that action, it is a sign that something is going on in your internal validation system. This system is where you draw on your internal sources of power, value, and worth. What enables you to act on a scripture, daily quote, or affirmation is a mindset that believes you can bring that statement to life, something inside that says “I got the goods (internal validation) to make this happen.” Thus, when a doubtful mindset meets an affirmation, daily quote or mantra, mental blocks become apparent and inaction can result. Self-awareness enables you to pay attention to this dynamic.

You have to deploy yourself intentionally

Your spirit, aka the divinity within you, acts as internal checks and balances.  When you act contrary to the highest version of yourself, your spirit sends signals to get you back on track. Your everyday decisions determine whether you effectively or ineffectively use your internal power. You have the power to determine whether you want to internalize or ignore the inspirational messages. Manifesting the mantra is influenced by the state of your inner world and your ability to recognize the power within you. 

When we pause to read an affirmation yet remain unable to act on it, fear and doubt are inevitably present. The best thing to do is to acknowledge and accept that this is exactly where you are supposed to be on your journey. Acknowledge without judgment. Use this as a learning moment about your power. How you use your internal power (mindset, behaviors, and emotions) determines whether trust drives you to action, or doubt maintains your status quo. 

Key takeaway

Affirmations, Instagram memes, religious texts, and daily quotes are great tools, yet sometimes we need a little bit more when our spirit issues a “stuck order.” A lack of consciousness on how you use your internal power can block you from taking action when reading an affirmation text. Amina has mantras in abundance, but she couldn't get past the divinity within her trying to get her attention. The tug-of-war in our spirits shakes us back to reality, calling forth a reckoning with the present moment. Many ignore the shaking and suffer from living as a lesser version of themselves. It is time to specifically address what’s going on inside that leads you to live below your full potential. The first step is to ask yourself: “What can I learn from my inability to enact change from my daily affirmations?” From there, you have to make the choice to become more present, using that self-awareness to make more intentional choices. You have to make the choice to use your internal power to access the highest version of yourself.

Now that you know nothing is wrong with you and understand this is a phenomenon that happens to everyone, we can start to tackle the deeper issues feeding your inability to internalize affirmations and take action. Navigating the interplay of our internal power and external manifestation can be challenging; however, having the courage to explore the “stuck order” is the first step towards freeing your mind and deploying the highest version of yourself from trust and love. Recognizing that you have power and choice in every situation sets the ball in motion to disentangle doubt’s grip on your life. Now it’s time to examine the voices in your head that drive doubt’s car and prevent you from gassing up on your daily affirmations, memes, daily quotes, and mantras.