2021. A year to live brilliantly.

As we teeter into a new year, we could do worse than to remember that we all have enough to be brilliant at what we are meant to be brilliant at.

There is no course, no therapy, no guru who can make us brilliant. Some of them though, often unintentionally, will touch a part of you that is trying to get out and shine. It's often really inconvenient for our parents, or our school or university, or employer and later on even our family and friends.

In The Alchemist, Paolo Cuelho nailed it. In the introduction, he highlights four reasons why we shy away from our brilliance:

1. We are told from childhood everything we want to do is impossible. That story builds up in layers until our brilliance, our calling, is covered in so many layers of discouragement it feels smothered.

2. We convince ourselves that if we disinter our brilliance it will hurt those we love, without realising that call is one of the reasons they love us. They often see what we think they cannot and want to see it appear.

3. We are afr…