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I am here. I am alive. I am. What am I? I don’t know.

I don’t care. I simply know I am.

-Don Miguel Ruiz

During the 2011 Celebrate Your Life Conference that took place in Lombard, Illinois, between The 10th and the 13th of June, I had an opportunity to meet Don Miguel Ruiz and his son Don Jose Ruiz and to attend the two sessions they preceded.

During their presentations, they supported us in remembering that we have no excuses not to enjoy life. “I cannot make anybody else happy,” shared Don Miguel, “no one can make me happy either. I am responsible for my own happiness, just like every body else. My responsibility is to speak my truth. The way others choose to take it and respond is theirs responsibility. The question we need to ask to ourselves is ‘am I giving to the world the gift of believing in myself?’ We get in trouble when we choose not to believe in ourselves. When we believe in ourselves, our cups overflow, and we bless the world.”

Don Jose shared with us the experience he grew through around 10 years ago when his father had a heart attack. Don Jose felt devastated and ran to the hospital to be at his father’s side. When he saw Don Miguel face to face, he broke into tears. “We are not trained to let go, to surrender to the life power”, Don Jose said, “that day I forgot that in the middle of misery, I can always practice gratitude. I will never forget when my father told me: ‘don’t disrespect one of the greatest moments of my life, my death. Do not intoxicate it with your agreements and reactions. Go and take care of yourself! This is an important day for me. I want to be present, aware and at peace.’ That day I realized that to be free, we need to let everyone be free,” concluded Don Jose.

Don Miguel emphatically reminded us “with or without awareness we create the story of our lives. I live in my own dream, my personal world, and my own creation, with or without awareness. My life, just like yours, is a masterpiece. Always beautiful, even when it doesn’t feel like it. Imagine that the world is a movie theater with a private room for each of us. Now Imagine that only you can see your own movie, that you are the main character of your own movie interacting with all the secondary characters -your family, friends, coworkers, clients, etc. You only perceive the images these secondary characters project. You don’t really know them. Now, think about this: when these secondary characters are watching their own movies, in their own private room, having you as a secondary character, they know nothing about you either, they only perceive the images you project. Reflecting about this metaphor you may come to understand that you may have lived all your life pretending not to be you in order to please others. If you could see their movies you would understand that, in spite of all your efforts, you could not please them anyway. They only know about you what they choose to perceive, believe and interpret. So, please, be you no matter what! They are judging you anyway. Get use to it!”

Listening to father and son, I realized that my attention could make things more difficult for myself. I am a 100% qualified to be me. And to be me is the reason why I’m here. When I pretend to be somebody else to gain people’s approval and recognition, I lose sight of me. I am the only person who can change my dream! Now is the time to change the things that I don’t like about my dream, about my own movie, about myself.

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