I like my eggs scrambled with cottage cheese and served with toast, or scrambled with spinach and wrapped up in a corn tortilla with hot sauce.

My boyfriend likes his eggs mixed up with milk, and then fried flat, like a pancake, until the edges turn brown and crispy.

Have you ever stopped to examine the little things you do in your life, like the food you prepare and eat, the clothing or accessories you wear, how you decorate your house, or why you use Comet to clean your sink instead of Soft Scrub?

Are all these little pieces of our lives really our own, or did we pick them up unconsciously from our parents, friends, lovers, the media? Really stop and think about it for a minute. Let's start with eggs. How do you like your eggs? Do you really like them that way, or do you just eat them that way because that's how you've always done it, or that's how your lover or kids like them?

This simple little exercise can tell you a lot about yourself. Do you really know yourself from the inside? Or are you mirroring someone else's preferences and just unconsciously adapted them as your own?

I just watched the Julia Roberts movie Runaway Bride. The story is about a woman who has found herself walking down the isle towards marriage with three very different men, and with each partner, she's adjusted her life to fit theirs, including the music she listens to and the way she eats her eggs. But just before she reaches the alter, she bolts from her own wedding, running for her life, some deep instinct waking up in her at the last minute. She finally hears her authentic voice as she runs for the hills.

Choosing to live authentically by my own light has been a journey of epic proportions. Starting back in 2009 when I filed for bankruptcy, it was the first step in clearing out all the garbage I'd accumulated mentally and emotionally, not to mention physically.

Painful, upsetting, unbalancing, declaring bankruptcy ripped away all thought I knew about myself. It was the tsunami of clearing and letting go, taking me to my knees in surrender. I no longer knew who I was or where I was going, what my truth was. For so long I had lived by other peoples' light, by their ideas of who I was and what I was supposed to do and be and say and act. And I was great at it. I played the part so perfectly I no longer could see I had lost my way and stopped following my heart. I had lost all sense of my authentic self. I had to clear it all away before I could start bringing the pieces of my life back together again.

It's like when one suspects one is allergic to something, but you don't know what. You have to clear all suspected allergens from your life and one by one, reintroduce them to see what is triggering the allergic reaction.

Being this conscious of how your body reacts is the most important part of healing and recovering your authentic voice. You must pay attention to every little nuance and ask yourself whether it feels good or not!!

Because of this conscious awareness, when you reintroduce something that doesn't feel good, you can choose to no longer eat that food or engage in that behavior,and so through this process navigate through all the programming from childhood. You begin to recognize you've been doing an activity because it makes someone else happy, keeps the peace, or avoids conflict.

It feels much more fun and playful to live by your authentic light. So what if I'm a punk rocker who likes to listen to Windham Hill new age music? That is part of me but I covered it up because it was met with judgement by the circles of people I was trying to fit in with.

As I approach my 50th birthday, I truly desire to live life by my own light; enjoying the experiences that touch my soul and enhance my life. I practice speaking my truth now with kindness and love directed towards myself, so I feel safe when what I want doesn't mesh with someone else's agenda.

Trust me, everyone has an agenda. We're human, and we're going to get our needs met one way or the other. The path to happiness is to become aware of that fact, and then act accordingly. Do your wants, needs, and likes get the same attention as you give to your loved ones? If not, speak up!

If it doesn't feel safe to speak your truth and shine your own light, maybe that's the answer to your prayers. Maybe that's how you're being guided to change the circumstances; to leave that job, talk honestly with your partner, boss or family, or take the risk of following your heart and studying literature instead of science. Become clear about who you are and what you like and life will open up. I guarantee it! After all, I am living proof!

Being honest with ourselves is probably one of the hardest things for humans. There's always reasons and excuses about why we can't move forward, why we are stuck, why we can't do and achieve the things we long to do.

But the truth is, we create those limits for ourselves. I often hear clients say, "I'd do this BUT, I don't have enough time, money, help, experience...".Blah blah blah....insert whatever excuse you want here. But the truth really is that you've created a block to not take a step forward. No one else does that to you, you do it to yourself. You have no one else to blame but yourself for the place you're at right now.

Now I'm not trying to be mean here or judge you or critique you. I'm simply stating a fact. And I know this because I do it to myself all the time, but am only just now starting to see the repercussions in my own life. 

I discovered this quite by accident. I've been doing alot of work on getting honest with myself about my self-made limiting beliefs of what I can and can't do. I've really worked hard to be truthful with myself about where I place limits on what I can have and create in my life. I have been stuck in this cycle of lack for a long long time, but every time I think I've finally healed, and moved past it, something would smack me upside the head, and I'd be right back in that limiting place: I'm not good enough, I'm not smart enough, I'm not creative enough, my boyfriend and family won't let me do this, I don't have enough experience, education, resources....blah blah blah! ARRRGGGHHHH!!!! When will it stop!? I'm so done with these limiting beliefs! I want to shine and thrive!!

Recently, some friends hired me to redesign their backyard for them. I'm thrilled-it's exactly the type of garden work I love! They want a backyard that is filled with native, water-wise plants that attract birds, butterflies, beneficial insects, hummingbirds and all God's wonderful creatures. This is the sort of gardening that I wish everyone would do! Of course I told them yes, I can help them. I went to their garden to  see what I had to work with, and I was so excited. There was so much potential there, once the overgrown foliage had been cleared out!

 I didn't have to do the work; they already had someone to do the labor.
All I had to do was come up with the design and plant list! However, I could feel the fear start to creep in as I spoke with them, and I started looking at all the excuses that were popping up in my mind about why I shouldn't take this job: I never got my landscape architect degree, I don't have the experience or skills to create what they want, I don't have the resources to put in the hard-scape, it's gonna be really expensive and maybe they won't have the budget to pull off this job....blah blah blah! I could see they were starting to get frustrated with me, and I was starting to get frustrated with myself.

I left their house petrified out of my mind. Oh my God, I can't do this! What was I thinking!!?? This is an enormous job, and there's no way I can pull this off. I better call and tell them to find someone else....wham! There were those limits and excuses, again, hitting me square in the face.

I was so tired when I got home, all I could do was go sit in a sea-salt bath and pray for guidance. I could see the limits in my space, but wasn't sure how to move past them. I went to bed and decided I'd look at these pictures again when I woke up.

I woke up with an answer about what was going on. Yes, I had done a tremendous amount of work, clearing my own fears, limits and insecurities. But because I was so used to limiting myself, I put my pictures of lack and limit in the energetic fields of the people around me. So that when I started to move past my own limits, I'd bump into them again, reflected back to me from the people I loved! Those weren't their beliefs, those were mine!! And so the cycle would start over again. Of course I could never get away from these limits because I was constantly bumping into them outside of my space, thinking they were what other people thought of me and my skills, when in fact it was my own beliefs. I created my own prison.

Are you starting to get the picture here? We create our own self-fulfilling experiences of failure and lack by unconsciously giving other people the power, thinking it's their judgements when in fact, it's really our own, put outside of our consciousness, to reflect back to us when we start to move beyond our comfort zone of what we think we can have or do or be.

We assume our loved ones won't let us fly, when the truth is, it's our own fears and insecurities limiting us. We simply don't own it for ourselves because that kind of truth is pretty hard to swallow.

Think back on the last time you really just went for it and didn't worry about what you thought you could do, or not do. When you totally trusted yourself and your inner knowing. For me, there's two distinct time periods that pop into my mind: when I was 11 and when I was 18.

At 11 years old, I was a strange kid. I admit it! I totally marched to the beat of my own drummer and didn't think twice about what anyone else around me thought or did. I fully listened to my inner voice and followed my creative ideals. I was obsessed with the Little House on the Prairie
books, and got my mom to make me a pinafore and sunbonnet set, which I wore to school all the time. I still remember my teacher, Mr. Ricci, looking at me like I was nuts, but I was so certain about what I wanted to do, I didn't worry about it. I took my sunbonnet off, and hung it up on the hook every day, just like Laura Ingalls Wilder. I remember my mom and brothers and sisters begging me to not wear that stupid sunbonnet everywhere I went, but I didn't listen to them. It made me happy and that was all that mattered! Eventually, I grew out of that phase, but I still remember how much pleasure it brought me to totally trust myself and what I wanted and to do it with totally faith and confidence!

When I was 18, it was a very similar thing. I had some deep strong inner knowing that I was powerful beyond belief, and I could make a difference in the world. I started a recycling program at the high school (this was way before it was an accepted thing) and put recycle boxes I had made in every class room. I went around once a week and collected the recycling and regularly shared with students and teachers what could and could not be put in those boxes! People thought I was nuts, but they humored me and started recycling.

I became vegetarian, long before it was an accepted practice, and of course my family and friends were stunned and totally didn't understand me at all! But it didn't matter, I knew it was what I needed to do for myself, and I didn't cave into the pressure around me. Eventually I stopped being vegetarian, guided by my body as to what I needed, and I didn't question it. I entered college that fall and took graduate level classes because they interested me, not caring that my advisor said the classes were too advanced for me. I excelled at them because it was what I wanted to do! That summer, I became the head dinner cook at a field station in Eastern Oregon, Malheur Field Station, planning all the menus, doing all the shopping and doing all the cooking, sometimes for up to 200 people. It never occurred to me I couldn't do it. I had such a strong inner knowing and confidence I just figured it out and I loved it!

I don't know why that confidence went away, why I started limiting myself and my abilities. It doesn't really matter. It's taken me 30 years to finally realize that I've created this prison of limiting beliefs for myself by expecting eveyone around me to hold those same limiting beliefs. And now that I've finally gotten to the truth for myself, I am ready to move past these excuses and step into my power.

Yes, I am fully capable of creating miracles and joy and abundance and wonderful new opportunities to grow and expand my life. I own the truth that I created the excuses to limit myself, and now I'm owning that I can destroy those limits. I'm ready to fly high. And so can you.