There is an old story told about a Buddhist statue. In the mid 50’s a monastery needed to be relocated to make room for a new highway. The monks arranged for a crane to come move a ten-foot-tall clay Buddha. Underestimating its weight, the Buddha started to crack as soon as the crane lifted it into the air. The monks had the crane put the Buddha back to its original home to prevent further damage to their holy shrine and they arranged for a stronger crane to move the Buddha the following day. That evening, the rains came. In the monk’s effort to keep the Buddha from further damage, they covered it. One of the monks went to the Buddha to ensure that it was not further damaged by nature. Whilst examining the crack in the clay, he noticed a glimmer shinning back at him just underneath the clay. Slowly he started to chip away shards of clay to find that the small glimmer was growing miraculously brighter. Hours later, when he had carefully removed the clay, he discovered a Buddha made of solid gold.
The clay was covering the beauty just under the surface. Everyone believed that the ten-foot clay Buddha was the real treasure, but just under the surface of that beautiful statue was something even more unique, much more valuable, and beautiful.
There are two major takeaways from this story that we can apply to our own lives. First, we all have layers covering our worth. Let’s dive into this one! Imagine that you are this valuable Buddha. Visualize your layers being carefully chipped away. Those layers might include lack of confidence, failure, walls we put up to protect ourselves from hurt, fear, comfort, the list can go on. You need to discover what your layers are and get rid of them. Losing these layers may be difficult, scary, and at times... painful. But in order to truly shine, we need to remove the layers of clay that cover up our miraculous shining souls. That gold Buddha for me represents our worth and our value. We all have something that makes us special. It’s time to look at yourself and into your soul and discover what makes you incredible. It’s time to change your dialogue with yourself and to reflect what and who you really are and what makes you so exceptional. Your self-worth and your potential are immeasurable!
This brings me to my second major take away. We all have a “gold Buddha” just under our clay surfaces. Once you are able to shed the layers, you will be able to discover the value and worth that you have to offer this world. So how do we discover what those are? This one is hard. There is no one size fits all solution. Knowing your worth has to click within yourself. But I am going to give you a few tricks to help get you there.
One way to discover your worth is to serve and love those around you. There is something special about getting out of our own heads for a bit. We start to love those we serve and those we come in contact with. Loving those around us bring me into my next trick. Looking for the beautiful unique goodness in those around you. You’ll start to see people through new eyes. You will discover their gifts, talents, and their true infinite power. I promise that when you seek to really know those around you and serve them, you will start to see not only their value, but your own value. You will discover your own gold Buddha that the world so desperately needs! This brings me to my next trick. Write down your traits, your talents, your passions, etc. But make sure you WRITE THEM DOWN!! Record them somewhere you can quickly and easily refer back to once you have them written down. Refer back to this list often and continue to add to the list. You will be amazed as you often remind yourself how special and unique you are.
Then, focus on that list once you make those discoveries and nourish those traits like you would a plant or an animal. Feed it, nourish it, and then let those traits shine brighter than the sun. In addition, something you can never fake is your passions. These are not coincidences. Focusing on what makes you unique and what you are passionate about will help you understand your Infinite Power.
Now, there will be some of you that don’t know where to even start. And that’s okay! That will be where this next trick comes into play. If you don’t know what your traits or talents are, ask those you trust. A partner, parents, siblings, best friends, anyone that you trust. Ask them what your best traits, qualities, or gifts are. Other people often see the beauty and value we can’t see in ourselves. By asking those we trust to help us discover our shining self-worth, we will be able to discover the gold Buddha we ALL have just beneath the surface.
Stop listening to the poisonous lies bombarding our lives. You are beautiful. You are unique. You are NEEDED in this world. It’s time to shed our clay layers, dig down, and find the shining, valuable, miraculous worth just waiting to be discovered.
So, this week I am going to challenge you! The challenge will be to create a list of your gifts or talents. I want you to create a list of at least 5. If you can list more, even better! Look at that list every day for one month. Keep adding to that list as you discover more about your worth. This will change how you see your self-worth as well as your potential. You are going to discover your value be getting rid of your clay layers. I can’t wait to hear from some of you who take this challenge. You’ve got this!