Welcome to Love Notes from Rhonda.

And I'm going to read you one of my very favorite lines ever.

And the line that finally gave me permission to become a coach.

Until I read this line, I didn't believe I had a right to do the work I do today.

I had too many upsets, too many suicides, too much alcoholism, too much sleeping around, too much, too much, too much, too much, too much past to create a different future for myself.

It was impossible for me, or so I thought, until after an accumulation of things I've read and listened to and workshops I took and all the things that I'd ever done, I read this line, and this line pierced my heart.

It's from Wolf, Waldo Emerson, his essay called Self Reliance.

And it's pretty quick into the essay, so you'll find it very quickly if you go and look up Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Self Reliance.

And here is the line.

To believe your own thought.

To believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men and women.

That is genius.

Let me read that again.

To believe your own thought.

To believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all women, for all people.

That is genius.

See, I thought what was in my private heart.

I thought I had to keep private.

I thought nobody would understand me.

Nobody would think no idea I had was ever good enough.

Nobody would get it, nobody would understand.

Nobody would see the goodness in it.

And when I read that line, I was like, what?

What?

What?

To believe your own thought.

To believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all people.

That is genius.

The things that are moving through you, your wants, your desires, your ideas, your dreams, your visions, your concerns, your words, everything, all of it, all people have.

And it's true in their heart as well.

They may not articulate at you like you.

They may not see it as you, they may not voice it like you, but there's a ringing true, there's a truth to it.

And then this is the next line, just down the paragraph that also was just.

In every work of genius, we recognize our own rejected thoughts.

They come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.

In every work of genius, we recognize our own rejected thought.

I thought we had an idea.

We had something that moved through us, and we read something like it in a book, and for a second we go, I thought I had that thought that was like.

It's recognizable.

You see it because it's in your heart, too.

And you rejected that thought.

I rejected that thought.

Because I thought me thinking it was bad wrong.

I must be.

There's something wrong with me.

If I have the thought, it must not be the right thought.

And I must not share that thought.

To believe your own truth.

To believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all people.

That is genius.

In every work of genius, we recognize our own rejected thoughts.

They come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.

And then it goes on to say a couple lines down.

Else tomorrow a stranger will say with masterly good sense precisely what we have thought and felt all the time.

And we shall be forced to take with shame our own opinion from another.

What is true in your private heart?

Knowing that you are not alone and that what's in your private heart is worth sharing.

Because I, my friend, don't want you to take your opinions and thoughts and ideas and dreams from the person who's mimicking what you've always thought and felt.

Instead, I invite you to claim it.

To believe your own thought.

To believe that what is true for you and your private heart is true for all people.

That is genius.

And in our own unique way, we're all geniuses.

In our own way.

If we have the courage to say yes, until next time, be fearless.

I love you.