Hold back, keep it muted, don’t stretch, stay safe. We tell ourselves we don’t deserve it. Bigger, better, faster, louder, that’s all for someone else. If we don’t try, we’ll never fail. Never have to regret the misstep, only what might have been.

Funhouse distortions. Twisting, obscuring, cloaking, masking, blurring what we really are. We buy the myth we can be anything and then choose so much less. We can’t be anything we want, but we can be so much more than we are today.

The internal light is strong, it’s bright. We turn away, look down, shield our eyes. Cling to the hope of life’s lottery. Don’t believe we can do it on our own. The internal dialogue thrums and numbs and drowns out the genesis of dreams.

We create the identity early on of who we are, what we can expect, and what we deserve. Then we leave it forever unchanging. No matter how outdated, inaccurate, or irrelevant it becomes, that identity keeps us locked in. We’re free to roam within the boarders, but not allowed to cross. We’re so used to the walls, we don’t even see them anymore. But we’ll argue with anyone (including ourselves) to keep them there. “Don’t you know, that’s just how things are?”

We look at others and dismiss their dreams as fantasy, their actions as overkill, and their results as luck. Interesting, how our mediocrity is hard won – we believe we’ve worked and worked to be all that we are (and all that we are not). We look down on those striving to our level as ignorant and lazy. We look down on those doing, having, being more than us as enjoying the whims of fate.

We put our faith in “experts” and their glossyslick 10-step plans. We trick ourselves into thinking that there is one perfect answer and a straightline path.

It’s so much more comforting to think that we don’t know enough instead of we don’t dream enough, think big enough, strive enough, put forth enough. Instead, we delude ourselves into believing we’re inferior. Not worthy. Never enough, never enough.

So we wait for permission, never realizing we already have it.