Owning your magnificence
I recently gave the group mentoring program participants an exercise to complete over a month. It’s one I regularly give clients (as well as the folks inside Donovan). Despite the simplicity of the exercise, no one finished it.
Why?
Because this exercise asks us to highlight the brilliance and magnificence in us.
Here’s a quick taster you can experience right now: List 10 ways you’re magnificent (not your accomplishments and accolades).
Pull out a piece of paper and take a moment right now with this.
...
Done? Not yet? Why not?
Because
“It’s uncomfortable.”
“It feels like a luxury that I cannot afford myself."
“It’s frowned upon to speak about myself in this way.”
“It sounds like self-flattery.”
Yes, we live in a culture that has made wrong seeing and sharing our goodness, our power and our value. It’s confused standing in our brilliance for boasting, arrogance or self-centeredness. Most of us have been shamed – often repeatedly and from a very young age – for standing in our authentic light and brilliance.
We’ve learned that “good” people do not raise themselves up.
That’s it. This isn’t raising ourselves up. Identifying our brilliance is correctly seeing the existing goodness in us. Correctly seeing our light, our authenticity, our inherent power. This is completely different than bragging about what we’ve done or have.
The group participants had fallen into this shame-filled trap, allowing past judgement to keep them disconnected from their brilliance. From this place of disconnection, we remain small, powerless, and finding the datapoints that confirm that we “suck.”
Yet, they aspire - like so many of us - to be fully empowered into their brilliance, being all whom they were always meant to be, bringing their greatest gifts to our world.
I challenged them to revisit the exercise and, this time, overcome the resistance and the false narratives to complete it. That they may feel the goodness and gorgeousness that inhabits them. So that, the next time someone or something triggers that inner voice that tells them they suck, there’s another inner voice saying “Um, excuse me. The truth is that I’m magnificent in my unique brilliance. You can go speak to someone else now; thank you very much.”
You have a choice: Step into the exercise above with the group participants: write your own list of 50 ways you're magnificent. Yes, 50. No less. (Not your accomplishments or accolades.) Whom does it ask you to be to see yourself as magnificent? I'd love to hear about your experience! Reply to this email and let me know. (Replies come directly to me, no one else.)