the mirror of self discovery

ready for a story? once upon a time....there was a little girl who was very afraid of shining her own light.

she kept everything to herself. she told no one of the wonderful creative things she got up to.   { she really enjoyed being creative } but still . . . she didn't share any of her accomplishments with anyone. she thought sharing things also meant that she was on the hook for completing them...perfectly. and what if she didn't finish? she couldn't take the scrutiny.

i'm sure you can guess that that girl was me.  i refused to share anything, sometimes with my own husband, because i didn't want accountability.

i have to tell you that that's the strangest thing because i'm now in a group, a mastermind group of sorts, that is all about sharing and being accountable.  

we've been meeting for 10 months and i know now that i really could not do without them.  they really help me to see the bigger picture, they help me reframe and come up with new ideas if needed, they hold me accountable for the things i say i'm going to do and i now i've always got an "no matter what I got your back girl".

in The Creative View, episode 5 we talk about the hashtag #failureisnotenough.  in it i discussed my fear of success.  

i could always handle failure because for me it  that meant if i dropped the ball or a task or endeavour failed i could step into back into the shadows, no harn]m no foul.  failure was never a real issue for me.

success, however, was my achilles heel.  i didn't know what to do with it, how to work with it when it happened.  

success in my head meant that everybody would look at me { remember no shining light upon me } and i would have to show up, do and continue to show up.  i would have to show me.

what i've gathered today, and why i chose to write this blog post, is that i am now okay with showing up.

on my daily walks i always try to catch up on podcasts i'm subscribed to.  in today's podcast walk jaime ridler interviews elise cripe about sharing oneself.  

and it's something jamie said that pinged the idea for this post "....as soon as I announce that I'm going to do something i'm gonna have to follow through".  

a whole torrent of thoughts started piling up in my head as i contemplated that one sentence.  my issue before becoming a part of my mastermind group was follow through.  

here, i would have to follow through over and over and over again and that meant I couldn't easily slip back into the shadows.

thing is, what i really didn't grasp before was that by being held accountable you really do learn and grow,  you gain clarity from a different perspective.  

you get insight from those you trust.   you get support from those who will catch you when you falter.  and, best of all, you get kudos and praise and massive high-fives when you succeed.

success DOES have its good points after all.  having the spotlight on you ain't all that bad.  try it.  get out of your comfort zone, step onto your stage and

S H I N E  Y O UR  L I G H T .

G