This is a great Insite from my friend Julie Cairns - a thought leader and successful entrepreneur and investor, who had a blog “the abundance code”
The words you speak tend to reflect your beliefs about yourself, and that makes the words that come out of your mouth important indicators of your state of self. But can your words shape your reality too, simply through the power of being spoken?
It’s an interesting question…
A few years ago I went to one of the last ever live workshops that Dr Wayne Dyer presented before he passed away later that year. It was held on the beautiful Hawaiian island of Maui, just near where Wayne lived. The workshop represented the culmination of his life’s work on personal and spiritual development. And the entire workshop was based around the words “I am…”
See, Wayne had come to the conclusion that the most important words you ever speak are the words that follow “I am…”
When we say “I am…” the words that come after that are often the words we use to express our identity.
Like “I am Australian” or “I am an engineer” or “I am an artist.”
Why is that important?
Dr Dyer felt that we could shape our reality by being conscious and careful about how we identify ourselves.
I had this experience recently.
My friend Susan Garrett (I wrote about her in previous blog post here) is a world champion dog agility handler and trainer. Susan recently said something that really struck home with me. She said “I’m careful about where I hang my identity. I don’t hang my identity on being a championship level agility handler, or on winning trophies, because maybe my dogs will get sick or maybe something will prevent me from winning. Even though I often win championships, I’m okay if I don’t because that’s not where I hang my identity or get my sense of being successful in life.”
For some reason I was ripe for this to really land with me.
I realised that my feeling of being successful in my life had been dwindling for a while. And when Susan said that, all of a sudden I knew exactly why.
For years I have strongly identified with being an entrepreneur and a business leader. But in recent years I’ve been heading in directions that are less about running businesses and teams, and more about sharing my message, coaching people (my passion projects) and investing in order to grow my wealth.
Even though other people would look at my life and call it successful, I was hanging onto an identity that didn’t quite fit me or my life anymore. So it was hard for me to really feel successful while I was still wearing that old identity.
In the moment I shifted my identity (which was pretty instantaneous) from “I am a business leader” to “I am a thought leader” and “I am an investor” I immediately felt a renewed sense of being successful in my life…
It felt congruent because I love to invest in myself through constant learning. I also love to invest in assets to grow my wealth, because that provides me with freedom and choice in my life. And I love to share my thoughts and coach people in order to help them grow and reach their full potential. So I was aligning my identity with things that I felt really good about and that bring me joy.
This brought a real clarity to my decision making processes. Ever since I made this identity shift a few months ago, my decisions have been so much simpler and quicker to make. Because I know who I am in this moment, and knowing who I am helps me to be much clearer about what fits with my current identity and what doesn’t.
So, 3 years after attending that workshop with Dr Wayne Dyer in Maui, I think I finally understand what he was talking about. What he was teaching is true: the words that we use to follow the statement “I am…” are some of the most important words of all.
I’m so grateful to Wayne (and Susan!) for this amazing lesson.
As always, let me know in the comments if this post helped you in any way.
To YOUR Abundance,
Julie Ann Cairns
