When we start discovering who we are and we’re happy and we’re proud of the time we took and the bridges we’d burnt and the challenges we’d managed to see as gifts … it is likely we become overprotective of the new sense of self. Whenever we feel the need to protect something, it’s because we fear we can lose it. We feel the need to defend what’s ours so nobody can stampede over it … until we realize nobody can take anything from us but ourselves.

If we fight to defend ourselves, we have to literally go out of our bodies, our comfort zones, our peace to do it. Along the way we lose the exact same thing we feared we would – the new-found sense of self. Actually, we don’t lise it, we drop it to replace it with a sword.

A better way to preserve yourself is to be it. To shine whatever you’re preaching. To Teach whatever you’re shining.