Are you allowing yourself to shine and show your brilliance? If not then we have the answers to help. Clinical psychologist, Susanna Mittermaier, shares her three steps to healing and unveiling your brilliance.
“Being like everyone else is hiding your brilliance; what if the world needs your difference?”
If you’re like most people, from the time you were young you have been shaped to be average, and just like everybody else have spent a lot of your life trying to fit in, be ‘normal’ and be accepted.
Yet deep down, you were aware of your difference. Maybe you wanted to be in a relationship in a distinctive way, or saw new possibilities for being embodied. Maybe you had unusual ideas about how to raise kids or live your life creatively instead of following the mould.
Being like everyone else is hiding your brilliance; what if the world needs your difference?
People have many points of view about what brilliance is (and often, it’s not them!). Some think it’s genius or intelligence, the creativity of a Van Gogh or the vision of a Steve Jobs, for other’s it’s position or status, such as being the CEO of a large company or the President of a country.
Brilliance can be so much more. Your brilliance may not be in inventing the next wave of technology or leading a worldwide movement. It may lie in your kindness, in daring to be happy when so many are unhappy, or in the uncharted ways that you choose to live.
Perhaps you tried to share what you knew and others judged you or simply didn’t understand. For many people, not getting the validation for their point of view sends them into wrongness: “Well, I must not know anything about that, if others don’t see it too.”
What is it you see as a possibility that you haven’t allowed yourself to see because you start out thinking it must be wrong? Have you stopped your brilliance before it can be seen (even by you)?
If you are ready to shine, here are three steps to unveil your brilliance:
Step 1: Stop Judging
Judgments are the number 1 killer of brilliance! Every time you judge yourself or go to the wrongness of you for being different, it’s like covering the light of you with a veil. How many veils are hiding your brilliance?
There’s no way we can prevent judgments from others, but you can change what you do with them. Take five minutes every day where you refuse to judge you: if you notice a judgment of you, tell yourself to stop or see a stop sign in your mind. You can pick up that judgment later if you’d like, but for that five minutes, be a judgment free zone.
Notice what is different when you give yourself the gift of no judgment. Do you perceive yourself differently? Are there new ideas that come into your mind?
Step 2: Ask, “What do I bring to the world that nobody else does?”
You are a unique being, with your own unique brilliance. Asking this question daily allows you to discover what you have on offer. Don’t look for an answer or decide what your brilliance should be, allow the information to come to you in unexpected ways.
Let it be a true question, in which you allow yourself to receive what might come from it without any expectations. In doing this you are opening a door to see what you haven’t been able to see before. Asking questions in this way is a muscle, so give yourself some time to practice.
Step 3: Have Fun
The easiest way to access your brilliance is to have fun. Have you lived your life not looking at what’s fun for you but at what you should do, the right thing to do, or what makes other people happy? Most people have learned to do things right—not to do things light!
What makes your world expand, lightens you up, and brings you joy? If you have lost touch with that—as so many people have—don’t lose heart! You can find it again. Do something that you think might be fun or used to be fun. If you try it and it’s not fun, don’t judge yourself for doing the wrong thing, just say “Okay, that wasn’t fun, what’s next?” Keep going until you find what’s fun.
How does having fun access your brilliance? When you’re having fun, you are closer to being you, and that’s when your true brilliance shines. Remember, your brilliance may not look the way you thought it would; it may be in your quirks and unique ways of seeing the world, or your awareness of different possibilities for life and living.
Follow these three steps—stop judging, have fun, and ask, “What do I bring to the world that nobody else does?”—and see how your brilliance begins to show up and shine!
