When you decide it's time for you to be seen

When you decide it's time for you to be seen, you will be seen. Are you ready?

The act of deciding changes everything. You have chosen to take a step.

A clear decision to be seen will help you head confidently to the place where you get to decide again, and then make another decision after that. It depends on how you want to be seen.

If you want to create a successful career, you must choose to be seen in your work. If you want your business to be seen, you have to make it attractive and visible so that people can find you. If you want people to read your writing or see your art, share it and invite them. Start a conversation, say hello.

Being seen means that you are now out in the open, and that can feel a little scary.

Especially if you are a sensitive or shy person, handling attention, whether positive or not, can feel uncomfortable. This may be why you sometimes hold back from stepping up and being seen, why you've been waiting.

Sitting on the fence waiting will just get you more of the same, repeatedly. Excuses won't work here, because you'll know that you are making them.

If you're getting stuck holding back, nothing changes and nothing grows, including you.

If you want to grow, say yes to growth.

Decide to say yes. Then say yes again, and start to listen for that little voice of resistance, that 'no'. When you hear it, know that you are succeeding, because now you've reached the edge of your comfort zone.

This is where real growth can begin, beyond your previous limits. Smile, give yourself a pep talk, and keep going. You're doing great.

Sometimes people stop themselves from taking a step forward because they feel incomplete, uncertain, or flawed. They are waiting for everything to be perfect before taking that step to free themselves. They are hiding because they're insecure about being seen as they are, now.

The problem with this is that they may never feel 'ready' or 'perfect'.

There's always something else to improve, for all of us. If you want to be seen, decide to show up. You give your gifts to all of us when you trust yourself enough to do this.

Being seen requires that you let go of what you're holding onto that keeps you in the shadows, and in the past. Being seen is a present time activity.

It can be painful to let go of what was, even if it wasn't the happiest experience for you.

This means that if you want to let go of unhappy energies, you get to learn how to let them go. Get creative: why not have an 'Emotional Baggage Garage Sale'? Everything must go, for sale cheap!

If you've been holding onto tough energies, learn some techniques that can help you to safely release emotionally stressful energies, or anything else that hinders you from embracing growth and expansion.

Commit to this and create a daily practice for yourself; meditate, write in a journal, do yoga, go for walks in nature. Give to yourself so that you have more permission and space to grow and be seen.

Many people are looking for permission to shine at being who they are, doing what they want to do. Performers, musicians, entrepreneurs, and artists of all kinds have a similar mantra: 'I want to be a star'.

You can start by becoming the star of your own life.

This theme is illustrated beautifully in the book 'Undercover', by Beth Kephart. The heroine narrates the story, which follows her adventures as she is pursued by a number of young men in her high school, not because they want to romance her, but because she can write the magical verses that win for them the young women they are romancing.

She is the school’s Cyrano, at the expense of her own happiness. There is the point in the story where she decides to have more:

"But the greatest tragedy of all is letting invisibility win. It’s choosing to give up the thing you want because you think you don’t deserve it." -Undercover by Beth Kephart

It's always the best part of the story, when the heroine changes like this. What was once good enough, no longer works. She has decided it's her turn, and the only way she'll experience that and make it real is to step up and be seen.

How about you, are you ready? Why not embrace it now, and have a say in how it happens? What is the change you’d like to become?

• ©Kris Cahill
  'Pink Plant' ©George Hodan on PublicDomainPictures.net