The theater room is pitch dark, and everyone is nervously waiting for what’s to come. There are slight murmurs and side conversations, but not loud enough to drown out what is about to happen. Then, suddenly, there’s a spotlight on the stage, and the room immediately goes dead silent.

Silence. More silence. Nothing except anticipated breaths from the audience. The stage opens up where the spotlight is, slow enough to make everyone’s eyes glued to the light. If they blink, they might miss a gesture or a moment. 

Then you are standing on the platform, emerging from underneath the stage. Dressed in your best and looking like a million bucks. The audience starts roaring so loud you almost get scared. You consider going back down, but this stage does not work that way, at least not for the next 12-18 hours.

You start considering your performance today, but the cheers are sinking your thoughts. So you do what’s most accessible, get in a good stance, wave, and then freeze. Once the audience notices you are frozen, the murmurs begin again; they think this is part of the performance. 

But this time, the murmurs slowly become noise. They are getting impatient with you; you need to do something. You need to show them why you are on that stage. Why the spotlight is on you and no one else. The pressure worsens every minute, and you can’t take it anymore.

You begin to dance. There goes the cheers; you did the same routine yesterday, the day before, and even the one before. Aren’t you tired? You ask yourself, but you still get the cheers this way, so you keep dancing until the stage goes back down. You promise you will be calm and do something different tomorrow.

This analogy is how some of us spend our lives; you think you are in the spotlight, and everyone is watching your every move. You only do things that please the audience, so every move is finely calculated to get only cheers. The murmurs and the noise scare and pressure you to only do what’s familiar, and you never try anything different.

Not only is this pattern of thinking flawed, but many people think this way too. If everyone is in the spotlight, who then is your audience? You are wrong if you think everyone is watching each day you take on the world, waiting to judge your every move. Instead, people are thinking about themselves.

You are only the main character in your story, not anyone else’s. The only person in that audience is you. It’s you vs. you, and you watching you. No one thinks about you as much as they do about themselves, and even if they do, it’s because they are also involved in whatever they are thinking about.

I bet you can remember the last five embarrassing things you did or your mistakes. Can you remember that of your friend? I don’t think so. That’s because no one cares, everyone is busy in their spotlight, and you are wasting yours worrying they are watching you. The only person you need to impress is you.

Take off the pressure of other people; I promise you there is no greater liberation than that.

Have an amazing July🤩🥳

Song for the week – Wish you the best – by Lewis Capaldi