You struggle to move forward in life, to be successful in your business, your relationships, and to stick with an exercise routine. The reality is that you can’t move forward with anything new in life until you get brutally honest about why you are doing life the way you are doing it right now! We often blame others, our parents, friends, or some external event for our problems. We say things like, “If my parents had never been divorced I would have learned what a healthy relationship looked like” or, “If I only had enough time I would get to the gym regularly”. But these are just excuses to justify why we continue to live the life we live, to continue to stay overweight, keep smoking, procrastinate, worry, stay depressed, and the list goes on. Until you come to grips with the fact that the majority of your life is a succession of habits that continually repeat themselves, you will stay right where you’re at. The fact is that most people get comfortable with the stories they tell themselves. And those stories are pretty convincing. They work. We have spent years perfecting the stories we tell ourselves about why we are the way we are, why we do what we do. And at the end of the day it’s all bullshit! It’s a story! One you made up and chose to live over and over. Maybe it’s time to change the story.
Deal with what is happening now, first.
This means Identify the mess in your life. You have what you want because you talk yourself into it. You talk yourself into your problems because they support an irrational belief. You tolerate your resentment of others, your anger at others, and at yourself because it makes it easier to justify why you do what you do. You tolerate your beliefs about others, yourself, and the world because it fuels your problems. You tolerate what you tell yourself that keeps you from doing what you know you should.
“If you really want to escape the things that harass you, what you’re needing is not to be in a different place but to be a different person.”
Seneca
This is not to say that bad things were not done to you. Maybe that was the case. Nevertheless, you have options. I never tell the victim of abuse to “move on”. That’s just cruel. But once you have sought treatment and the triggers that haunt you are no longer an issue it is time to move forward. Unfortunately a lot of people overcome the disorder of PTSD but stay stuck with the beliefs they hold about themselves as a result of the trauma. And whether anyone wants to read this or not, those beliefs can and do fuel the behaviors that you engage in now! They become a support system for the life you live that you can’t stand. So whether your past consisted of trauma or not, it is time to pay close attention to the story you live out every single day and change it.
If you made a list of all of the things in your life that you tell yourself you ought to change or do differently what would it say? Here is a list of things I hear every day:
I’m unlovable
I’m too stupid
I procrastinate
I’m addicted to__________ (fill in the blank)
I can’t have healthy relationships
I don’t deserve…..
…..and the list goes on.
Ask yourself this question: What would happen to your life if you flipped one of those things on the list, If you changed just one thing today? You see, change happens the moment it happens. Often we are waiting for change to occur. We tell ourselves “if I just learn enough then I can change”. Years go by and you spend money on therapy, self-help books, and courses that in the end all focus on the same thing I am telling you right now. BUT the moment change takes place it takes place. It wasn't like you needed another course. You just needed to implement what you learned from the first course, the first therapist, the first book you read. The moment you decided to do something different change happened.
Find the problems you tolerate.
Pick one.
Decide today it ends.
Determine the ACTION you will engage in to make the change.
The reason the self-help industry makes so much money is because we study how to correct our problem and we never implement what we learn. We don’t take action!
The problem is that most of us think that the things we do are different from the things we think. The reality is that what we think is guiding the things we do that prove what we think. Therefore, you’re reality is a reflection of your experience of yourself.
Own your bullshit! You can blame anyone you want for the beliefs you carry. At the point you are no longer an adolescent that blame becomes an excuse, a decision that supports your behavior and beliefs. The evidence for what you believe is in how you behave. You tell yourself you want success, love, excitement, but you’re not up for that level of fulfillment. You’re too busy proving by your actions what you think about yourself. It’s time to rewrite the story!
