Scratch That!

Did I say I wanted to outdo myself in that last post? NO!!!!!! Delete, delete, delete! Granted, that is basically what I have been doing for 49 years now (as of next Tuesday… hint, hint), but enough is enough! Don’t you think? So this is a new one for me. I’m trying to turn over a new leaf here. That was a slip of the tongue. What can I say, old habits die hard.

What I meant to say was that I want to outbe myself. Being the greatest version of myself has little, if anything, to do with doing. It has nothing to do with accomplishments. It has nothing to do with achieving. Been there, done that. Not that I regret a moment of it. I think we kind of have to expend ourselves in order to fully realize our selves. Not to mention, truth be told, it’s been fun!

Seems we spend much of our lives working hard to lock in our identities. It’s a deeply human survival technique. You want to know who I am? Check the records. I’m legit. The records say so. Just look at my credentials. I have so many initials after my name that I have had to edit them! Ridiculous. You want to know what my records will show you? That I am a hopeless overachiever!

You want to know who I am? For that, you’ll have to get to know me. As in personally… through relationship. Now as you may have caught on by now, I am not easy to get to know. You’ve got to have some serious special agent tactical skills to navigate my defense mechanisms. I mean, come on, I AM an architect. I’ve got a well-designed (misguided as it may be) fortress inside! Expect a few bumps and bruises along the way.

Not that I am discouraging you. But how about this instead? How about I just make it easy on you? How about I just come out to play? That leads me to the first half of my new favorite word: outbe. In essence, outbeing is like coming out of the closet. Only in this case it’s a fortress, not a closet. Hello World, here I am! Here I am in all of my messy humanity. That’s the out part.

The be part is, well, gargantuan. That’s because when we really start to look at it, there is truly no limit to being. Oh sure, we draw boundaries around our being left, right, and center. But we are just making them up. When I say I want to be a better version of myself, what I am really saying is that I want to let down some of my arbitrary boundaries so that I can live into the much bigger Being that I Am. Put the two together, outbe, and what I am suggesting is stepping out into the light, outside of old, tired boundaries that no longer serve.

Go for it! I double dog dare you! Outbe yourself.