In October of 2000, I had the opportunity to meet Dan Millman. Dan’s classic book Way of the Peaceful Warrior had a profound impact on me and my life when I read it just a few years earlier. I was grateful to get a chance to connect with Dan and excited to gain some wisdom and insight from him as I attempted to start my business as a speaker and a coach, and hopefully, one day, become an author like him.
I said, “Dan, as excited and passionate as I am about the idea of helping and inspiring people, every time I think about speaking or writing, I worry that all my ideas are recycled from someone or somewhere else. I’m not sure I have any original ideas.”
Dan said, “Mike, don’t worry, everyone feels like that, especially when they’re just starting out. It’s my belief that there’s only one light but many lamps. Your job is to simply shine your light as bright as possible, and trust that the people you are supposed to reach will resonate with you.” I was grateful for the simplicity and wisdom of Dan’s feedback, and I took it to heart.
Shining our light is something most of us want to do in life, but sometimes it can be a little tricky. As Marianne Williamson famously says in her book A Return to Love, “It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.” As much as we want to “shine,” we often don’t allow ourselves to do so, either because we don’t think we deserve to or because we don’t know how to handle it when we do. For many of us, it’s much easier to struggle and suffer than it is to shine.
How about you? How do you feel when things go well for you? Are you comfortable shining? If you’re anything like me, you may have some mixed feelings about it, as odd as that seems. While I do love it when things go well, I also notice that sometimes it poses certain challenges for me.
When things go really well in my life, as much as I appreciate and enjoy it, I also find myself feeling uncomfortable at the same time. Why is this? For me—and for many other folks—there are a few main reasons, as I noted in the earlier chapter, “Allow Things to Be Easy.”
First, we may hear that voice in our head that says, It’s too good to be true, or It won’t last, or You’ll mess it up. This, of course, is one of the sneaky ways our gremlin tries to rob us of our power and joy. Our gremlin convinces us not to shine too brightly, because if we do, we will have farther to fall when we fail.
Second, we worry that people won’t like us, will judge us, or will get jealous of our success, power, or happiness, and thus pull away from us. Connected to this feeling of separation, we may also find ourselves worrying that if things go too well, people won’t be able to relate to us. We may have picked up some of these beliefs in childhood or adolescence—from siblings, friends, or other kids in school. Many of us grew up in environments where we were constantly competing with and being compared to the people close to us. And, as much as we may have wanted to stand out, we also may have learned the hard way that there can be negative consequences for shining too brightly.
Third, much of our learning, growth, and evolution in life has come through pain and suffering. Even though we may have heard a number of teachers and mentors say that we can grow more effectively and elegantly through joy and love, sometimes we find ourselves worrying that if things get too good, we’ll get lazy. We’ll stop actively learning or somehow abandon our journey of personal growth.
Finally, we sometimes don’t feel worthy of our success. It’s as though we take our gifts, talents, and successes for granted, choosing to focus on all of the areas we think we need to improve, and in the process discount ourselves.
These and other limiting thoughts, attitudes, and beliefs have gotten in my way in the past. They’ve kept me stuck in difficult situations, or, at the very least, have limited my experience of joy and fulfillment. It’s almost as if I’ve been more comfortable suffering than I have been when things were going well. When there are problems to deal with, I’m able to dig down deep, access my power, and rise up to meet them.
Your version of this may look a little different from mine, but lots of people I know and work with, even those who have created a lot of outward “success” in their lives, seem to struggle to some degree with allowing themselves to shine.
We all have this ability. We are born with it but somehow unlearn it as we grow. One of the most remarkable memories I have was as a brand-new father taking Samantha out in public for the very first time. After we brought her home from the hospital, we kept her in the house for the first few weeks, with the exception of visits to the doctor. She’d been born a little early, and had jaundice (which many babies born early do), and as new parents we were a little on the paranoid side, so we didn’t feel comfortable taking her out in public. After about three weeks, we decided it was time, and, on the way home from the doctor one afternoon, we stopped at the store to pick up a few things.
Samantha was asleep in her car seat. I took her out, wrapped her up in a tight swaddle, and decided to carry her into the store in my arms. I had no idea what was about to occur. We walked through the front door and almost immediately I became the most popular guy there. People came running up to us to see the new baby. You often get a lot of attention when you’re out with a baby, but when you go out with a newborn, it’s even more intense—people are both excited and shocked to see such a tiny human being. I think that’s because even those of us who’ve had babies forget how little they are when they first come out.
What felt like hordes of people came over to see Samantha, to congratulate us, and to whisper to her. They said things like, “Oh, look how beautiful you are,” or “Welcome to Earth,” or “You’re amazing!” They said these things in a hushed tone (because she was asleep), but with such appreciation, authenticity, and reverence that I was stunned!
As we walked out of the store, amazed by what we’d just experienced, I said to Michelle, “That was incredible. But, it’s so interesting that Samantha got all of that attention and appreciation—she didn’t even do anything to deserve it. You’re the one who carried her for all those months and gave birth to her, but no one even said anything about that. She just slept in my arms … and did nothing.”
Even if she had been awake, Samantha, as a new baby, would probably not have consciously known what people were saying to her and about her, but she most likely would have been able to feel it, and would not have had any resistance to receiving that appreciation and attention. Unfortunately, as we get older, we pick up certain ideas and beliefs about what we deserve and don’t deserve. Many of us learn, sadly, to dim our light based on our own fear or judgment (or that of those around us). But Samantha just lay there and let her light shine.
We don’t have to dim our light. As Marianne Williamson also says later in that same famous passage from A Return to Love, “There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you.” As we get more in touch with who we really are and let go of our fear of what other people think of us, we give ourselves permission to let our light shine brightly. And, when we do this, it can liberate us and inspire others.