Confidence and Empowerment- What Holds us back?

Our ego is trained and shaped by our society, media, parents, teachers,educational institutions, religious figures and culture in general to identify with everything that we are not; such as our professions, roles we play in our lives (spouse, parent, child), nationality, religious dogma, or political belief systems.There is a perception of reality that has been created for us. Increasingly over time we actually see this reality to be true and accept it as our own. This creates an experience of separation,lack,and futility, as we perceive our selves to be in competition for limited resources of love, wealth, power, control and happiness. It appears that there just isn't enough for all of us.Rather than defining ourselves as connected to everyone else, we perceive ourselves to be isolated and disconnected except through externally imposed social groups. We even actively search for differences to separate our selves further dividing us into groups of nationalities, religions,race and ideologies.
We spend the first half of our life looking into our outer space
and forgetting about our inner space. Then we spend the second half of our life trying to find life's deeper meaning and eventually look into our inner space to find out who we really are. How do we reach the turning point and decide to begin to look within? Often it takes a crisis in our life to cause our attachments to be abruptly wrenched from our grasp and strip our ego and force us to look within. For others,the quest begins with a sense of emptiness and lack of fulfillment,even when we believe that we have achieved all of our goals as set forth by us or by the standards of our society.

When we have lost touch with our true essence, we are not fully present in our daily lives.We have forgotten our innate gifts and abilities that we had in our innocence as children.When we sit in judgment of our self and define our self as the roles that we play, we do not feel or experience the true flow of joy and abundance in our lives.We feel limited, and thus we end up limiting our selves with the box of our reality that we have created.

The Obstacle of Inadequacy and Powerlessness:
We all have crises at some point in our lives.They are the tests and challenges that we all face in our daily existence.Some of them are small and seemingly insignificant in the scheme of things such as being late for an appointment or burning dinner in the oven. Some of our tests and challenges loom larger for us, such as a loved one dying, divorce, being fired from a job, a career has lost its reward, a driving dream was not
realized, financial problems, children leaving home, children in crisis and we feel helpless, relocation, retirement, or a sudden physical illness.Too often we beat ourselves up when one of these moments arrive, feeling that we have somehow failed or that we are being punished in some manner.

It is important to realize that tests and challenges are part of everyone's life and are a tool for growth, learning and expanding our perspective on our own life.It helps to view tests and challenges as an opportunity to shift and grow. These life challenges allow us to get out of our narrowly defined world of our egos and assist us with becoming aware of whom we really are versus who we are not.It gives us the opportunity to evolve into our greater self and, ideally, to develop more compassion and love for ourselves as well as for others.Or we can remain stuck. The choice is ours -- but recognize the choice is always there.

These challenge moments make us stop abruptly and examine who we really are,what we expect out of life, how we perceive ourselves and how we want others to perceive us.They define our strengths and our perceived limitations.Once we rise to the challenge of the moment, our perspective can expand.We begin to realize that we are not limited by anyone or anything except for ourselves.We are not victims of our circumstance; we are the creators in our daily lives.Whatever thoughts you had yesterday define who you are today, and whatever thoughts you have today define who you will be tomorrow.

Doc Marion and Doc Tracy