I am…an empath

The other day I read this wonderful quote from Dr Wayne Dyer:

“Anytime you start a sentence with “I am” you are creating what you are and what you want to be.”

When I teach people about healing throughout the world, I often hear similar statements being made during the courses:

I am an empath and therefore I pick things up.

I am an empath and need to protect myself.

I am super sensitive so please do not say these things.

I am a sensitive person so I feel a lot of pain from others.

I am a psychic and need to close my aura for protection.

I am a psychic and I pick up other people’s pain.

Students often ask me how I protect myself or how I do not get carried away with people’s pain or issues.

The answer is in essence very simple: do not identify yourself with the “I”, with your ego.

But that of course is not easy; we love to focus on the “I” as that is how we “I”dentify ourselves. That is how we portray ourselves to others and, maybe even more so, to ourselves. This is who “I am”, “I” have always been like this, “I” have always been sensitive or an empath or a psychic.

Therefore the solution to the questions I am being asked about protection, sensitivity, or empathy is about letting go of the “I”.

Like Wayne Dyer points out, as soon as you start a sentence with “I am” you are already creating what you are and what you want to be. You are in fact saying that you are picking things up, that you feel things and therefore need to protect yourself, that you are overwhelmed by all the senses and by what you pick up.

Letting go of the “I”, ego is not that easy. But the first step we can take on the journey of our healing is to change the way we say things. Words matter.

So instead of saying things like the statements mentioned earlier in this blog, you could change it to:

I am strong and centred.

I am balanced and whole.

I am clear and focused.

But of course these are just stepping stones to becoming whole, balanced, and clear. It needs to become a direct experience and embodiment, the embodiment of the letting go of the “I”, ego. We can more toward this through meditation, yoga, tai chi, the system of Reiki, and other practices… But we need to keep practicing as we are holding on so tightly to the “I”, ego that it might take some years of practice to soften that grip.

So take a step back, look at how and what you are saying, and how that relates to Wayne Dyer’s statement:

“Anytime you start a sentence with “I am” you are creating what you are and what you want to be.”

Words matter. Becoming whole, balanced and clear matters even more.

Watch your thoughts, they become your words; watch your words, they become your actions; watch your actions, they become your habits; watch your habits, they become your character; watch your character, it becomes your destiny.

-Lao Tzu

Frans Stiene