Take a look at the core of everything I share.

It’s been a big week. I’m in the process of refining what I share with you and part of that process has involved me asking myself a lot of questions. Some of which are: who exactly am I trying to reach with what I’m sharing, and what was it that inspired me to start sharing in the first place?

All of these questions got me to look back at my own journey.

As I looked back at the last 3 years of my life, I realised a lot has changed for me. Two areas of my life have undergone significant change. My creativity and my relationships with others.

In this episode I share the journey leading up to the realisation which compelled me to start B is for Being and take a look at why it’s at the core of everything I share.

Buckle up, it’s story time!

Highlights and Takeaways

* I was creatively blocked.

* I felt insecure in my relationships with other people (friends, family and partners) and never felt like I could just relax and be myself.

* I was having a hard time in a relationship I was in and went search for answers on how to stop feeling so bad.

* Self-awareness and acceptance was the main theme of all the self-help books I read.

* Fear-bound energy (fearful thoughts and feelings) can be cleared with self-awareness and acceptance.

* Our authentic state of being is always there. And it’s always been there.

* The combination of self-awareness and acceptance, present moment awareness, and a compassionate self relationship form a powerful tool for self-transformation.

Show Notes

Creativity and Relationships

* Ben: I could feel this desire to create and express myself. At the time I was doing a lot of video projects, writing short stories and film scripts - but all of these projects I’d quickly lose interest in or find myself procrastinating about working on them and never get anything done. So I ended up with hundreds of unfinished projects.

* There were some times when I would get lucky and feel really inspired and sit down for one or two days and produce a video or even a song. But that didn’t happen so often. I was often waiting to feel that inspiration instead of working on a project progressively until it was finished.

* I wasn’t having such a flowing time with my relationships with other people. So my friendships, my interactions with family, my interactions with partners. This isn’t to say that these interactions were all bad and horrible, we still had great times, but I never felt like I could completely relax around others. And that might sound strange to some people who know me because on the outside I seem very relaxed and calm and chilled out. But on the inside I was always alert and watching what I said and did. I made sure I always had something interesting to say or that I was trying to be funny or crazy. And for me this felt like a necessity, like I always had to keep proving that I was interesting and likeable and intriguing for those around me to stay friends with me. And I even had the thought that people were just hanging around me because once upon a time they’d seen something interesting in me, but it was kind of an accident; like they’d seen me do something when I was having a really good day and then they thought, “awwh, Ben’s this really cool guy, he does those things.” I thought it’s only a matter of time before they discover how un-interesting I was. So I felt this pressure to be someone I wasn’t in order to maintain that connection with the person.

* Obviously all of this insecurity is going to be compounded in my intimate relationships. I was really fearing that the person I was with would uncover this complete mundaneness, this complete uninteresting part of me that I thought was the default me.