Tales from Rural Maine: We are bigger than we think we are

March 30, 2016

Last year, around this time, I stood in this open-air room overlooking the Pacific Ocean in Costa Rica and I wept. I had become overheated, drained and worn out and was unable to attend my surf lesson earlier in the day. In my mind, I believed that if I couldn't make my body do every single thing I wanted to do in Costa Rica--especially take this surf lesson--then it would mean my condition had gotten the better of me and I would be a failure.

My teacher Jillian Pransky talked with me gently about how untrue this was. She said to me, "You are bigger than you think you are."

And then, we practiced.

I came home from Costa Rica and I wrote in my journal, "What if I am bigger than I think I am?"

And then, I practiced.

I practiced every day. I practiced loving and accepting myself; I practiced noticing that I am bigger on the inside; I practiced noticing that I am full of vast, untapped potential; I practiced trusting that I am full of great big beauty; I practiced knowing that I am so much more--so very much more--than my mind's most limited stories can imagine. I practiced being kind.

This year, while my beautiful friends and my teacher returned to Blue Spirit to practice together, I stayed home...to continue the work I began in January of becoming a bona fide interior firefighter. That dream (interior firefighter) seemed far away and very nearly impossible last year. It was a tiny speck on the horizon of a distant shore. I saw myself as too weak, too frightened, too tired, too old, too heavy, too small, too inadequate, too feminine, too sick to even really allow myself to fully dream of such a thing.

But then I went to Costa Rica. And I began to wonder..."What if I am *bigger* than I think I am?"

You can talk yourself into your dreams, or you can talk yourself out of them.

This weekend, I will enter my fourth month of Fire Academy training. It was hell for me from the get-go. But it's getting better. I'm getting better. I have more confidence, more self-respect, more fire! And for the first time since I began, I am not afraid. (Which is lucky, because I will be facing the biggest fire I will probably ever see in my life on Sunday.)

And it all began when I sat right there, on the far side of this open air room in Costa Rica and I listened when my teacher said, "You are bigger than you think you are."

I am bigger than I think I am. I am more capable and courageous and kind and full of light than I ever thought I could be. I am bigger than I think I am.

And so are you.

#changedbytravel