I get discouraged some days.

There, I’ve said it. I get discouraged.

I look at the world, I encounter a situation that doesn’t make sense, a remark that hits a nerve or triggers a memory and I feel the ennui of discouragement settle around me like a woolly blanket on a winter’s night. Except, discouragement isn’t comforting.

It makes me feel…. sad.

Colour me optimistic. Colour me naive. But I do believe peace is possible.

Not the peace of the world kind. But rather, the peace within that radiates out into the world creating ripples of harmony everywhere it flows.

Last night at our Centre for Conscious Living meeting — we are four people setting the framework for the centre which we believe can impact how we express our magnificence in the world — we talked about what is the impact we want to make. How many people do we want to touch. We had agreed at the beginning of our meetings that the number was ‘millions’. But the question came up — what does that look like.

Well… said one of the group. In practical terms, one in a thousand. 1 in a thousand sounds manageable we all agreed. Not too pie in the sky. Not too out there we’d never even get to the sky above us. Someone quickly extrapolated the number into a quantifiable amount. That’s 700 million people. Oh. Cool.

and then, we did the math again.

Oops. 7 million people.

And I laughed.

Because seriously, 700 or 7 million — the point isn’t to count the number reached. The objective, in this emergent alliance of co-creative leadership, is to put into action, the possibility, the probability, the absolute necessity of moving forward. Of taking action. Of doing what we believe we can/must to create a world of change all around. A world where people see, feel, know they are not the adaptive being they became in order to fit into the world as they viewed it, but rather, the magnificent essence of the self they were born into this world to be — because they already are, this magnificent being.

This is who we are all born as — not ‘to be’ — but as.

Call me Pollyanna, but I’d rather believe it is possible to create a world of magnificence than to live believing there is no magnificence to awaken in anyone.

We are all magnificent. It’s just that in the journey of our lifetimes, we have adapted our thinking about who we are to accept how we are in the world today as being ‘okay’, or all that we can be.

Shaking up the status quo doesn’t come easily to we humans. We like to protect and preserve our beliefs. And some of our shakiest ones are the ones we tell ourselves about what we can or can’t do about ourselves in this world of wonder. Some of our cruellest beliefs are the ones we hold onto about ourselves. And in our desire to not let go of our limiting beliefs about ourselves, we will go to great lengths to hold onto the impossibilities of change that keep us playing small.

We are all magnificent.

I know this. It is not a belief, or a dream. It is a truth I know about our human being.

We are magnificent, and the rest is just stuff.

It is that simple. We are born to be great — and whatever else we are doing is just stuff. Stuff to keep us playing small. Stuff to make us think we don’t have to shine.

We are all magnificent.

We are all born to shine.

I awoke feeling a bit discouraged this morning. Frustrated that others couldn’t see the wonder and beauty I see in them.

They don’t have to — until they do.

In the meantime, I must continue to do what I do to shine, to radiate, to light up the path so that 700 million people will be touched by the truth that is our birthright. We are all magnificent. And all the acting out in the world will never diminish or extinguish that truth.