Who Do You Think You Are?

©Nance Thacker 1990

"List 3 words to describe who you are, the kind of person you are; positive attributes." I said with eager enthusiasm.
I looked around the room at the Memorial Camp last weekend and saw that my simple request was being greeted with far less than an enthusiastic response. Some people closed their eyes and heaved a sigh. Others squirmed in their seats. The silence was deafening. Stillness followed, as if I'd caught a herd of deer in my headlights. No one was forthcoming so I chose the first person on my left to jump in.
"I think I'm..." he began.
I put up my hand and stopped him before he could continue. This was IT, I could see that many were having great difficulty acknowledging and owning their positive characteristics. Their reserve was made worse by having to declare it aloud.
"If I had asked you all to list 3 negative things about yourself. You could come up with them very easily and probably have more in reserve. Right?"
Nods all around.

And so I gave them this task which I'll ask you to do as you read this.

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Don't tell me what attributes you think you have. Remember a time when you acted in an admirable manner or you felt really, really good about yourself. What did that feel like? How did you feel about yourself? What qualities where you showing at that time? Tell me about those.

What qualities would you like to have? Maybe you don't have them right now or maybe you have their negative flip side but would like to develop the positive quality in the future. State them aloud as if you already have them. We don't know whether you have them or not, but we'll take your word for it. Mix in up a bit, those you already have with those you'd like to have. We don't know the difference.

Our body/mind, like the audience in the workshop, responds to our self-talk in the same way. It doesn't know the difference between something "real" or "imagined" but accepts a statement about ourselves (negative or positive) as if it were TRUTH.

If you can feel a quality in your body, it is familiar to you. It is familiar because you have possessed it at one time or another. So, though you may embrace the negative aspect as being who you are, if you can, even for a minute, bask in its opposite it is a resource within you and with cultivation can become your truth.

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So then I asked them, "IN THE FULLNESS OF ALL THAT YOU CAN BE, WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? Imagine it, take it into every cell, declare it and bring the future into the present with your actions."

The room resounded with the joy, laughter and light as the positive declarations were stated aloud and released out into the room so that their vibrations could be supported by the dreaming that followed.