A few weeks ago, I shared an experience I had with a stranger that led me to a profound insight about why I broke my heel for the second time in a year. This past week has been riddled with random daily advice from friends and strangers and an unsolicited three-hour "come to Jesus" talk with a spiritual healer all centered around this question: "Why aren't you walking in your power?"
My first response was, "What does this have to do with my heel not healing?" My second was, "I didn't realize that I wasn't walking in my power." Finally, after five days in a row of people giving me some variation of this unsolicited advice I realized they were right. I haven't been walking in my power. And I think this is a problem many of us share.
So what does it mean to "walk in your power" anyway? To me, it means this: We are all here for a purpose, our life's mission if you will. But many of us get sidetracked along the way. Caught up in the day-to-day chaos of our lives, we forget what we came to this life to do. We attend to things that we thinking are more pressing (like checking our email at 3:00 a.m. in case we finally got that reply from the agent we've been waiting for), and we lose track of the thing that really matters. The thing that brought us here: our life's purpose.
Maybe you don't know what you came here to do. If you truly don't (and aren't just hiding by feigning ignorance), then I encourage you to reflect on what you came here to do. Some of my friends call this, "the big why." As in, "Why are you here? Why are you doing what you're doing?" It's a question that deserves an answer, and you owe it to yourself to find out if you don't already know.
Or maybe underneath it all, you know your life's purpose, but you're afraid to act on it. That's my problem. As Marianne Williamson says:
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.
So my answer to the question, "Why aren't you walking in your power?" is because I'm scared to death of it. I'm afraid to let go of the safety and security of the life I've created for myself to pursue my true purpose. I'm afraid to let my light shine.
Because of that, I'm stuck. I can't seem to move forward (quite literally with the broken heel and all). So here I sit between a rock and a hard place. If I cling onto my old path, I will never heal (and I really don't want to be on crutches for the rest of my life). But stepping on a new path takes courage that I'm not sure I have. I've become, if not happy, content with my life as it is. It's safe. It's secure. It's a known quantity. And I'm scared to give it up -- even though it's keeping me stuck.
Rhonda Britten hosted a Fearless Living bootcamp on HuffPost a year ago where she encouraged us to stretch, risk, and die. I jumped in wholeheartedly and completed it along with over 600 others. But I've come to realize that not only did I not take real risks, I really didn't even stretch myself. What I thought were big risks back then were nothing compared to what I need to do to walk in my power.
So here's the challenge: it's time to walk in your power. To finally figure out what you came here to do and do something about it. I know what I came here to (I figured that out last spring in a big way). I just haven't done it; I haven't been walking in my power.
So today is day one of my Walking in Your Power challenge -- my version of Rhonda Britten's Fearless Living Bootcamp. Each day I will do something that is truly me walking in my power. Something that scares me a little -- or a lot, but needs to be done for me to own my truth.
I'd love it if you'd join me. Comment below on your daily successes and struggles and I'll do the same. We can hold each other accountable and keep each other honest. And maybe, just maybe, truly embrace walking in our power along the way.