Your True self: The road less travelled. Are you living the life you always wanted?

What stops you from traveling the life you’ve always wanted?

Fear is the gateway of who we are and who we are destined to be. -Justin Stumvoll

Thanksgiving week is when it feels as if life kicks up two more levels on the volume knob. The year is beginning to wind down, but pressures form all around us. You evaluate the life you’ve been living for the past 10 months and realize you are racing time to New Year’s Eve. For some, New Years Eve is another day to party and numb out the noise. For others, it’s a measuring stick: It’s a time to take stock on what value, worth, and impact you created in the past year. You look back and see what can be changed, improved, and eliminated. Was it a year of existing or a year of being? What if you could change the course of your life? Would you? I have found what I believe keeps us from becoming and living out our true self.

I believe we live two lives that are constantly at war: The life we are living now and the life we hope to live. It’s as if we have a chasm between the ideal us as we’ve dreamt and the mundane life of “have to” live day in and day out. Since I was 13, this war was raging within me, and I couldn’t put my finger on it. I had the reality of living day to day survival and the life I wanted of thriving in my talents, passions, and relationships. It’s not a life of balance. It’s a life of purpose.

So, I wanted to share with you a few road blocks I believe paralyze us from becoming who we are supposed to be. And, we’ll talk about some ways to discover that person.

What are the things that stop us from living the life we are meant to live?:

Defining the Enemy: We cannot defeat the enemy until we recognize, define, and locate it. The enemy is us. Ourselves. We blame outside forces, people, circumstances, and our physical feelings to justify why we don’t change and accomplish our goals. We even rationalize and say our past, upbringing, family of origin, and ancestors are to blame. Now that you know who the enemy is, take a moment to consider the symptoms and examples of how the enemy shows up in your life.

Self Sabotage: You desire to be an artist, launch the dream you’ve always wanted, lose weight, and get that new business off the ground. The other you (enemy within) wages war and throws all it has at you to keep your authentic self from accomplishing it. It’s full-time occupation, and mission is to shut you down at all costs. Once I defined this enemy, I formed strategies to silence and overcome it.

Rationalization: The enemy will use any excuse to rationalize why we shouldn’t take action. We build days of “thinking” and “dreaming” about what we want, instead of “doing” or “building.” Goals without deadlines will remain dreams. We live vicariously through other people’s social media, build dream boards on Pinterest, and get consumed in false identities through TV, movies, and pop culture. All the while, we stay on the hamster wheel: Super busy running, but getting nowhere.

Procrastination: 80% of all people I meet suffer from this condition. The enemy within knows exactly what you need to hear to keep your dreams sidelined. This condition of self-hate gives birth to other symptoms to keep us paralyzed. We look for people to fix, create drama to stay busy instead of building our dreams, overeat to stay numbed from feeling the shame of inaction, put our self-worth in the hands of others and allow their opinions to define us, overwork a job we hate to build someone else’s dreams at the cost of our own, and stay in toxic relationships. These are just a few examples of how procrastination tries to win, but the root cause is self-hate based in fear, which is the mother of all.

Fear: Fear of what we will become. Fear of success. Fear of the unknown. Fear that we can’t handle all that will happen. We chose to stay in a condition of analysis paralysis. Even though we are miserable it’s better than the unknown and road less traveled. We work until our hands bleed hoping to get as comfortable as possible only to realize that day never comes. The fear of living our true self overwhelms us, and we retreat to numbing ourselves with another symptom above.

So I have a question for you that I had to ask myself: Are you living the live you’ve always wanted? Are you being your true authentic self? Is the world and your relationships getting the real you?

When I came to grips with these questions, I pulled the trigger and started doing life with people that didn’t care what others thought. Their lives were a symbiotic relationship with the Creator and they worked to build a life designed and crafted to be amazing.

Let me tell you, it is possible to live your true self. Here’s what I did:

I began changing all my decisions regarding my spiritual life, marriage, kids, relationships, my career and craft, and giving. What then began to form is what I call living in the sweet spot: I shaped work around my life. Work became more preferred and less about principle. My marriage began to thrive because my mission was to get that foundation solid before adding anything else. My relationships with my kids started to flourish and work became more preferred because it wasn’t the main identity. For years, my work defined me. Now it’s just a vehicle and a way to underwrite our mission.

Then, I wanted to help others get set free. I wanted to help others achieve the life they’ve always wanted. I wanted to help their dreams become a reality. That’s how www.noahuniversity.com was born. I designed an online mentorship to help people gain the techniques, strategies, and tools to run his or her life; not have life run them.

I’d love for you to leave a comment below and answer the question: If I could live the life I always wanted, what would that life look like? What is holding me back? Oh and by the way, money and time can’t be the excuse.

Please share this with others you feel need encouragement and hope. I’m glad you’re here and thanks for reading.