What are you willing to be or have?

What are you willing to be or have or do? The answer is always available to you.....the answer is exactly what you currently have, are or are doing!! You get what you are and not necessarily what you want. This is why self awareness is so monumentally important. Self awareness can be a challenge and can be deceiving. Most people say that that they are fairly self aware, but when it comes right down to it, they are not and mostly because they think they are. By thinking that you are self aware, you run the risk of being closed off to new realizations about yourself. You run the risk of being delusional about what you are.

Let me explain. I was working with a woman that was in an abusive relationship. Her boyfriend was controlling, verbally and emotionally abusive and generally not a nice guy. I asked her why she stayed in the relationship. She rationalized that he provided well for her and her family loved him and he was successful. So I asked her why are are you willing to be treated so badly? She didn't answer, but offered "I don't want to be treated badly and it's not constant mistreatment", and I replied again "why are you willing to be treated badly?". She didn't know. She wasn't self aware to the extent that she realized she was choosing to be treated badly, she was coming from a perspective of victim rather than a woman with a choice.

When you compromise, are you giving away something (a part of yourself) or is it a case where it's just not that big of a deal and you concede? Big difference!! How does it feel? If there is any angst or discomfort, you are giving part of yourself away. My friend and mentor Robert Quinn calls this "living a slow death". Refuse to live a slow death. And this can happen in every stage of life, personal, work, family, school......and it's all about relationship, your relationship with others, but more importantly your relationship with you.

In the work place it is rampant, and the core reason why the global economy is in the precarious state that it is in. I watch it happen everyday in my office, and it's really sad. People don't even know to the extent that they are giving themselves away. I was talking with a colleague the other day about this very topic and he asked "how do you know people are giving themselves away? Maybe they are doing what is true for them". So I said, "the next staff meeting we are in, just observe the body language and nonverbal behavior and tell me what you see". He did just that and admitted that he could see the resignation in people. The apathy of the group when the person(s) in charge spoke or espoused their opinion.

When it comes down to it, are you willing to pay the price to be true to yourself? There is always a price and a payoff. The price is that some people may not agree with you and may tend to drift away from you. In the work place you may be punished for being true to yourself and not compromising your character and integrity. But the payoff is that by being true to yourself, your true potential will be realized and you will accomplish things you could only dream of. And you will not measure your success by the accolades or promotions you receive, but rather by the relationships you build and the resulting outcomes of those relationships.

Being self aware is measuring success by how you feel about what you do. Are you willing to feel the creativity, wisdom and expansiveness of pure Love or are you willing to play small and feel empty about the work that you accomplish? There is a very small difference in these two states of being, and that is you and what you are......true to YOU, or compromising and giving yourself away for the desired result.....it's not what you achieve, it's how you achieve it.........Be willing to be true to YOU! And see what comes!!!