Expand Your Life! Christopher Howard
"Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage" -Anais Nin
Everyone of us was born onto a playing field of pure potentiality. We live in a quantum soup of atoms and molecules that are constantly shifting, changing re-evaluating. The Greek philosopher Heraclitus said it best with the statement "You can't step into a river in the same place twice."
These are abstract concepts but something that I sometimes need to continually remind myself of as I'm navigating the playing field of life. Taking the conceptual and bringing it into the practical. As a martial artist It reminds me of the complete shock that esoteric or mystical based martial artists faced when Royce Gracie, destroyed one traditional martial artist after another with his Gracie Jiu Jitsu ground fighting techniques. The high-flying Bruce Lee movie kicks lost their meaning when the conceptual met the practical. But then again just recently we've come full circle and the conceptual has proven it's practicality as demonstrated by fighters such as Anderson Silva and Lyota Machida who have found a simple high front kick to be devastatingly effective.
In my own life I am looking out to a future FULL of possibility. I had for a long time been holding myself back - bound with chains based on pre-conceived notions and faulty assumptions. I was literally and figuratively a captive of my thoughts. I have been a professional in the field of personal development for 16 years now, and no matter how long we have practiced a discipline, we are ALL beginners and we will always face challenges and there is always more to learn.
I received an email the other day from a woman who has attended seminar after seminar after seminar.
This woman said to me that she heard me on a radio show where I was speaking about some of my own challenges in life. She wrote to me saying how liberating it was, because she wanted to help people in the way that I do, but she had been holding herself back because she thought that she had nothing to share if she was still having challenges in her life, and that she had to solve all of her problems before she began with the work that she would like to call her destiny. She said she had been given the impression from motivational speakers and seminar leaders that their lives were perfect. And that she had never heard one come out and share what was really happening in their life.
When I have shared my own challenges I haven't intentionally shared them for that purpose, although it is a nice side-effect and I am blessed to be able to serve in that way.
I have believed for sometime now that my purpose on the planet was to shine brightly and in shining brightly give others permission to shine the same.
It's interesting to me that part of the shining brightly is in revealing my own fraility, interesting....but I'll gladly accept it.
My dear friend Rickson Gracie, said something very interesting in a documentary that he made called "Choke." He said that that there are alot of fighters (mma) who say that they are not afraid.....but he said, "I'm afraid, I'm afraid of everything." And I'll paraphrase here....he went on to say that it was the fear that caused him to be aware...to win the fight in every moment....to never underestimate his opponent and that is a healthy fear; the kind of fear or awareness that forges a champion.
I have said time and time again that COURAGE is not the absence of fear. Courage is the realization that there is something more important than the fear....
The ability to love with abandon
The ability to set forth in the direction of ones dreams
The ability to master your financial future
The ability to weigh your ideal weight
The ability to let go of control and have peace of mind
The ability to win in business and in life
Think about this:
What's more important to you than any fear you might face?
What needs to become more important to you than any fear you might face?
We were all born in a quantum soup of pure potentiality. All possibilities exist in this quantum soup in terms of experiences you can have. There exists the possibility for you to live in poverty or wealth; to live with hate or love; fear or peace of mind.
Einstein said that we are boxed in by the boundary conditions of our thinking. It's COURAGE that will allow you to move beyond those boundary conditions so that you can embrace the life of your dreams.
I have fear. There are so many places in my life where I am afraid or where fear comes up. But I am also non-comprimising in terms of how I choose to live. And those dreams are more important than any fear.
Our lives shrink or expand in direct proportion to the amount of courage that we have.
When we find the courage to take huge leaps - sometimes even leaps of faith - new worlds of opportunity and possibility are revealed to us.
I am choosing right now to direct my focus from a business perspective toward new frontiers. Different ways of expressing myself and delivering the impact of my teachings are unfolding for me, and the direction requires a leap of faith and courage. But this is something I'm growing more and more used to. And I am becoming more and more comfortable with the discomfort :) It's a good place to be.
Consider this:
Where in your life is it time to find the COURAGE to expand?
What one step can you take today to make the greatest impact in an area where you have let fear hold you back?
If there is an area where you feel stuck, and you CAN'T even consider changing it....
Ask yourself the question "What would happen if you did?"
Open up your imagination and you may find that with courage and imagine you are taken to places that you've never gone before.
Love Deeply and Shine Brightly,
Chris
Thank you to Christopher Howard for this excerpt.
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