Stop Trying To Be Someone You Are Not – Authenticity Leads To Success – Marie Forleo
Speaker: Marie Forleo
Interview: Tom Bilyeu
Music: Fearless Motivation Instrumentals
You Don’t Have To Be Anyone Else To Be of Value – Marie Forleo – TRANSCRIPT
When I first started as a business person, I was 23 years old and I was so insecure and I was trying to fit myself into this idea of who I thought I should be and it wasn’t working.
So it wasn’t until I actually allowed myself to just be the weird, wacky, energetic, kind of a little bit crazy person that I am, that things actually started to work.
And I’ve seen it time and time again, where people tend to feel stuck and stifled. Where they tend to feel like their life force is just drained out of them, there’s gets to be despair and depression. They just feel stuck. Is when they’re not expressing the fullness of who they really are. They’re trying to fit themselves into a conventional box. They’re trying to live up to other people’s expectations. They’re trying to be someone who they really aren’t, because they’re afraid that the real them is going to get rejected.
You know, and at the same time culturally, we were starting to spend more and more time on our computers and then devices started to come into play, cellphones. And I just watched as how so many people started living from the neck up and started losing touch with their intuition, that inner voice. The very innate wisdom that each of us are born with, they just didn’t know how to access it.
So for me, in terms of tapping into your body, in terms of movement and incorporating all of these different modalities into how you figure out your life, um, it’s become second nature to me. But I think now more than ever, it’s so important that we re- connect to this thing, so we can hear our truth.
Walk people through how to re-connect.
What is, what does that process look like?
So first of all, taps into slowing down. We’re all moving so, so, so fast. We want the answer instantly, we’re always going up here. So I think step one is to slow down and actually breathe and feel your body. You know, if you’re someone who works out, even, you may not be that practiced at doing this. You know, if you go to the gym and you bang out your reps. You’re doing squats. You’re hitting a class. Where it’s just go, go, go, go, go, you may not be actually feeling the physiological signals that come through your body.
So I always like to frame it like this:
A lot of people ask me what’s the difference between fear and intuition. Like fear, a fear that you should actually move through, it’s an opportunity for you to grow, it’s something that you actually want to do, but you’re just afraid of failing. Or what if it’s your intuition telling you this is the wrong move? It’s hard to decipher that sometimes.
You have to slow down, you can close your eyes if you can, and ask yourself, in terms of the opportunity you’re thinking about saying yes to, when you imagine yourself saying yes or moving forward with this idea or this person, in your body in the nanosecond you ask the question, “How do I feel about this?” Do you feel yourself expand or contract? This is a tiny, tiny micro-movement, a feeling within you.
Expansion might feel like lightness, joy, excitement, fun, all of those feelings. Where you almost perceive your body moving forward in space ever so slightly.
Contraction, think about it in terms of dread, despair, something in you is saying no, there’s a heaviness, a pit in your stomach. Even if that opportunity, even if that idea or that person that asked you something, on paper it sounds like you should say yes, but something in you is like pulling back, that’s your no.
So it’s a really great way to help people train themselves to tap into their inborn wisdom that’s already within them, that’s working to guide them on their best path.
And it’s when you have that level of faith to surrender to your body, to surrender that you have wisdom within you that you’re not going to access grinding to it. It unfurls almost like a flower blooms when it’s ready.
You know, if I ever feel like in any moment life is not going the way that I think it should be going, it’s because I’m resisting what is. It’s me arguing with reality. I’m making myself miserable in that moment, because I’m choosing to argue with what is. That’s always a losing proposition. So the more awareness I can bring to that and go like, “Is this really how you want to live your life in this moment, Marie?” Because every single moment, as you know, sets you up for the next moment. And you string these moments together and guess what? You have your life.
Every single moment is an opportunity for us to check ourselves before we wreck ourselves.
And so I just try and play the game. If I’m miserable, if I’m upset, if I’m angry, if I’m cranky, it is my responsibility. Because it’s based on what I’m thinking or believing in that moment. It’s not the outside world causing me to feel this. It’s what I’m doing up here that’s making me have that reaction. And if I’m the problem, I am also the solution.
And then in the moment, again it sounds so simple, but I think we’re all searching for these really complex things and we don’t need them. If you can catch yourself arguing with reality in the moment and realize, “That’s not a wise thing to do.” You can then back yourself up and go, “Okay.” But the argument and the irritation is not necessary to get a new result.
I’m always focused on the long game. I think these days, a lot of people want insta- results. They want to be Instagram famous, they want to have like a billion dollar business over night.
And I always say, I’m like,
“This is not a get rich quick over night program. This is get great over time.”
For many people, when they have an enormous vision it paralyzes them. They have no idea how to accomplish it. I see people cry in workshops all the time, “It’s so big, I don’t know how to do it, I want to change the world.” I’m like, “Don’t worry about changing the world, change one person’s life.” If we can focus there, stay there for a little bit, we’re going to get to that thing, maybe. Otherwise, it’s all good. Because you’re still doing the work that you were born to do.
I’ve always had this belief since I was little that every single one of us is born with a unique set of gifts and talents that only we can give the world. So the impact that I want to have is:
I believe our world will transform significantly when every single one of us realizes that the world really does need the special gift that only we have.
So to see people wake up to that, to know that it’s already in them, they don’t have to do anything or be anyone different, to just express that. I think we’d go a long way.