Who and What do I want to be?It's always a Me I will one day be.

Who do you want to be when you grow up?
What do you want to do?
What do you have to offer?
What makes you special?

The answer to all these questions is always You. Your purpose in life is to experience being you. If you are successful in this life, you've become adept at being You.

Successfully becoming Something or Someone happens two ways:

You accept that you are already everything you've ever wanted to become.
- You acknowledge that the answers you are seeking can all be found internally - the details are all waiting to be explored, discovered, named, reclaimed, and synthesized within the boundaries of your unique experience.
- You recognize that you're not missing anything - nothing is wrong with you except your perspective.
- You realize in a moment of sheer joy that you need not wait any longer to start being you.
- Your definition of success shifts from being a question of substance to a matter of distribution.
- You are already everything you've ever wanted to become.
- You already have the unique experience of being you to work with - the question of success becomes a matter of expression.
- How can your experience serve others?
- How many other people can you share your wisdom with?
- Your success is no longer a matter of can you, will you, what should you… You already have it, you already are it - how do you intend to share it?
- Who can benefit from what you have to share?
- Have you offered yourself to them?
- Success is now a goal that starts with your internal experience and proceeds to your external expression.
- The success of your life's purpose is directly proportional to the number of other people who are served by what you have to offer.
The second path to Success revolves around finding a label - a profession - a life that is already defined, and editing your personal experience to conform to the details of that predetermined life label.

Travelling a path to success that has been mapped and used by others can lead you straight into a trap. Many people only reach technical success --

they complete the checklist
they attain all the ingredients
and yet somehow it just doesn't all add up.

Something Is Missing

The synergy is not happening. You have obtained all the ingredients called for in the recipe, you've dumped them all in a bowl and mixed them together, you've thrown out -- or at least suppressed -- any element of yourself that is not required -- but the results aren't cooking, the dough isn't rising, the crust isn't turning a nice shade of golden brown.

Where's the fire? Where's the element of transformation?

Cooking is alchemy -- your success is only half-baked.

What's Missing?

You are.

Your energy, your creative energy, your personal divinity. Your unique power.

You are the fire and the spirit.

Some Assembly Required

Some professions -- the certifiable kind -- doctors, lawyers, etc. -- have a very specific blueprint. Some assembly required. They are highly specific paths with a roadmap. Complete the detailed checklist, move through the game, arrive at the designated finish line. Pick up your diploma. Congratulations -- here's your tiara, with adjustable tabs.

Your name is now adorned with a title, a sash announcing your worth -- this is usually the most important prize.

The Artist does not have the luxury of purchasing a map. No one can tell you how to become You with a capital Y.

The Artist's Way can not be duplicated. The path I map can be shared in great detail but ultimately it can only inspire you to travel your own.

When you become You, when you get There, you will arrive by your own road, a race no one else can run. It can be lonely, because there are no competitors.

This is why it is a waste of time to compare yourself to anyone else.

You can absorb everything -- it will always result in a unique synthesis -- You.

Give everyone the same ingredients, elements, environment -- they apply their unique creative divinity -- the resulting works are as numerous and diverse as the souls who participate.

If you feel lost, it may be because the Path you're on doesn't lead to you. If your destination mimics another's so well that it appears to be identical -- well, congratulations -- you've become someone else. You have achieved someone else's life.

What Happened?

It would be more useful at this point to consider what hasn't happened -- Your life. Your life isn't happening. Because You are not in it -- you're not energizing it, you're not powering it -- you've been off following a crowded road instead of blazing a trail.

If you are Amanda and you've worked to become Angela -- well, I hate to tell you, but isn't it obvious that Angela is so much better at being Angela than you will ever be.

Give it up now.

There's a place being held for you and you alone. It can never be awarded to anyone else. No one will ever become the Amanda that you already are.

Leave Angela to the business of being Angela and concede the race. You will never succeed at becoming someone else. Someone else's crown will never fit -- you'll be forever bobby-pinning that sucker to your bun, gluing that swimsuit to your curves just to achieve the illusion that it fits like it was made for you, holding your breath instead of breathing, and trying to run in heels.

Angela will roll out of bed with a smile on her face, put on sweatpants, and step into another day of her life, she will throw open the shades to gaze upon the crowd that has gathered beneath her window, and there you will be, sucking in your gut and standing on her lawn, half of your hands spent balancing her crown; and both you and the legions of Angela-fans will look up above you and see Angela without a stitch of makeup, sporting those endearing dimples she was born with that make your vaseline smile look like the grimace of effort and painful pretense that it is, and what all of you will discover when you behold Angela being Angela is that she needs no tiara to identify her -- the bitch has a fucking halo.

A Halo is the glow of authentic presence. The radiance of comfortable, genuine personal power is pure light -- light generated from the divine spark within.

That big A on the crown you're wearing -- lettered in cubic zirconian bling -- can't compete or compare. Oh, and, by the way, your crown is slipping, Girlene...

The moral of this story is: Amanda's make lousy Angela's -- or -- You can't bake a cherry pie with a basket full of apples.