Tag: courage

Speaking my truth

Posted on by philipdodson

It’s been nearly a month since I posted a blog, I came back to my blogging earlier this year after a break, I had blogged every single day for over 6 years, then felt that my writing had got stuck so I stopped. So I took a break to freshen up and came back. However, I realised that I was still holding something back. I stopped again in early August, I’d lost my way with it all.

My writing was reflecting my mind state and not coming from my heart, that is where our true essence comes from, the soul and our heart and not from the mind.

Without realising it, my mind was sabotaging me writing from my heart and saying my truth.

This is the thing that we all suffer from, learning how to free ourselves to say our truth to ourselves first and then to the world. We hold back, we are fearful of it within and we fear others’ reactions to it.

Our soul wants us to always speak our truth and to be open-hearted and the mind fears this so, if we allow it, the mind stops us.

We all want to be seen and to be understood and we want the world to hear our truth.

The knowing within us that we are not speaking our truth and that we are holding back brings us great suffering and brings challenges to us. We can not be at peace and truly 100% love ourselves if we do not learn to speak our truth.

We are not here to be liked, we are here to be our true selves and to speak openly our true feelings from our hearts. When we do, we free ourselves and we attract to our lives the right tribe of people who accept us for who we are, they will love us unconditionally and will allow us to be seen, listened to and understood.

Finding our truth is a challenge initially as we have to be prepared to peel back the layers of the onion that we have put up around ourselves to protect us. We have built a shield around our true selves and hidden from the world. We have to be brave enough to bare our soul and to reveal our true self, we have to take off the layers. This is fucking hard and we are conditioned not to.

When we finally speak the truth from our hearts our relationships change with friends, partners, and everyone. Those who want to be around our truth will grow more connected to us and those who don’t will fade or run away.

Speaking from the heart comes without agenda and comes from love. When we speak from the mind it comes from a place of judgement, evaluation and has an agenda.

I am committing to going on a journey to speak my truth, speak from my heart and free myself. It’s going to be tough. It means sticking my hand into the fire.

What can I do to make a difference?

Posted on by philipdodson

We all think that we are too small to make a difference and there is a brilliant quote by the Dalia Lama that sums it up nicely “if you think you are too small to make a difference, try spending a night in a room with a mosquito”.

There are countless examples of where one person has done a small step, every single day and created an amazing change, one that springs to mind of Jadav Payeng who on a sandbank planted some seedlings and over the course of a lifetime created an entire forest that bristles with life. He created Molai Forest which is now home to tigers, elephants and a whole diversity of animals and nature that had disappeared in the area.

And while we are on trees how about the bravery of the Kenyan Wangari Maathai who through her dedication, in a time when it was unheard of for women in a country like Kenya to stand up and make a difference, she created the Green Belt Movement and with the involvement of the UN they were responsible for 51 million trees being planted.

Look at the unbelievable bravery of Malala Yousafzai, who stood up to the Taliban and campaigned for women’s education and ended up being shot in the face. The Malala fund helps to improve access to education for women worldwide.

These are just three examples and none of them was born any different to you and me, they just choose to make their difference and against incredible odds, they showed up for us.

We can all choose to be the example to inspire others and that means taking the first step, as Brene Brown says we have to brave the wilderness. If we want different leaders it is no good waiting for them, we can become the leader we want to see, and we can become the change that we want to see. 

What can I do? Make my difference by showing up. We all have to get off the bus and stand up for what we want to see not stay on there and wait for someone else to do it first.