Oh, Be-Have!
- olivierbranford
- Jan 2
- 13 min read
Updated: Jan 25
As Austin Powers said "Oh, behave! Yeah! Yeah, baby!" There is wisdom in this. Bear with me...
If we dissect behave into be-have, this teaches us how to truly live.
We all get it wrong. We all want to have first, and think that then that makes us be who we want to be. But 'have-be' doesn't work. Be-have does.
If you focus on who you are BEing, then the doing flows naturally like a river from its source towards the ocean. The having then comes as a consequence of who you are BEing.
Austin Powers as an unlikely 'spiritual Master' "Be-have"
Put simply, the English word "ego" is the Latin word for “I.” Literally translated, ego means “I.” Your ego is your fragmented, petrified 7-year-old self who is trying to run your life from a place of fear and pain as a result of societal conditioning and your childhood experience. To heal you have to let go of your ego - the 'little me', the 'King baby', or the “I, me, 'mine'” in your life. The ego is an illusion. The ego is simply self-will run riot: It is self-obsessed and self-destructive. The ego lives as have-be. The Higher Self lives as be-have, in that order. Just like Austin Powers! We may find wisdom in the most unexpected of places!
Salvador Dali once said “At the age of six I wanted to be a cook. At seven I wanted to be Napoleon. And my ambition has been growing steadily ever since.” This quote made me laugh. It should not be confused with ego. Dali felt his calling to the divine within him Self. As such, he was a spiritual Master, like Jung, Einstein, Michelangelo, and Shakespeare. Those who achieve anything truly great in life come from their soul; their Higher Self. They live as be-have (in that order), not have-be. Salvador Dali became a truly great artist, and everything else followed.
We are programmed by our consumerist society to want to have and then we are told in marketing strategies that that will make us be who we are. This is total nonsense. Once you find out who you are (BEing), then the doing and having will follow naturally. A car, a title, a house, or a diamond ring don't make or define who you are. Once you are BEing, all those things will come automatically.
As William Shakespeare wrote in 'As You Like It':
"All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts..."
Perhaps we should limit those parts to one: Our true Self. I am sure that this is what Shakespeare meant.
Many coaches talk about BEing. But what does this mean? BEing is not what you do or have. BEing is who you are. That is your value, and it’s non-negotiable. The ego does not understand BEing, and fights it at every opportunity: For BEing involves the death of the ego.
The cross, which is the most recognised symbol in the world (just ahead of Macdonald's!) has a horizontal dimension, which is the material world (doing and having), and there is a vertical dimension, which is BEing. Eckhart Tolle wrote "Neither failure nor success has the power to change your inner state of BEing."
Who are you anyway? There is a Sufi saying "Don’t cut the person to fit the cloth." We need to shift our focus away from living 'outside in' through external validation to living 'inside out' through looking inwards and gaining wisdom.
What is it to be human? Plato wrote "Man - a BEing in search of meaning." Epictetus, the brilliant Stoic Greek philosopher, wrote "No man is free who is not master of him Self." You become master of your Self by BEing. What is BEing? Epictetus wrote "First say to yourself what you would BE; and then do what you have to do." Andy Warhol wrote "When you want to BE something, it means you really love it." Who do you want to BE? As it says in 'Pretty Woman' "What's your dream?"
Anton Chekhov wrote that "Man is what he believes."
Say to your Self every morning:
"I am not what happened to me - I am what I choose to become.
I am the I am that I AM.
I am entirely powerful in this present moment.
I am the light of my life in this present moment.
'I am' statements unleash to power of abundance.
In Exodus 3:14 "God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM." In Matthew 6:33 it says "But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you." When you make inner peace your first priority, whatever you need in the world will come easily and effortlessly, by Grace. The Universe has your back.
When you step into your soul, which is also called your real Self or Higher Power, your doing flows from that place of BEing. The BEing comes first and all else will follow. Knowing who you are is an essential foundation of abundance: As Epictetus wrote "Know, first, who you are, and then adorn yourself accordingly." As Epictetus wrote “Don't explain your philosophy. Embody it.” He most famously wrote “Man is not worried by real problems so much as by his imagined anxieties about real problems... It's not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters.”
BEing is seeing the Universe through new eyes: To have a perceptual shift. Marcel Proust wrote “The only true voyage, the only bath in the Fountain of Youth, would be not to visit strange lands but to possess other eyes, to see the Universe through the eyes of another, of a hundred others, to see the hundred Universes that each of them sees... The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.”
BEing is the immaculate conception through cocreation, like Mary, Jesus’ mother, of your saviour. Your saviour is you: Your super-coach is you. The new you, your Higher Power. I am here simply to sling-shot you into possibility. You were born with infinite possibility, and then the world, and your parents, came along and created fear and all your limiting beliefs by telling you that you are not good enough as you are. Their conscious and unconscious behaviour towards you set the scene for your life. It did not come from you. But it can, if you allow it to. Neville Goddard wrote “Each person is born with an infinite power, against which no Earthly force is of the slightest significance.”
Many teachings on manifestation focus almost exclusively on the horizontal dimension, suggesting that if you get what you want as a result of your constant hustle through exhausting, relentless doing, you will be happy. But that’s a fallacy; everybody eventually finds if they only operate on the horizontal dimension they may get what they want, but it doesn’t ultimately satisfy them or have any lasting value. There is another dimension, the ‘vertical dimension,’ or the dimension of BEing, which is even more important to be aware of when we talk about manifestation and abundance. The mastery of life is to have them both in your life. It the dance between BEing and doing - not as separate things, but acting together - BEing and doing as one, with the doing flowing naturally from the BEing. Believe in your Self and have Faith in what you are capable of. Trust the process. Trust the wait. Embrace the fear and uncertainty. You have tried everything else. You will change the way you view your Self. Any other method will simply crumble and turn to dust. Intuition is a spiritual faculty and does not explain, but it always points the way. Strength grows in the moments when you think you can't go on but you keep going anyway, like finishing a marathon after you have 'hit the wall.' I have run 5 marathons so I am qualified to comment on this!
Neville Goddard wrote “Man's chief delusion is his conviction that there are causes other than his own state of consciousness.” The journey of BEing involves expanding your consciousness. He advised “To rise in consciousness to the level of the thing desired and to remain there until such level becomes your nature is the way of all seeming miracles… Unless man discovers that his consciousness is the cause of every expression of his life, he will continue seeking the cause of his confusion in the world of effects, and so, shall die in his fruitless search… Learn to shake yourself loose from what the world believes is the only reality... You rise to a higher level of consciousness by taking your attention away from your present limitations and placing it upon that which you desire to be."
Leave your ego at the door
Dwayne Johnson wrote “Check your ego at the door. The ego can be the great success inhibitor. It can kill opportunities, and it can kill success.” Robin S. Sharma wrote “Leadership is not a popularity contest; it's about leaving your ego at the door. The name of the game is to lead without a title.” In other words humility.
Our way out of fear is to move from being self-centred to serving others. Joseph Fort Newton wrote “An egotist is not a man who thinks too much of himself; he is a man who thinks too little of other people.” Beran Wolfe wrote “No one has learned the meaning of life until he has surrendered his ego to the service of fellow men.”
Ryan Holiday, the author of The Obstacle is the Way, and Stoic philosophy expert, wrote “What is rare is not raw talent, skill, or even confidence, but humility, diligence, and self-awareness.” He continued “In the battle of egos, both competitors lose.” I love what he said, when he said that “Leave your ego at the door every morning, and just do some truly great work. Few things will make you feel better than a job brilliantly done.” It's worth putting a sign on your office door - "No entry to egos."
Rabindranath Tagore wrote “We come nearest to the great when we are great in humility.” C. S. Lewis wrote “If a man thinks he is not conceited, he is very conceited indeed.”
Michel de Montaigne wrote “On the highest throne in the world, we still sit only on our own bottom.”
How do you do BEing?
Everyone interested in personal development, growth, transformation, and leadership coaching is talking about BEing. But how do you actually do it?
Socrates said “The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new.” How do you build the new, when the ‘new’ stems from the new you, the highest possible version of you. How do you step from ego into BEing? It’s what takes you to your full, limitless potential. It is certainly the most powerful step you can take in your life. We are human BEings, not human DOings, after all. DOing flows effortlessly when you are BEing. But HOW DO you BE? You will be able to do-away with to do lists, normal goals will seem like mere drudgery compared to what you are capable of. When your personal growth reaches levels of Self-realisation the most transformative results are undoubtedly seen in your capabilities and new aligned successes. People have suggested morning mantras based on your core values, creating a ‘Document’ that you read to your Self at the start of each day, and meditation.
But these alone don’t get you there, they just give you glimpses, a flavour, of your full potential and possibility. How do you actually step into BEing? Enlightenment, which is what we are talking about when we talk about BEing, is when you are awakened, ALL the time. It’s when you are fully actualised and present through every moment of the day.
By focusing on BEing, the doing will flow naturally from this place, like an oak grows from an acorn. The having will follow the doing. So the wrong order is have, then do, then be: The right order of things is BE, then do, then have. For this you need to awaken, embody your fractured parts, and surrender to the flow of the Universe. Lean back into the river of life, and watch what happens. It will be miraculous. This is how you invoke your 'God-Mode'.
BEing your Higher Self is a daily choice
You may think that your life if full of problems. In fact you have one problem in life, only one. That one problem is you: You have forgotten who you are. You were born as your Higher Self, but you lost sight of who you truly are through your conditioned mind. That’s the human condition: Everyone has it. But, you don’t need to be saved or rescued. All you have to do is learn how to tap your own Real Personal Power and to see and feel it. There is one thing to work on: YOU. There is one choice to make - do you choose to be your petrified ego, your Wounded Child (who listens to the voice of your inner critic) or your Higher Self?
Who are you BEing? Are you choosing to come from your Wounded Child or are you BEing your Higher Self?
Making this choice deeply and daily says to you that you are feeling and declaring that you are worthy, that you are lovable, that you are deserving of love, and that you are powerful and abundant. You’ll become more aware of your inner wisdom, leadership, and authority. You will change your life from one based on selecting fear to one based on love - your own love. Not egocentric arrogance: Genuine self-love. All of your re-united fractured parts will eventually express the richness and genuine purpose of your soul as a result of this.
The following table summarises the associations and consequences of your daily choice: Which column do you identify with? Which column would you like to live in all the time? Wounded child (fear and ego) or your Higher Self? It is your choice. Truly!
Associations and consequences of your daily choice: Wounded Child (ego) versus the Higher Self
Your ego bellows in your ear and is brazen. You need solitude and meditation to hear your Higher Self’s whispers. But there is a chance for change when we endure suffering. God “Whispers in our pleasures, but shouts in our pain,” as CS Lewis once stated.
As Shirley Conran said "You're never too old to grow up."
Our suffering helps us to see our shadow on the left side of the table from the right side, where we wish to be. The light from our Higher Self really becomes brighter as a result of this searching within. After accomplishing this, we must visualise and become our Higher Self. There is no turning back once we have done that and experienced the comfort, love, and safety of that BEing.
It is a daily choice, made during your morning meditation routine. Once you’ve looked within, accepted your shadow, become whole, and are awake, you have the choice. Would you hire a terrified 7-year-old to lead your life, or the highest version of your Self? I’ll want you to pretend that you are the interviewer for the job of your life. The obvious response sheds light on the absurdity of the human predicament. You can blame your ego for doing it. It’s time to let go of your 'King Baby' persona, totally embrace and love your inner child, and show up as your higher, more fearless Self. The position you are interviewing for could literally save your life. Only your Higher Self is a genuine candidate. Give your life to your Self. You’ll witness miracles, and self-promise fulfilment. Is it “You’re fired!” to your King Baby or “You’re Higher-ed!” to your true Self?
Immanuel Kant, one of the most influential figures in modern Western philosophy, wrote “To be, is to do.” Once you remember who you truly are, all your doing will flow from who you are BEing, like a river flows from its source. Like an acorn turns into an oak tree. You are the source. You are the saviour that you have been waiting for.
If you would like infinite possibility, true abundance, joy, love, and peace, then try 'be-do-have', and do not try the reverse to 'have-do-be.' So, as Austin Powers so concisely put it 'be-have'! It's worth a try...
Namaste.
Olly
Dr Olly Alexander Branford MBBS, MA(Cantab), PhD.
Fully qualified and certified coach
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Hello,
I am very pleased to meet you. Thank you for reading this far. I very much look forward to connecting with the highest version of you, to seeing your highest possibility, and to our conversations. Please do contact me via my email for a free connection call and a free experience of coaching.
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Dr Olly Alexander Branford MBBS, MA(Cantab), PhD
Fully qualified and certified coach
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