Were you taught to play small? Did you inherit a long list of dos and don’ts from everyone who had a hand in raising you? Were you told that you could be anything you wanted and then criticized for who you chose to be?

When I was growing up there was a word for all the things I could not be, it was called inappropriate. But I didn’t come here to be appropriate. I came here to do things differently. To live a life like nobody’s ever lived before. To find my own path and determine for myself what is or is not appropriate relative to what I want to experience.

I don’t want to play the game by the rules of those who came before me—rules that were set up to avoid every possible pain one might encounter during their time on this earth.

I came here to ride my bike with no helmet. To dance even when I don’t know the moves. To risk everything that I am knowing that the eternal aspects of me can never be destroyed.

I don’t want to yield to anyone’s signs of caution. I don’t want to fall in love slowly to try to avoid being hurt. I want to rush in, to be impetuous, to love unabashedly for as long as it feels good to me and then move forth to explore the next manifestation of love.

I want to live out loud. Broadcasting the beauty of who I am for all who are ready to see. I want to unleash the music within me for all who are ready to hear. I want to step into the life I came here to live and shine brighter than I ever thought possible. And I don’t want to mistake another’s unwillingness to look for my ability to blind.

There is so much love in this world and the reason I have shielded myself from it is not because I’m fragile or vulnerable to its dangers, but because if I let myself loose I might live a love so powerful that all those around me would need some time to adapt. I would strip away the veil of social norm, trample over the customs of appropriateness, and be real in the rawest sense of the word. But I don’t want to be alone in my realness.

I fear that if I wake up too much I might shatter the myth of the matrix. But the matrix itself is a myth. The reality you experience is on par with your willingness to experience reality. The moment you embrace a higher form of living is the moment that a higher form of living reveals itself to you.

What we see depends mainly upon what we look for, and what we look for is determined mostly by what we’ve seen. But there is an invisible truth that lies beyond our familiar realities. One that is accessed through our desires and imagination. We have been trained to believe that the world can only yield to us the things that are realistic, forgetting that we ourselves are the ones creating the reality.

I feel like I’ve been living a lie. Making due with the reality I’ve defaulted upon while incubating the reality of my dreams. Trying to content myself with the best of what’s available to me, forgetting that I am the one who does the availing.

Well, No more!, I say. I’m tired of minimizing my dreams out of respect for the reality that was created before me. I’m ready to tear down that reality. To thank it for the structure it lent me and the contrast it provided that sparked the desires that now carry me so fervently—but I am now clear on those desires and need it no more.

I am far, far, far from normal. For normal is a melting pot where everyone brings only a small part of themselves to the table, muting the bulk of who they are in favor of keeping the peace.

To maintain harmony, we play small, but the world is far more stable than we realize. Every day new fortunes are forged; new fame, realized; and new inventions, unveiled. And yet our world always finds a way to keep going. It’s business as usual.

Even the giants of our world, titanic as they are, do not crush those playing small around them. To the contrary. We are inspired by all that they offer, all that they risk, all that makes them a marvel to behold.

Well, I want to release my inner giant. To stop shading it from the love it needs to grow. To expand far past what is being asked of me and into the realm of what I’ve been asking of myself.

The world is never ready for the next big thing, but it always finds a way to adapt. So I need not fear destroying the world I love. For in cracking through the shell of limitations that surrounds me I will find a world beyond that which I am used to living, and the world will find a me they didn’t know they were missing.

Final thoughts:

To avoid the pain of being inappropriate we have learned the art of going unnoticed. In lieu of unconditional approval, we find security through obscurity. “Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt,” right?

But you cannot hide from the dark, for hiding only obscures the light.

Playing small is merely an anesthetic. It can numb but cannot cure. You release your dependency on playing small the same way you release your dependency on pain killers, addressing the source of what’s causing the pain.

So long as you rely on the approval of others to feel good, than to feel good, you must share only the preapproved aspects of yourself. Only when you learn to care more about how you feel than what others think, can you free yourself from the bondage of their opinion. And in freedom you will find joy.

Care more about how you feel than anything else you desire, and you can manage how you feel while attracting everything else you desire. The seemingly disparate desires that form the dream of you have one thing in common, they all meet up in a singular state of bliss. Follow that bliss. Own your bigness. Unleash the fullness of who you are.