2024 brings with it hope; hope for more… Greater opportunities, a fresh new outlook, expanded consciousness and deeper self-love.

We all would like deeper and meaningful experiences for ourselves.

In preparation for the coming year, my soul has been stirring within me something different, something new that I hadn’t previously experienced.

Last November, while out for a hike on a beautiful tree-lined path near my home, I heard a voice ask, “who would you be without your stories?”.

I stopped in my tracks; a fear ran through me. For a moment, I didn’t know who I would be if I hadn’t identified with my experiences, or judgments others have about me – all which I had, up until my hike that day, subconsciously taken on, believed and lived.

Since that sunny day in November, I have been in deep self-examination and soul-searching introspection.

I had to ask myself, “Who Am I?”.

“Do I really know myself void of my stories?”

I thought I knew myself quite well. I have my thoughts and judgments about myself, others and my world. I know what I like and what I dislike.  I have a career that I identify with, wonderful friends, a large family – and memories of experiences with all of the above that have woven the tapestry of my life.

Much of my tapestry has been wonderfully laced; some of it not.  A few stitches are missing; a few threads, pulled.

Maybe you, like me, have, up until now, identified with your experiences by telling yourself stories about yourself.  “____________ failed; I must not be good enough”. Or “They said __________about me; they must be right”.

Because of these false narratives and our need for connection and security, we create personas for ourselves, masquerading as people we only think we should be.  These fake personas, in their attempt to protect us from bad things happening again, are whom we’ve become.

This is what we do. 

We adjust our personalities and our lives to suit the glaring lens through which we view our outer world.

“Who am I without my stories?”

As I begin the New Year, and having explored this question for a few months, I’m allowing the question to live bigger in me, and upon searching for the answer, I know that my ego requires some adjustment.

In fact, I might even say, my ego needs to be ‘broken’ – much like a trainer ‘breaks’ a horse.

The ego has caused suffering through its lack of control and discipline. The ego has been allowed to run wild, so to speak, arguing for its every whim, forming judgments about its world, creating wars within itself, and succumbing to every craving, and the next shiny new object.

The ego over-thinks: it worries; it judges and schemes, attempting to rule its world in order to feel safe.

However, the ego’s tactics have caused us to lack trust in ourselves. And the absence of trusting ourselves is a sign of not knowing ourselves.

How do we tame the ego?

Give your ego, with all of its fearful stories of suffering, a voice.  Yet, now, rather than believing everything it judges, giving it everything it wants, and making it larger than yourself, love it, and put it on the top shelf in the closet of your life.

Train the ego to be in submission to your true self.

We, then, realize the true reality of safety can only be found in one place: Inside

And when inside, a new persona is birthed, or rather, resurrected from the sarcophagus where we’ve kept it hidden far too long.

It’s time to call ourselves back home from the ego’s journey, and allow a rebirth, a new story to emerge and be written.

What are you believing about yourself that isn’t true?

What are you doing – only because you believe you should?

What associations have you made for yourself to ‘be enough’ for others?

What false perceptions do you have about what others expect you to do and be?

What beauty (creativity, love, power, authenticity) might be ready to emerge from within you?

What if you could harness THAT?

Do it.

Make 2024 the year of discovering something bigger, greater, and powerfully real.

A Year of Discovering YOU.