I wake up before the alarm clock every single morning. Even on weekends, when I don’t set an alarm, I still wake up early. Most of the time it is either Mother Nature or Pip who wakes me up but the other morning it was something a little more out of the ordinary. It was a voice. And it woke me up literally and figuratively.
Now before you think I need a one-way bus ticket to a padded cell, I don’t hear voices in my head. This was right after a dream and right when I was in the zone between sleep and being awake. I was having a dream where I was listing off names of people who were keeping me back from my goals. Yeah, I know, a pretty whiney dream, right?I’d much prefer to dream about 1980’s Paula Porizkova. But right as I was starting to wake up, I heard a voice that said this, “You are holding you back.”
My eyes shot open.
It wasn’t a condescending or scolding voice. I wasn’t the voice of anyone I knew or really even my own voice. It was a loving, kind and compassionate voice –one that was giving me a big, fat dose of constructive criticism.
My life is my responsibility. The life I am living is a sum of the decisions I have made in the past. I can influence the future by the decisions I make today.
I’ve felt like I’ve been driving with the parking brake on for a few years now — hell, all my life. Thanks to a lot of work and some introspection (and a few revelations), I now know why (a story for another day). It’s up to me to change that. That can only be done through hard work and taking action. But knowing that no one is holding me back but me is liberating. It’s putting a key in a lock and unlocking the ball and chain. I can do something about me.
We live in a time where it is popular to point fingers at other people for our problems.
People gain power by making us fear others and lay our blame at their feet. I am choosing to buck that trend. If it is to be, it is up to me.
I am grateful for my previous 19,026 days on this Earth and how they shaped me into who I am. Now it’s time to enjoy the remaining ones I have left.
I’m not going to give you my secret seven-step plan. I won’t bore you with that. I’m just going to be grateful, put my energy into the moment to stop anxiety and fear and love with my actions, not my words.
Now it’s time to get busy.
P.S. I am pretty sure that voice was me telling myself what I already knew. 😊