349 I’m Meant To Change Someone’s Life Today December 2017 Friday Week 3

Fantastic Fridays-#349  December 15 The Strong Within Daily Affirmation Podcast I’m Meant To Change Someone’s Life Today I was invited by my good friend Angi to attend her work Christmas party. Her company has been known to put on great parties, and so last weekend I went and ate some good food, and they even had a cool surprise guest do a concert for us. The company had hired Chris Blue, the newest winner of the television show The Voice on NBC. Chris Blue is a fellow Knoxvillian like I am, so it was neat having a local celeb on stage for us. On one set, he combined the songs Change The World made famous by Eric Clapton, and Man in The Mirror that Michael Jackson originally sung. And after those songs Chris talked about how he believed that love could change the world…and so he had us do an exercise with him while he was up on stage. He had us look to our neighbor and say with him, “I believe I was supposed to sit next to you for a reason, and you may not know me but I wanted you to know that I love you…and there’s nothing you can do about that.” And when you do icebreakers like that, it can feel awkward to do something that makes us experience vulnerability. And I feel that we aren’t able to help people if we aren’t real with them, if we aren’t vulnerable with them. But to change someone’s life, we must first be willing to change ours. We must be willing to be vulnerable and go to the places that we avoid in our minds, the places that need to be addressed, not because we need more conflict but more because the things we avoid don’t disappear…they grow. When we confront those dark places, we don’t have to fear them because we will see that by encountering them face to face…they never had the power we thought they did. We’ll see that the only reason they had power over us…is because we gave them that power. And if we gave them that power, then that means we are the powerful ones…not our darkness. I spent so much of my life trying to help people, so I could avoid my stuff. It probably could even be called one of my addictions because it was a way for me to avoid my struggles. It was a way for me to disengage from my life. And as I became more aware of myself over time, I saw that while I still was helping people, I wasn’t helping them to the capacity that I wanted to. There’s this silent lie I tell myself that if I can give someone good enough advice then maybe I can save them. And I think I wanted to save people because I was hoping it would be enough to save myself. And so in everyone else I see me…but I had to work on myself first so I could understand that the greatest help I could give people was being a better example. Helping people with words of encouragement or just being with them in their times of need are great, but being the best version of yourself first when helping them will be a more impactful presence in their life. And when you become better, when you stop avoiding your darkness you’ve been hiding within…you can then begin healing it. There’s an age-old question I believe everyone asks multiple times in their life…what is the purpose of life…or maybe put more accurately…what is the purpose of my life? And everyone will have a different answer, and maybe even different answers in different times of your life… but the purpose of life, at least for me, is to experience life. It is to live in a moment and be comfortable within it. It is the challenge to love myself underneath my skin no matter my faults because they were lessons that brought me to this point. It’s the chance to experience the Divine not out in the cosmos but to know it is within me at every moment waiting for me to plug in and connect. It is the choice to experience the pains and joys of others…to be a part of their lives as much as mine. And so my purpose of life is to continually keep finding ways to connect and experience the moment…and I believe that is the pathway to heaven. It is the pathway to finding or becoming what we seek. And within every riddle will be a simple solution, or question, we overlooked. And I think this quote brings it home for me every time I remember to say it… “I am not a human being having a spiritual experience; I am a spiritual being having a human experience.” So today let’s have a human experience and be the answer for ourselves. Let us stop looking for our crutches in life, let us stop leaning so heavily on something else to save us, and let us begin remembering our power we’ve always had. Let us remember that to experience life we must be willing to show our deepest essence, to share our vulnerableness unafraid of what other people will think. As we stop covering up who we are and share our souls nakedly, unapologetically, to the world. Let us come back to what we’ve always known but have forgotten…that our words of advice won’t be someone else’s answer, if we are not committed to healing ourselves first. For when we become better, we become the example, we become the miracle for people to see…that they can be a miracle too. So today, let’s change our lives by being vulnerable and loving ourselves unapologetically through our mistakes and all, and let’ change someone else’s life by being our best selves. For when we do that, we can truly love others then. And when we love others….there’s nothing they can do about that…and I think that’s a pretty amazing feeling to have. Today’s Personal Commitment:How can you be a difference today? I like to challenge my personal training clients after their session is done. I say that our workout session isn’t over, “I want you to go out this week and see how you can be 1% better in every aspect of your life.” So how can you be 1% better, so you can not only be the difference in your life…but the difference in the lives that you interact with daily? So each morning this week wake up and take three purposeful deep breaths and say to yourself, “I will be 1% better in all I do, so I can change my corner of the world today 1% at a time every day.” I’m Meant To Change Someone’s Life Today     Thanks for listening.  I'm sending great energy your way as we become Strong Within together, Personal Development Life Coach- Chris O'Hearn Contact info- email: [email protected]  phone:865-219-3247     Music by: - Zest by basematic (c) copyright 2011 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license. - I Have Often Told You Stories (guitar instrumental) by Ivan Chew (c) copyright 2013 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license. Location: Knoxville, Tennessee USA but available worldwide