I was a very shy girl.
Didn’t speak unless spoken to, head down, hair falling in front of my eyes to hide behind, slumped shoulders. Teased and tickled by my father and brothers to the point of tears, bullied by schoolmates – you get the picture.
It wasn’t until I went to live in NYC to attend Parsons School of Design that I woke up to someone new inside of myself. She had been brewing for a long, long time. All of a sudden, no father, no brothers, no bullies! It was like a miracle.
Now I felt audacious. Bold. Adventurous.
I changed my nickname. I changed how I dressed. I walked with my head up. I slapped the men on the subway who tried to grope me. I spoke my opinions – slowly, at first, but gained confidence as time went on.
Despite gradually becoming more of my own person over the years after I left college, underneath it all I was still plagued by “I’m not good enough” thoughts. “I’ll never make it, no one wants to buy my paintings…” and on and on. All hiding behind Ms. Audacious.
Can I really do this? Yes!
At 35, I began to see that I really could command my reality: I jumped out of my norm of carving stone by hand and went – alone – to Italy to learn how to carve marble and use air tools. I moved to another state. I trained myself in the major graphic design software. I went to NZ as Artist-in-Residence for a couple years.
The really BIG jump
But it wasn’t until this year, 2018, that I really, really jumped. I had been experiencing a low-grade, constant, crippling illness for 2 years, I was over 100 pounds overweight, I was being manipulated and downtrodden by someone close to me, and was flat broke and going broker.
All of a sudden, one day I awoke shouting, “ENOUGH!” right out loud. The word filled my ears and felt like every cell was listening.
I thought, OK, if I really was truly audacious, and if I could create the reality I really wanted, how would it look?
What concrete steps would I take to change how things were?
How?
After looking within for a bit, do-able steps came to me, and I did them:
• I made a list of three of the most awful things I hated about my life.
• I vowed to never complain about those things again.
• I listed the opposites of those things
• I expanded them so they were audacious.
• I released my emotional attachments to the hateful things.
• I imagined and created a re-flow of creative energy to the places where the hurtful ideas had been.
• I meditated on (and still do, every day) the feeling of being free and able to do any damn audacious thing I wanted.
Now you!
If there are things about your life that you don’t like or feel stuck about, those are signs that you haven’t *decided* yet to be audacious enough to pop completely out of the mold and stride out on your own two very capable feet.
I hear clients say to me, “I’ll be so alone! None of my friends will like me anymore!’
Well, as a coach once said to me, I say, “As soon as you show up for yourself, your tribe will find you – and love you.”
My little Audacity Map sounds simple.
It is. And you can do it, too.
But you have to commit to it, and DO it.
Vow to re-create your life the way YOU want it. Because unless you do, you’ll be living either someone else’s plans or a dull default of your own subconscious making.
Pop on out!
I invite you to be and think and live audaciously.
What’s to lose – besides a dull, not-enough life?
.
.
