Written by: Antonie Ziegler, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
Choose yourself, and everybody else is taken. The secret to change lies within you. Rather than asking why sh** happens to you repeatedly, connect with what you truly want in life.
Are you struggling with yourself?
Are you feeling guilty about wasting your time not doing what you think you should be doing? But then you don't know what you should do or how.
"The secret of change is to focus all your energy not on fighting the old but on building the New." –Socrates
You can choose to stay in the same old rut or step out of it and live up to your dreams. The choice is yours.
The clients I work with in my transformational coaching and shamanic practice want to change their lives for the better so badly. But at the same time, they don't trust themselves that they can change. There's this fear of not knowing what will happen once they change. They don't know how and what to change.
There's always a "Why is this happening to me?", "How can I change?" or "But what if it doesn't work?".
Isn't this something we all experience?
We have all the insights and understand the energetics behind the issues we're struggling with. But then we doubt ourselves and ask all these questions that put us right back into the old seat of who we think we are.
Parable of an eagle that thought it was a chicken
This eagle was rescued as a baby bird by a farmer and put in the chicken coop with the other hens. The eagle grew up believing that it was a chicken.
One day a wildlife expert came by and discovered the eagle out on the pasture with all the chickens. It was scratching and pecking for food, just like the other chickens.
The expert talked to the farmer, wondering whether he was aware that he had an eagle with his hens. The farmer agreed but told him that he made the eagle grow up like a chicken and left it at that.
The wildlife expert talked to the eagle, picked him up and asked him to fly. The eagle flew to the rooftop of the chicken hen, looked around, and returned to his pals on the pasture.
The wildlife expert didn't give up as he knew that deep in his heart, the eagle would remember that he was meant to be an eagle and not a chicken. The next day, the expert returned to the farm and asked the farmer if he would allow him to show that the eagle is born to be a great bird flying in the sky and doesn't belong on the ground.
The three of them walked out to the countryside near a mountain. The wildlife expert picked up the eagle and asked him to stretch his wings and fly. This time the eagle looked around and saw the wide open space and the sky above him. The eagle stretched its wings, trying them out, and felt their wide span the wide span of them. It looked up, and with a leap of faith, it flew, higher and higher.
Learning moment
The wildlife expert believed in the eagle, and the eagle took the courage to jump, trusting that its wings will carry it. The eagle eventually chose to be what it was meant to be all along, an eagle, free, soaring up high.
This parable speaks to our dilemma of believing the stories that make us who we think we are. We believe that they are true. We think that the circumstances we're born into make us who we are.
Is that so?
What if I told you that you can be who you want to be no matter your life's circumstances, the repeating stories, and the beliefs you have about yourself?
My story of choosing Me
When I started on my transformational path 7 years ago, I believed I was all alone and didn't belong. I felt like a victim of my life's circumstances and couldn't get my head around it. Stuck, sad, and didn't see a way out. I thought I'll never get what I wanted.
Did I even know what I wanted? Not really.
I knew what I didn't want – living a life where I felt miserable and alone. In the outer life, I had everything I ever asked for – a loving, and caring husband, children, a beautiful home and property – abundance in many ways. But inside I felt restless, irritated, sad, and even angry.
I kept asking myself the same questions that my clients ask.
Why do I keep feeling excluded from the fun?
How can I change feeling so miserable?
What if no one gets me?
I know now that these questions kept me stuck in my old stories and beliefs. I had to learn to ask myself what I wanted in life. And what I yearn for is joy, fun, laughter, and connections. By connecting to my heart, from a place of love and care for myself, I got in touch with my deepest desires.
I discovered how I self-sabotaged my way of being as I couldn't stop listening to my old and negative thoughts and beliefs. I held myself back from what I wanted in life.
Connected to my deepest desires, I changed the belief about myself that I didn't belong to “I'm lovable and so much fun to be around with”. Every morning before I get up I connect with this new belief. I make sure it's alive within me, and I decide what kind of fun I can create on this new day.
It's not always comfortable to connect with this new ME. If it was up to my inner saboteur, I would just snooze a little longer, and get out of bed in a less than great mood. My day would drag along, and I'd just confirm to myself again that there's no fun out there for me.
Instead, I choose how I show up, every day, every moment. I choose me, the one who wants to feel alive, joyful, and get things done.
I invite you to choose YOU!
Three distinctive steps to becoming who you want to be
Below are the steps that support you in changing your life from the inside out.
1. Connect with your biggest dreams. What is it that you want for yourself? What are you yearning for? Get clear about the vision you have for yourself, and make sure it takes you out of your comfort zone.
2. Envision your desire. Feel it, imagine telling your best friends about it. Make it real. Write it down as if you've achieved it already. Read your statement out loud, several times. Connect with your vision with all your senses.
3. Build new behavior. Write down how you can show up differently, every day. Build new behaviors, one by one, and make them a habit.
Take small steps every day. They will make a big difference in the process of becoming the best version of yourself. Trust yourself. Remember the eagle that took the courage to jump, trusting that its wings will carry it.
It's never too late to be who you are. Deep inside yourself, you know who you are. And connecting to your heart will guide you along the way. Intuition and knowing what steps to take will come automatically. Trust yourself and the process.
My invitation to you
Instead of staying in the same rut, same old stories, self-sabotaging yourself with this negative mind chatter of yours, I encourage you to choose YOU.
You might want to start with the first step, connecting with your wants. Ask yourself what you want in life, what you'd love to experience, and create. Connect with your heart every day for the next 10 days. Write down whatever comes up. Don't question it even though it makes no sense to you. Your heart will tell you what's true.
If you're done with the negative mind chatter and want to make a shift towards a life that is more than just fine and become the person you desire to be, send me an email to antonie.ziegler@gmail.com, and let's get you into an effortless flow of balance, joy, and connection.
Antonie Ziegler, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Antonie is a dedicated and certified deep dive transformational coach and shamanic energy medicine practitioner. She is committed to become the change she wishes to see in the world: happy, healthy and thriving. Having spent almost her whole life attempting to run, avoid and hide from the pain of her childhood, she dived deep into her own personal development and climbed out of her misery through what she now calls her “Cut Looze Formula”.
Antonie is passionate about helping others to heal and become the best version of themselves.
