Dare to Open

If you’re an Empath or Highly Sensitive Person like myself, it may feel safer to hide your light under a bushel. My partner recently said to me ‘not only do you hide your light under a bushel, but you’ve built a house on top and parked your car in front of it.’ Daring to open is a process which can take practice and isn’t always comfortable, but it’s part of my own commitment to living more authentically.

When we dare to open and reveal ourselves, with both our talents and all of our human vulnerabilities, we risk failure, judgement and rejection. So it’s not surprising there are so many triggers around this for many people and it serves us in many ways to wear our social masks, to protect ourselves from the fear of not being fully accepted for who we are. But how do others recognise and know who we really are if they can’t see us? It’s one of life’s dichotomies that when we hide our vulnerabilities, we are also hiding our light in the process, we can’t have one without the other. Yet when we have embraced both our light and shadow, we have greater self acceptance and don’t need the approval of others in the same way and it becomes easier to be discerning about how much of ourself to reveal, out of preference rather than from a place of fear.

Stepping Up and Out

In a recent session with my coaching mentor, I was exploring my fears around stepping up and she asked me ‘what would love say?’. After a brief pause the reply from my heart was, that we don’t have to be perfect and know everything to take our gifts out into the world, we are all in a process of learning and growing.

It can feel challenging to step forwards and put our head above the parapet, but it’s okay to do that one step at a time. It’s in those moments when we are expressing ourself, our creativity and doing what we love that we experience joy and that’s what really lights us up. It’s during those times when we are enjoying the moment that we feel more alive, and then we are effectively radiating our unique vibration out into the world. This also helps the people who need our services to recognise our ‘signal’ and to find us. When we dare to open its not just ourselves that benefit, but other people as well.