 If somebody stops quote unquote loving you because you have grown into a better version of yourself, you've brought out more potential because you've stopped playing small because you've stopped dimming your flame and you've put your light as bright as you possibly could. If they stop quote unquote loving you, they never loved you in the first place. Today we're going to be talking about how to stop playing small. I love this because there's so many people that send me messages asking me, how do I stop playing small? And a lot of people that I tend to find is they tend to dim their flame simply because they're afraid. And I'm going to talk about what they're afraid of. They're afraid of a few different things. For those of you guys that are down in Australia, all my Aussie friends, I know that it's called the tall poppy syndrome where, you know, if you look at a field of poppies and there happens to be one little poppy that sticks up, you're supposed to cut it down. So when people tend to come out and talk about, you know, how amazing they're doing or how well they're doing, society tends to cut them down in, you know, Australia, but it happens everywhere. And so it's called tall poppy syndrome. And another way of thinking of it is if you've never heard of tall poppy syndrome because before I started having people in Australia that followed me and started talking to me about it is, you know, just the fact that people will become haters, they'll be cut down when they're starting to live an extraordinary life. Right. Just just because they're starting to do something amazing, people start talking trash about them. I don't know why it is. We're going to talk about a lot of different reasons, but we're going to talk about how you need to stop playing small and how to actually stop playing small. How to fully step into your true potential, fully step into who you could possibly be. And you know, it could be a tribal thing more than anything else. If you think about the fact that 100,000, 200,000 years ago, we were tribal beings. Our ancestors had to rely on the tribe in order to survive. So anybody that didn't fit in with the tribe or did what the tribe didn't want them to do could be exiled. And if you're exiled from the tribe, you're going to die. And the easy way to think of this is that the brightest, brightest light gets the arrows. And so we have this fear of like if I am the one that stands out from everybody else. If I don't fit into the box, if I feel and show that I am different, maybe I'll get all of the arrows. Maybe I won't be accepted. Maybe I'll be kicked out. Maybe my family will stop loving me. Maybe my girlfriend will stop loving. Maybe my husband will leave me. But in reality, those are just fears that tend to come up and majority of the time, what I tend to find when people do step into their true potential is that nobody leaves them. Nobody stops loving them. They're just a bunch of ridiculous fears that they've brought unto themselves that actually never come to fruition. But some people dim their light and dim their flame and don't live to their true potential. They start playing small simply because they're afraid of losing people and that never actually truly happens when they do, if they do, step into their true potential. They're worried about offending others. They're worried about, you know, alienating people that they grew up with, alienating people that were there that supported them along the way, alienating people that love them along the way. It's so crazy how often people don't step into their true potential because they're afraid that the people who love them are going to stop loving them. Some people don't want to make money, make more money than everybody else around them because they think that their family is going to leave them. And I'm curious, does this strike a chord with you in some sort of way? Is there a fear inside of you that if you were to step into your true potential, if you were to become the version of yourself that you know that you have that maybe people wouldn't love you anymore because you're thinking to yourself, well, they love this version of me. They don't love that version of me. I don't know if they love that version of me. And so, you know, and you're quote unquote safe in this current moment, knowing that they love you as you are. But if you were to change, oh my God, what if my family exiles me? What if my wife leaves me? What if my boyfriend decides to break up with me? What would I do if that happened? And I'm going to tell you this, if somebody stops quote unquote loving you because you have grown into a better version of yourself, you've brought out more potential because you've stopped playing small because you've stopped dimming your flame and you've put your light as bright as you possibly could. If they stop quote unquote loving you, they never loved you in the first place. They didn't. It's the truth. Love is not supposed to be conditional. Conditional means I only love you when you act this way. I don't love you if you act that way. That's conditional love. So it's not true love. So if somebody did leave somebody because they decided to live to their true potential and start living their dream, did they ever love them in the first place? No. And the beautiful thing, if that happens, which believe me, it's very, very, very, very rare that this happens. They show their true colors to you. You should be grateful for that. But people are worried about offending people. They're worried about alienating people. They're worried about being made fun of. They're worried about other people's opinions. You know, I teach coaches how to grow coaching businesses. I teach them for years how to do it because I was able to grow a successful coaching business. So now I teach people how to do the same. It's crazy to me how many people come into that course and want to start learning for me that are afraid to post on Instagram that they're a coach, or a life coach, or a fitness coach, or a mindset coach, or a wellness coach, or a financial coach simply because they're worried about what their coworkers might think of them. What Stacy and accounting might think of them. What their high school friends might think of them. What their mom might think of them. And they're just worried about other people's opinions. They're worried about making other people feel insecure. If I were to become rich, would I make everybody that I love feel insecure? If I were to make more money than I ever have, if I were to become wealthy, if I were to become a movie star, if I were to become the most successful author that's ever been, will I make everybody around me feel small? Well, then I'll just continue to feel small so that I don't make them feel bad about themselves. That's what people think. So what do they do? They stay in a box forever. Hey, you know what? I'd rather play small than lose the people I love is what they think. Consciously or subconsciously, I'd rather play small than offend people. I'd rather play small than people throw their opinions at me. I'd rather play small because I know that's okay. I know that people around me are here because I don't know what's going to happen if I were to bring out my full potential. So they live in this box and they're never truly satisfied with their life. In fact, they tend to hate their life because they know that there's so much potential for them. They know that there's so much more that they could do, but they're afraid so they don't do it. So they put themselves into a box and they always feel like something's wrong. They always feel like their life isn't right. They always feel like there's more that they could bring out to the world. They're truly satisfied and they have this build up of energy that they just can't seem to get out and release. Curious, have you ever felt that way before? Do you feel that way now? What's the truth? Because you can stay there if you want. It's your prerogative to stay there, but you also have to realize, if you want to get out of it, you are the only one that can get yourself out of it as well. So then they live their life far beyond their true potential or far below their true potential. And they never get to where they want to go. This fear is not being loved, being alienated, being kicked out of the tribe. And they know that in my comfort zone where I currently am, I am quote unquote loved. I'm not alienated. I'm in the tribe. But if I were to leave this, would I be tribe? Would I still be in the tribe? Would they let me be here anymore? Once again, if someone stops loving you, they didn't love you in the first place. So the real question I have for you, if you're listening to this and this is hitting home in some sort of way, is what do you want? That's the first thing to figure out. What do you want? Do you truly even know what you want? First off, do you know what you want to make your life? Because it's time to get very clear on that before you do anything else. It's time to get very clear on the life that you want to create. Now when you look at it and you can become very clear on what it is that you want to create, now we've got to figure out what does it require of you to make that happen? What does it require of you? Maybe it requires you to step out, start that business, to wake up earlier, start posting on Instagram. I don't know. What does it require of you? Is it important to you to bring that out to the world, though? Because nothing's sadder than someone who doesn't live up to their true potential. There's so many fears in this world. Fear of being not loved, fear of being alienated, fear of rejection, the fear of failure, the fear of not being good enough, not being good of mother, father, not being able to bribe for your family. But you know what the biggest fear should be for people? It's not living up to your true potential. Getting to the end of your life, being on your death bed and going, it wasn't enough. It was a waste. There was so much more that I could have done. There's so many more people that I could have helped. I lived far below my true potential. I can't imagine the pain that it must feel like to get to your death bed and realize that you didn't do it like you could have. In the Five Regrets of the Dying, which is a book, the lady who wrote the book is a hospice nurse, which is people who are on their death beds. She said the number one regret of people who are dying is that I wish I lived a life that was true to myself and not the life that others expected of me. Let me say that again. Let me let this get hit home. The number one regret of people who are on their death beds, they know they are going to die, is that I wish I lived a life that was true to myself and not the life that others expected of me. Are you living a life that others expected of you? Are you not bringing out your true potential to the world simply because you're afraid that you might offend other people? That you might make other people feel small? Because you can live that way if you want to. Or you can get to the end of your life and possibly regret. But what you have to do is you have to step out into the unknown. There is nothing else that you can do. Anytime you want to do something great at some point in your life, you're going to have to step out into the unknown. The unknown of will I be accepted? Will people love me? Will I be exiled? Will I be kicked out of the tribe? There's no other option. You've got to step out into the unknown. There is nothing else that you could do. Either you stay where you are or you step out into the unknown. What's interesting about everyone's biggest fear is that it pretty much almost never happens. That's what it's so crazy about. I see this so many times because I've taken so many people through transformation. And what it really is is it's the subconscious trying to keep you in your comfort zone. So it makes up all of these fears of being exiled, people not loving you, of giving you all of these fears and these excuses to why now is not the right time. Oh, yeah. What if, you know, it starts to cut you down and you get a whole bunch of haters? What's interesting about it is that your biggest fear of not being loved, of not being accepted will probably never happen if that's the thing that's holding you back. Here's what's really interesting. You start stepping out into the unknown and you start doing what's inspiring to you. You start doing what feels right. It might not intellectually, you might not intellectually think that it's right, but it just feels right, something about it feels right. What happens is instead of being exiled, people want to be around you more. You're gravitating to them. So you're such a bright light that instead of the bright light getting the arrows, you're like everyone around you is like moths to a flame. They're attracted to you. There's something about you that's different than everybody else and you bring something out of me that nobody else can bring out of me. You inspire me. You make me feel better. You make me excited about the future. You want me, you make me feel like I want to grow and that people love us. They love us more. They want to be around us because there's something different about you. There's something different inside of you and you light people up. Your energy will light people up. You become the lighthouse. So many people send me emails and they're like, Hey, I'm on this journey of personal development and I love it. I'm reading books. I'm listening to your podcast. I'm starting to go to conferences. I'm investing in courses. But my husband isn't really on the same page. How do I make them get into personal development? I get this no joke all the time. People always ask that because you weren't in a personal development when you married them. So they're probably not in a personal development. Then you get into personal development but they're still not into it. And so a lot of people want to force their loved ones into getting into personal development. They want to force their loved ones into being interested in what they're interested in. You can't force anybody to do anything. Force will cause more resistance more than anything else. So what you have to do is you have to realize that you have to be the lighthouse. You have to go, you know what? Maybe they're not on the same page as me right now. Maybe I can't change my wife. Maybe I can't change my husband. But what I can do is I can change myself. And I can be a shining example of what happens when you work on yourself. And maybe down the road they're going to ask me what I've been doing. And this happens the same thing as if you were on a weight loss journey. You decided to start losing some weight. And you look at one of your friends that just lost 40 pounds over the past year. Wouldn't you go up to them and go, hey, I'm trying to lose some weight as well. What did you do? Like it seems to be working for you. Can you give me some tips? That happens all of the time because somebody has knowledge around something that you want to get better at. And being around them and go, hey, can I be around you more often? You start to be eat better because they're eating better. You start to pick up their habits from them that help them become the way that they are. Essentially, that's what you want. That's what you want to become, right? So people start doing the same thing when they notice that you've been working on yourself. When they notice that you're starting to live up your true potential, when they notice that you're not the same as you used to be. You're not the same as everybody else around you. They go, oh my gosh, that's like a shining example and they go crazy. We think that we're not going to be loved. We think that we're going to be rejected. We think people are going to leave us when we stop playing small. When we start showing our light and really bringing out our true potential, we think that people are going to leave us. We think that people are going to love us. We think all of these things, nothing, nothing, nothing can be further from the truth. Will you get haters along the way? Yeah, sure, maybe, but a hater doesn't hate you. A hater hates themselves because I want to be like that. I want to be able to be that way, but I don't have the willpower. I can't take action. I'm not doing what I need to do. So to make myself feel better momentarily, I'm going to try to bring this person down so I can feel like I'm on a pedestal compared to this person momentarily. They don't hate you at all. So maybe you'll get a couple of haters. Whatever. That's fine. No big deal. But when you're on a path and you're so clear on what you want, you're so clear on what you need to do to get it. You're so clear on what you want. That is when you start working towards life that you want. You start getting what you want and you start inspiring the people around you as well. If you want to vastly improve the people around you's lives, you have to vastly improve your own life and become the inspiration for them. That is what the definition of a lighthouse is. So instead of trying to force people into the harbor like a tow boat would, you are doing your job. You're standing in place, standing by yourself. You are literally being the change that you want to see in the world. For the longest time I didn't understand the phrase be the change that you want to see in the world. You have to become the change that you want to see in the world and when you do that people around you start to change as well. So if you're out there and you've been playing small and you haven't been living up to your true potential, you have to step out into the unknown. You have to know that people are not going to stop loving you. You have to get rid of that fear and feel the fear and know it's going to come up. The doubt, the uncertainty, all of that's going to come out but the only way that you're going to live a life that you love is by figuring out what it is that you want and then bringing your true potential out of yourself and in turn I promise you you can inspire those around you as well. To not make the decision to step up your life and to take control of it is still a decision. You realize that, right?