I came upon a quote from Albert Einstein while reading Jill Bolte Taylor‘s book, “My Stroke of Insight.” It read:

“I must be willing to give up what I am to become what I will be.”

It’s a powerful idea to meditate on.    

“What I am” for most of us is the person we made up and got comfortable with. When we begin to get uncomfortable with “what I am,” there is usually a fork in the road presented. One fork leads to more of the same (same s**t, different zip code), and the other leads to “what I will be.”

You’ll know which road you are going to head down when you make this decision: What to take with you. Reminds me of a story . . .

My long time friend and business partner and his wife were moving from upstate New York to Florida about 5 years ago. They had a cozily decorated home featuring an Early American décor. They decided to have an auction of all their furniture and many other household items so they could start from scratch when they arrived in Florida. When I visited their lovely, new home, the only thing that remained the same was the pictures of their grandchildren on the new refrigerator.

This uncomfortable period of standing at the fork has been labeled as “falling apart.” The patterns that make up who you think you are start coming unglued. The road most people take at this point is the one that takes you backward. On this route, you begin to buy into the “cake and eat it too” illusion. People usually seek more “stuff” at this point. They become more superficial. This is an effort to add more to their personal illusion so they can finally feel like they are enough. The mistake they make is simply mathematical. They add when they should subtract.

Most people eventually figure it out that adding will never fill the hole in their soul, and then take the other fork. It’s what Eckhart Tolle and others refer to as the “return movement.”

A portion of our life is spent amassing and adding layers and layers to our image. The return movement is removing the layers to find out who we really are. The uncomfortable area in between is a signal and an invitation for us to go deeper. Many don’t R.S.V.P.

Underneath all the layers of addition is the foundation of our core – the animating life force that is who we all are. Once we make that discovery, the fork that most others take becomes the road less traveled for us.

You will find “what I will be” when you drop what you were hanging on to for dear life. Life gets simpler when we give up carrying around the backpack labeled: “What I am.”

All the best,

John

P.S. My dear friend, Jonathan Manske’s new book is now available. It’s called: The Law of Attraction Made Simple:  Magnetize your Heartfelt Desires. Jonathan provided me with the manuscript months ago and it’s a wonderful book where you get to discover more about you. Order online at http://jonathanmanske.com