I’ve Got A Story To Tell (and my book is coming!)
It’s hard to believe that it’s been 24 yrs since I first read this book, Your Erroneous Zones, by the late, great Dr. Wayne W. Dyer. I’m re-reading it now just to see it through a different lens. I read this book when I was just 17 years old and in a very bad place in my life. I had just gotten out of a juvenile detention training school for breaking the law several times. I’m so grateful for going to that training school (although I definitely wasn’t at the time). It was actually a turning point for me. I had also dropped out of high school due to my severe generalized anxiety, social anxiety, and debilitating panic attacks.
This was one of the first “self-help” books that I read. It was actually the second. The first one divinely fell into my path while I was still IN training school. It was: You Can’t Afford the Luxury of a Negative Thought by Peter McWilliams. That one propelled me into a life-changing journey of self-discovery, self-reflection, and healing. It helped steer my ship into a completely different direction.
When I got home from training school, I found this Wayne Dyer book and completely fell into it, fully absorbed by it, just as I had been the first one. I didn’t even know what the hell “erroneous” meant, but I knew this book was written for me.
These books spoke straight to my soul. I then began envisioning and planning a better life for myself. One stepping stone at a time. A GED. An application to a community college. A new job. Letting go of old friends. And so on and so forth. I could finally see a light at the end of the tunnel. A way out of darkness.
From then on, I was hooked. I began reading everything I could get my hands on that had anything to do with self-help, self-awareness, self-actualization, change, overcoming trauma, and anything else that was motivational and inspirational.
These books gave me hope. They gave me new direction. They quite literally set my soul on fire. They helped me to see that I was in charge of my life and that I get to define my life – not my past, not my unfortunate circumstances, not my traumatic childhood, not my poverty, not my father abandonment, not my sexual abuse, not anything or anyone else. Me. I was in charge. I WAS IN CHARGE.
Of course this wasn’t easy. Change never is. (And I’m STILL on the journey until I die, although it does get easier). But it was better than the alternative, which was staying stuck on a self-destructive, self-hatred, dark, and dead-end path. However, now looking back, I realize that ALL of that was STILL my exact path. That’s exactly what I came here for. To go through all of that and to heal from all of that, continually deepening my journey to the soul, so that I could help others do the same.
And the point is that it’s DOABLE. For anyone. A.N.Y.O.N.E.
You just have to want it, to seek it, and to welcome it. And you have to walk bravely into the discomfort of it. Within. Into the depths of the darkness. That’s where you find the LIGHT.
Looking within is scary. Never looking within and choosing not to find and fulfill your purpose is even scarier. But you get to choose.
And I can’t wait until MY book is out there floating around in the Universe for that lost, wandering soul to find at the EXACT moment that will be the EXACT thing that will give hope where there was little or none before. Maybe one of them will be a 17 yr old locked up in a juvenile detention center waiting, searching, longing, to find his/her path.