However, I resist the urge to talk of hope or a better future… It’s easy to offer hope as a distant dream, a story, an inspiration, a supposedly attainable desired future state… it is not always clear whose dream is being hoped for or worse still, whose desire the supposed end state really is. But more importantly, the hope and motivation offered is like air and smoke, often, it merely ends up inspiring an endless expectation of miraculous interventions which then results in a life of waiting, of  inconsistencies, of frustration and disappointment.

What’s missing? Well, as offers of hope encourage us to look up into the sky, somehow we begin to believe we can fly, we slowly forget or avoid confronting the reality that we actually don’t know how to fly and thus never commit to developing the skills. We just want to fly because we believe we can…

Three things missing…

1. The reality of where you are relative to where you want to be
2. The self belief not only that you can get there but that you have the capacity for anything it’ll take to get you there
3. The courage and confidence (wherever you get this from) to go the distance.

In reality the inner strength and purity that allows one to see the slightest flickering flame in the distance and have the courage and confidence to go beyond the obstacles and trudge confidently and determinedly towards the light, comes not from believing but from knowing, not from hoping but from doing, not from waiting for the right time but from knowing what time it is now. The belief that you can fly should come from the belief that you have the capacity to develop the ability to fly…

Until you come to terms with and accept who you are, you can not truly change. Sadly, until you are willing to look yourself in the mirror and see yourself for who you are, your ability to be the person you desire will always be a distant dream. For whatever life you create will never satisfy the pseudo-person who created it… You have to be yourself so when you change (if you so choose) it will still be you.

Sometimes the fear that comes with acknowledging self comes from the desire to live up to the perceived expectation of the assumed audience in what I can only refer to as  ’A play called life’ with you as the lead character. But then even with this, if one can look out into the audience and realize that one is not alone, that what one feels is felt by others, what one wants is wanted by others, what you’re thinking others think also and what you want is desired by many… that should ease the fear for in itself it is liberating… if only one could truly see, if only one could know..

You can be anyone you want to be if you believe you can… this not a self-contradiction… you can only truly ‘believe you can’ if you know and acknowledge (not necessarily accept) who you currently are. The greatest threat to your confidence and capacity to be who you want is the extent to which you deny who you currently are… the longer one lives in this state of denial, the harder it becomes to acknowledge reality and eventually loss of hold on reality and loss of  control self results.

As you become more willing and able to see and acknowledge who you are, you allow yourself to tap into a phenomenal internal store of confidence and capacity to become who you desire.

One of the worst things that could happen is to disregard the current self and instead just keep hoping that the desired-self will miraculously emerge… how is this even possible?