With regard to stepping out of your comfort zone and into your “shine,” I’ve written out 7 steps to this process that you might find helpful. In summary, this is really a journey of self-honesty and alchemizing the pain of not shining into the courage to make small steps toward more authentic self-expression.

Explore these steps loosely and have fun with them. This isn’t a ‘should’ exercise, but rather it’s an exercise in curiosity.

Here are the 7 steps:

1. The Painful Self-Honesty
2. Look Beyond the Personal
3. Define the Opportunity
4. Plan Your Small Steps
5. Daily Growth Evaluation
6. Track & Celebrate Progress
7. Fall in Love with the Journey

Here are some more details about those steps. Enjoy!

1. The Painful Self-Honesty

• Can we be deeply honest with ourselves about the pain that comes with not allowing ourselves to shine?
• Can we be painfully honest about how this affects every area of our lives, and how we avoid the truth of this by blaming others and the world?
• Can we courageously face this pain, feel it, and meet it with self-forgiveness and a heartfelt decision to give ourselves back to ourselves?
• Can we be courageously honest about the real solution, the one where we must acknowledge our root fears and truly see that hiding from them does not serve us?

2. Look Beyond the Personal

• Why do we hide our shine? Because of an innocent misunderstanding that takes everything so damn personally. This stems from looking for the world and other people to validate us, accept us, and give us permission to be ourselves.
• If you want to shine because you want other people to like you, then you will spend your life trying to be what other people want. This is the opposite of shining; this is hiding from yourself in service to the opinions of others.
• What other people think about your shine isn’t about you. Whether they like it or hate it isn’t about you. You are not shining for others; you’re shining for the sake of your own sanity. The only real prize is the freedom to be what you are, the freedom to express what is sincere and grow in the direction that resonates with your heart.
• If you’re truly going to be free, beyond taking things personally, you must give people back to people and let them like and not like whatever they like and don’t like. Come back to yourself and see that you are here to set yourself free, by first releasing the world and then getting in touch with the deepest sincerity of what you are.

3. Define the Opportunity

• What is the opportunity here? How do you want to learn, grow, and play? What does your shine look like? Is it anything other than loving people in a way that shares your heart’s sincerity?
• What are the obvious ways you hide your shine, and how would it transform your life if you slowly but surely came out of hiding? Be radically honest with yourself.
• Of all the ways you hide, what is the highest value opportunity for transformation? In what way can you come out of hiding that would have the greatest impact on your journey?
• If you experienced progress in this area, how might that affect your personal and business life?

4. Plan Your Small Steps

• Stop looking to take giant leaps, start from where you are, and take small but consistent steps in the direction of more shine.
• Identify what these small steps might be, what they would look like, why they are scary, and the real value of taking them.
• Plan the day and time when you’re going to take these steps, and set alarms if you have to.
• If you fail to take the step, acknowledge the failure and learn from it. Get in touch with the pain of not taking the step, don’t fool yourself, and then recommit.

5. Daily Growth Evaluation

• I recommend having at least 15 minutes toward the end of your day (1% of your day) scheduled for self-evaluation. This is a time to review your self-growth commitments and see where you were on point and where you got off track.
• Devoting yourself to this time of evaluation consciously trains your subconscious to see these self-commitments as important. In fact, this could be one of your daily small steps that gives fuel to your other steps.

6. Track & Celebrate Progress

• This is supposed to be fun; it’s supposed to be a gift you are giving yourself. It’s important to be playful with this. If you track and celebrate your progress, this will undoubtedly help you turn these small steps into regular habits that become second nature.
• Track: Write it down on paper and have it close by every day. See it in the morning, afternoon, and evening. Commit to tracking small steps for 30 days. Make a game out of it. Allow yourself to be curious about what would happen, and to see what’s actually possible for where you are right now.
• Celebrate: Hold off a bit on your beloved distractions, treats, and dopamine hits. Allow those things to be available because you took certain steps. Again, only for 30 days. Play with yourself in this. Make it known beforehand how you will celebrate after you’ve taken certain steps. And, if you don’t take those steps, then the “distractions, treats, and dopamine hits” must be delayed, and you spend that time in more self-reflection and evaluation.

7. Fall in Love with the Journey

• Setting off on this journey is the greatest gift you can give yourself. This is an unending journey of growth, not a journey of anxiously trying to reach a destination. Can you recognize this? Can you see that you have an opportunity to actively participate in the growth process?