Owning and Defining Your Greatness

Greatness.  This is really a term that is made up.  What does it mean?  Who has it?  What does it look like? These are questions that are asked of me as I live my life and share my journey with others.  These are also questions I ask myself as I look over the tapestry of my life and all the events that have woven together the events of my life and produced who I am today.

I used to think that who I was and what has happened to me throughout my life, the events, the people, the beliefs that were passed down and the ones I created about myself were what defined me.  In fact, I lived my life this way, always looking over my shoulder making sure the "demons" that limited my ability to live were not too close.  I did everything within my power to make sure that I was "okay", that what I said/did proved that I was worthy of love, friendship, acceptance...and in the end sat in a therapist's office stating I wanted to end it all regardless of the people in my life it would hurt.

It was at this point that the word "greatness" was introduced to me.  Such a foreign concept...yet held with it an energy that made me yearn to hear more.  It was here in my journey that I discovered that anything outside of the way I saw myself at that moment had to be better and made me determined to find out more.

As I have been on this path for almost two years and have written in this blog many times about the "18 inch" journey to greatness, you may ask why am I bringing this up again...well over the last several weeks something happened that brought me to a new level of self awareness.

I discovered that I do not need others in my life to validate me and tell me about how fearless I am, what positive thing I am doing, what growth is taking place, or what my greatness is that day, week, month.  While all these things are okay, if you need them to be "fed" to you and cannot see them in yourself then what do you truly believe?  

I have been used to over the past year of being told regularly about all the things mentioned above by a couple of people in my life.  I loved it and it felt great, I believed it and used it to fuel myself each day towards growth. Then, life happened and my "providers" got busy and I watched this constant "feeding" drop off, and for a while questioned my worth.   So I struggled, until a few days ago when I awoke as if from a dream and allowed myself to look in the mirror of my heart and what did I see but all the things I know to be true about me, determination, fearlessness, courage, greatness and I felt a haze lift and realized that if I rely on others to tell me these things do I really believe them about myself?

As I looked in the mirror I saw the person before my journey started and the one I am now.  The difference...understanding greatness and how it defines you and your belief about the possibilities in your life and what you believe yourself to be capable of.  What you OWN and not what another owns in their belief about you, but what you own in your belief about yourself.

So, what is greatness, and what does it mean?  The definition is really one you write as you discover the person you are and have always been.  How all those things that happened to you, the people in your life, the events both negative and positive are what make up your journey.  You can filter them through your head or your heart, the result will be vastly different as greatness resides in your heart and truly defines who you are.

What filter are you using?  What is your definition of greatness?  do you own it or does another?  these are now the questions I pose not only to you, but to myself.  Let the next phase of the journey begin...