What's Shine

Let's be clear from the start. Shine is not the attention-grabbing images, blurbs or rants you post on social media.

It's not the day your hair stayed put, or the moment someone congratulated you on your well-deserved promotion, or even when your kid decided to grace you with a compliment - even the hard-earned "these hot dogs taste good Mom!"

Real Shine is the essential stuff of you, that sacred and rare elixir that resides at your core and animates every cell of your being. It's not your unique fingerprint, but the force that makes your fingerprint unique. It's the light and the energy and the creativity at the very beginning of you.

 

Why Shine Matters

There are many reasons your Shine matters, and here are just a few.

1. Your Shine matters because it can be a tremendous source of vibrancy for you when you align with it. Think fountain of youth, that endless source of energy, enthusiasm and regeneration. Your Shine is your well-spring.

2. Your Shine affirms who you really are, not in some other-dependent congratulatory way, but in a seeing-yourself-in-the-mirror kind of way, and seeing not just anything, but seeing the bright light of your essential nature. Catching a glimpse of this is always profoundly validating, simultaneously soothing and stimulating.

And that's two benefits for you. But there are global benefits that impact the rest of us when you live your Shine.

1. Your Shine matters to others because it affects both what you do and how you do. Aligning with your most energized, authentic self has a way of instilling confidence and contentment. Moving from this place of security vs. the graspy-feel-of-scarcity we see everywhere these days often moves people in the direction of generosity and openness. And you all know what the world needs now...

2. Shine exists in us all, and when you live yours, and she lives hers, novel ways of approaching the challenges and pleasures of the day multiply. Our innovation is maximized and with it the likelihood that our future will unfold safely, even brightly,  and with all of us in tow.

That's two benefits for the rest of us.

 

The Difficulty of Shining

Tapping into your Shine is not an automatic thing. In fact it's just the opposite. It's a radical thing. 

We've been taught, in so many ways and from so many directions, that the correct and noble action is to hide our light and go along for the good of others. Because of this other-focused narrative, many of us have lost a fundamental and intimate relationship with our Shine. The act of getting in touch with our essential selves has been re-purposed as some lost and esoteric art. We've fundamentally lost the ability to listen deeply to our own truth.

Even more subversive, we've been conditioned to appraise our value in "alienated" terms, meaning we've been taught to measure our worth by standards and within parameters that may suit others, but don't always relate to who we are and what we need.

From these perspectives we will always fall short. When we value ourselves by "foreign" standards" we are made strangers in our own land.

 

Why Shine Daily

Tapping into your Shine and living from its light is not only radical, it's restorative. Connecting with your Shine on a daily basis can bring you back to life. The life you were born to live.

• Connecting to your Shine is validating: You get a daily reminder that you're unique and worthy. Reconnecting with your Shine both affirms and strengthens this idea.

• Connecting with your Shine is vitalizing; it's tapping into a personal source of endless energy that's always available to you.

• Connecting with your Shine is orienting; when you touch base with who you are, what's important naturally follows. 

• Connecting with your Shine is calming; getting a dose of your inherent value and purpose has a tendency to quiet the external noise and put things in perspective.

• Connecting with your Shine is centering; when you act from who you you claim the center, the position of authority. This is the surest place from which to take action. 

 

But the most important value of Shining daily is this. You will slowly but persistently begin to awaken the dormant connection to your vital self.

Through finding and exercising what's weak, but always there, you will discover something. You will uncover the thread of your vitality, your authority and your truth.

In other words, your way home.