Street entertainer in London, doing his tricks, trying to pick up as many bricks as his arms allowed, and let me tell you, that day he really worked hard for his money.

Do you not feel like sometimes you are a street entertainer?

That you are trying all the tricks in the world to get through the day?

Perhaps just like the entertainer you keep on picking up more “bricks”, more tasks, more of other people’s problems, secrets, views, energies, moods.

And the more you take on, the more you feel how your arms are not large enough, that your shoulders do not feel wide enough, that the burden is too much? And then all of a sudden you feel lost.

A few years ago, I saw an activity on a site; the activity asked for us to either create a picture of what would represent us, or stand in front of a mirror, then take post-it notes and put individual words on them to describe all the negative words that either we say to ourselves or others say about us, and stick each of those on the picture and on the mirror in a way that you can read them all, then stand back and observe what it is you see. Well, can you see yourself from all those labels? Perhaps not! This is what happens when we take on all that we are being told from others, when we take on that which is not ours, we slowly disappear from the picture just to be replaced by this bunch of words describing us not in a good way.

For many of us, of course, those negative labels are what creates our reality. And if we have that reality day in and day out, the real us can never be revealed, until we take each of those negatives and we can transform them into positives.

So, if you do complete this task with all the negatives, then try to get one post-it note at a time and try to find how the opposite of that is true about yourself. And for each positive opposite that you can find, take one label down. For every negative that you have evidence to the contrary, take a label off and see how many remain in place. And perhaps you can try and do the similar activity and see how many tasks or “burdens” you take on which are not yours, and see how many can you ditch.

We all had to stretch further than our arms, carry loads that are heavier than us, and yet we have managed.

Just like the street performer we are experts at juggling, at picking up bricks and entertain, the choice is then whether we are happy to do all that, or change our lived experience.

The choice is always yours to make.

As always join in the conversation in a comment, or journal your thoughts. We are ready to evolve, join us on the journey of discovery.