The Viable Alternative

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You know, when I first completed this site, I considered this a milestone in my life.  After years of writing about The Viable Alternative, I finally was able to compile it all into one neat little site.  I beamed with pride at what I considered an intellectual masterpiece of all the insights that helped me on my path of personal development.

Well, after my “crowing achievement”, when I realized all was “done”, I excitedly email several trusted friends of mine who’ve been what I’ve considered confidants on my path of self-discovery and tell them to check out my site.

One of my friends, who has been a trusted mentor of mine, gave me what my ego considered to be some damning feedback about my site.  Now, I always welcome constructive criticism from trusted and well meaning people, because it helps me to grow and work on my blindspots.  However, due to fact that I am a sensitive person by nature, (a quality that I have always loathed about myself), the feedback was quite stinging.

The feedback given to me was that I still came off as very guarded in my writing, which, she said, is a reflection of how I am in real life.  Furthermore, I was told that my writing had too much head and not enough heart.

What? …..Wow!  How could someone NOT be impressed by such an obvious intellectual masterpiece?  After all the tremendous growth I’ve made in the past 2.5 years culminating in me being FINALLY ready to do a site like this, how can someone still be saying this?

Well, after licking my wounds for a few days, and almost scrapping the site altogether (I said “almost”, but yes, I’m such a perfectionist. .sheesh), the clouds began to part and a whole new realization about what’s to be the next phase of my life opened up.  A lesson that I was only now ready to receive had become plain to me.  The next phase of my life is to involve learning to let down my guard.

You see, one of the main reasons I started my path of self improvement was because I felt I was too stifled.  I wanted to learn how to un-stifle myself and become fully self expressed.  I hated the fact that some days, I’d be this suave, charismatic person, while MOST other times, I was stilted, self-conscious and inhibited.

I would read stories about people I admired, one of them being “The Rock,” a.k.a.  Dwayne Johnson, professional wrestler and actor, and I would gush with admiration (and envy) when people would praise his charisma, his wittiness, and aura of power.  I wanted to be that confident, charismatic guy that people loved and thought was cool.  I wanted to be that guy who was always on, always had something witty to say, who exuded that “power.”

To be honest however, I failed miserably at achieving this “goal”, and the more I tried to be that “guy”, the more frustrated and inhibited I became.  For YEARS I banged my head against the wall getting absolutely nowhere.  In fact, I reflect in embarrassment on how annoying I must’ve been to others.  Can you imagine what it’s like to be around someone who’s “trying” to be cool and confident in order to be liked?  It’s weird when others do it and I must’ve looked quite weird myself.  There’s a sense that something is off, and my friend, something was definitely off with me.

Well, the reason why I failed so miserably was because I was missing a piece of the puzzle.  That piece was a willingness to let down my guard.

For as long as I can remember right from infancy, I had a deep emotional wound that left me with a feeling of always being weak and vulnerable.  This caused me to be very sensitive as a child.  I used to cry at the drop of a hat.  From some of the deep soul searching I’ve done over the years, I really think it might’ve come from the fact that at one point in my life at a very, very young age, I felt as if I were abandoned by my mother.  That wound was further exacerbated by the emotional wounds inflicted by people in and out of my family while I was growing up.

With me seeing the world as a hostile, unfriendly place in which I felt too weak to defend myself against to the very core of my being, I learned to build a wall around me that would hide my pain from me and from others.  This would be where I stopped living from the TRUE core of who I was, and constructed a false self known as my “ego”.

So with this type of past, here I am YEARS later, saying that I want to be free, spontaneous and fully self-expressed but failing miserably.

The problem was that this whole “altruistic” goal of mine was all b.s.

I was coming from my ego, where I wanted to look cool so I could be loved and admired by everyone.  I really didn’t give a rat’s ass about expressing myself from my core, which is what TRUE self expression is.  Hence the conflict I had: on one end, I was desperately attached to projecting a certain persona to the public while on the other end I was cursing my life as to why I wasn’t able to freely express myself and be spontaneous.

By identifying with my ego and its goals, I was able to stay hidden behind the wall I built up to hide my pain.  And if I insisted on hiding my pain, there was absolutely NO way I could ever hope to ever be “free”.  Imagine watching a fight where someone gets badly injured and is trying to protect his wound.  Chances are you’re going to witness this guy receive a good pummeling by his opponent.  He’s not free to “express” his fighting skills because he’s trying to protect something.

Ironically, I was that guy, the guy who was being pummeled by life because I couldn’t, or wouldn’t let my guard down.  Imagine wanting to be free, but somehow “something” seems to be holding you back.  Take it from me, it sucks, and I would know because I lived that way for most of my life.

I wanted to be free but I didn’t want to pay the price.

The price I now realize would be me manning up, letting go of my ego so my core self can shine through.  That would mean giving up “control” of how I wanted to look and giving that power over to my core self.

It would mean letting my guard down and being……vulnerable.

By the way, when I say, “vulnerable”, I don’t mean I become a person who falls down on his back crying anytime someone does or says something to me I don’t like.  Rather, I mean being a person who’s willing to express and SHARE who I am with the world, warts and all, without fear of who will or will not accept me.

At this new crossroads in my life, I realize my overwhelming desire that I nursed deep down for years to lose my “inhibitions” would NEVER ever be achieved if I was attached to looking a certain way to the people.  That’s not being free, but somehow, I was able to lie to myself all these years that I was indeed striving for freedom.  Somebody shoot me….just kidding.

My ego had absolutely NO interest in letting my core self shine through unless it expressed an image that was pleasing to my ego.  It was terrified of giving up “control” because it was afraid of what may come up.  Hence the reason for the existence of the robotic, emotionless, frustrated individual that many people knew to be me, living totally inauthetically in that he said he wanted one thing (freedom of self expression) but was actively pursing the opposite goal (expressing a false self engineered by the ego in order to look good and protect himself).  Sad, but true.

I now accept the fact that by letting my core shine through, everything expressed by my core may not be in line with the image my ego wants me to present to the world.  Everything expressed by my CORE self may not be so “peachy”.  My “warts” are certain to come up as well.  However it’s these “warts”, these odd quirks that we all have that actually set us apart from each other

Now, don’t get me wrong, like I said earlier, the last 2.5 years was probably the period of some of the greatest growth I had ever experienced in my life.  A lot of this growth had enabled me to connect more to my true self and become less inhibited.  The feedback I had received was my friend pointing out a blindspot that I hadn’t been able to see in order to aid me in my growth  and self-discovery process.  Had I been given this feedback let’s say three years ago, it would’ve sounded like some extinct Biblical language.  In fact, it was like a extinct language to me, because people had told me before that I was guarded, but frankly, either I didn’t care, or I didn’t know really how to take it or what to do about it.

Hey, like I said in my about me page, I am in no way some type of guru.  I am a work in progress and will be so until the day I die.  I am here to share my insights that I’ve learned in my life to help you along.

I’ve written this to extend my hand to you, in the way someone who was drowning in quicksand has figured how to climb out, and wants to take others in the same predicament with him as he climbs to safety.  I’ve learned the past year that fulfillment, the number one thing we all seek in life, is gained by giving value to others.  How I personally gain fulfillment is by inspiring others, and giving others insight from what I’ve been through.

There’s no way I could really effectively do that unless I learn to let my guard down so my own core self can shine through.

If you’re painfully self-conscious to the point where you’re afraid of making any move because you’re afraid of looking bad, I feel your pain.  It feels so constricting, so stifling.  It feels as if you’re in your own prison looking out at a world that seems to be freely living life.  What’s worse is when you try to solve this but can’t seem to get anywhere year after frustrating year.  It feels as if your life is passing you by.

I invite you to welcome the possibility that you really have no idea what freedom really is…..News Flash: I didn’t.  The “freedom” you desire has strings attached, but that’s not really freedom, is it?

First off, let’s call a spade a spade. There’s no use living under false pretenses any longer.  Your REAL goal is to hide behind a wall and have the world see you a certain way.  That’s why you haven’t been able to make any “progress”.  You think you want one thing but have been going after something else.

Think about comedians.  I’ve read that some comedians tend to be some of the saddest people on this planet, though they make people laugh for a living.  I’m not saying all comedians are like this, but those who are, they use humour as a wall to hide behind their pain that most likely originated from childhood.  Comedy is a way they escape from their pain and also gain acceptance from others.

They may be able to make people laugh and gain people’s acceptance, but are they really free?  Are they REALLY expressing themselves?

Hey, I have my own wall I hide behind, and will continue to do so until I fully evolve to the next level where I’m fully able to let my guard down.

The difference between me and you is that I have now realized The Illusion that I’ve been living and choose not to live this way anymore.  I’m sharing my insight here with you to give you a chance to make the same choice.

Now, if you’ve seen the light and have made the decision that you don’t want TRUE freedom and rather continue hiding behind a wall constructed by your ego where you’re seeking to appear a certain way to the world, I wish you all the best.  At least now, you’re honest about what you want and are no longer lying to yourself.

If on the other hand you’re tired of living all the b.s., and want to be truly free, you must first acknowledge that there is a SELF within you that you had no idea about that is far, FAR greater than any image that your ego tried to project to the world.

It is a self so complex, so vast, yet so beautiful that it scares the hell out of your ego because your ego can’t truly grasp it, so it tries to bottle it up and put it in a corner to use for its own selfish devices.

Unstifling our selves involves giving up the idea of “control” and surrendering to a greater self that can never be controlled.  It involves getting out of our way and letting ourselves BE.  Now, what may now come forth may not always be “pretty” the way we may want.  It may not always be wrapped up in a nice neat little bow.  Some “dark stuff” may emerge from time to time.  However, because it will be coming from our CORE, and not from our ego, that in and of itself is BEAUTIFUL as well.

Our true, core self within each of us does not give a damn about how the world perceives it.  It has no need to “hide” because it’s already aware that it was “fearfully and wonderfully made.”  It’s not concerned with the past or future because it lives in now, and is thus able to flow from moment to moment.

Before I go, I’ll let you in on one more thing: by letting our core selves shine through, we will exude charisma EFFORTLESSLY.

Now, doesn’t that sound like TRUE freedom to you?  Well, it does to me.

Giving up control is the price you and I have to pay for freedom, but I’m prepared, because as I heard a “retired” millionaire once say, “freedom ain’t free.”

This is The Viable Alternative.

Hope this helps.