I will take you with me on a short trip through a life. A life of a common person just like me and maybe just like you. We start as babies by learning to laugh, walk, speak and a lot of other things. Even from the beginning children show to the parents their uniqueness. We are born with a big bag of outstanding qualities and this is obvious even from the beginning. Just pay attention and you’ll see!
One day we are asked „what would you like to become when you grow up?”. Some of us would answer with a specific profession; some would want to be like uncle … or would answer back with a question: “what shall I be to see a woman’s breast?” (this was me and I found out that I should become a doctor) and some of us would say they would like to become Cristofor Columb or Michael Jordan or nowadays Messi. At that age we can do anything. We believe that we are extraordinary and we can really be Michael Jordan or whatever we want to be.
But one day we start school and start the real competition this society lives in. We find ourselves alone in front of teachers who teach us 12 years long that we are not a genius, that there will always be someone better than us. That classmate Popescu is much better at math than we are. So simple and cruel: most of the time we learn that we are not good enough.
Let’s play the life game further. Now look back at Michael Jordan. We grew up, Michael Jordan did too. He is now already old, he retired in glory. He recently started to play baseball. It was an embarrassing mistake but … come-on he is Jordan! He was the king. We forgive him. We have plenty of sympathy for him. Jordan is Jordan. He reinvented basketball. Being a child I wanted to play Michael Jordan not only to play basketball. We are all the same; we are here to reinvent basketball, to reinvent whatever we want. We are not here to follow known paths. We are here to deliver our oneness to the world, to release the genius residing in us, to show a miracle to the world.
Unfortunately most of us have no sympathy for ourselves like we have for Michael Jordan. We also make mistakes but we don’t accept the way we are. We try always to change us, starting from “I am wrong, I have to change” (un-acceptance). We try to build a big castle without foundation and we wonder why we fail. Acceptance doesn’t mean we don’t want to change. Acceptance is the first step to change; acceptance enables us to evolve.
Time passes, we are now too old to start becoming a sport star. We also have some other mentors in other areas of life. We are now managers working for multinational companies, we live abroad, we travel, we are proud of us, we’ve made it! We ARE THE JOB we wanted. We stop for a while and proudly look back to our childhood and see how we have tried several things: graduated from a university, used some opportunities, got a job, worked hard, followed known steps to reach the top and now finally we are recognized by the company, society, we’ve made it. We are within the system on a better position than the classmate Popescu who was better in mathematics but now he is employed by us, he is below!
Let’s play the life game further, we get older and somehow we grow tired: always doing the same job, always in the system. We remember now that we wanted to be Michael Jordan and play our game. Unfortunately we are deeply caught and play somebody else’s game. This discomfort grows and grows and one morning we wake up and decide to be lucky! We take the courage and make a step aside and look deep inside ourselves. What do we really want form this life? What are our strengths? We start to sweep the dust away from them and discover more and more of us. We see that long time ago, while we were discovering the world, we were told: “you are not good enough” and most of us accepted it. From that moment on we were always looking for safety and that was the name of the game. We wanted to be sure we succeed and we took what the society provided: known paths. Become an engineer, become a doctor, a layer … and you will feel safe, you will make it, you will be happy … but we aren’t. We cannot find safety unless we quit looking for you it.
Don’t quit your job; just check what’s in it for YOU. Which are YOUR strengths? Do you really use them? Remember: when you think you are good at doing something it is just another barrier you set in your way to become Michael Jordan.
And you know what; after failing in baseball Michael Jordan went back to basketball, his game …
I challenge you to choose something you do best (like I am a good speaker, I am a good project manager, I am god in finance) and try doing it differently. For example you are good in organizing events and you usually stay in front of the computer an plan hours long. Nobody can interrupt you and after some long hours you proudly finish and check your event agenda which looks as usually perfect. My advice is to try a different approach, try to draw the event, use drawings, not words, stand up when you think don’t sit down, talk to people and not to the computer. This is just a stupid example to be sure you got what I mean by do it differently because you will see the barriers vanish and you will discover how big your universe is!
