Do you feel stuck or feel that life slipping away from you or that you get about your day solely on autopilot?
Do you find it hard to get out of bed each morning, and constantly hitting the snooze button saying, “just 5 more minutes”?
Do you find yourself after a hard day at work exhausted, physically & mentally drained, feeling flat and then finding yourself just sitting on the sofa watching TV while strolling through social media when you get home?
Do you find it’s another night of takeaways because you don’t have the energy to cook?
Or do you just feel a lot of envy or jealously looking at the life other people are enjoying, saying I would love a life like that?
So, what is stopping you?
I’m guessing that life has got too hard and it’s a mission to put yourself first, when you have spent your time & energy looking after your:
- Kids
- Spouse
- Aging Parents
- Friends
- Extended Family
- Co-workers
To think about what you want just seems too hard as you find yourself just hanging out to get to the end of the day. You are no longer living the life you would like to be living and have got yourself into the rut of merely just surviving.
We have all been there, but there comes a point in our lives when you must decide what is important to you. Society is putting pressure on us (especially since social media came on board), to become:
- Anti-social spending our spare time scrolling through social media, buying cool gadgets online that we don’t need but with good marketing convince us you need them to make your life easier.
- Working long hours to have the career or promotion you are chasing.
- Trying to be a loving wife, husband, mother or father, friend all while trying to betray to everyone that “you are ok or that you are fine”!
But you can feel that something is missing in your life! A sort of emptiness.
You know something must change if you want to come out of survival mode, and truly start living the life you were put on this earth to create, but don’t know how. You really want to start feeling the joy and passion of doing something that truly makes your heart sing. But I think we fall into the expectations from society that we must put other people first before we take care of ourselves.
I love the saying “we must fill own cup first before filling others cup“. Or another way to look at it that is used when flying is, “you must put your own mask of first, before helping someone else with there’s”. If you don’t take care of yourself, it’s not just you who suffers but everyone around you. Everyone at home, at work who all must share & carry the extra load.
We must remember that what might be someone else’s dream isn’t always your dream. Our dreams are only created for us chase. We all see the world through our own prescription glasses that are only made for us.
What might fit someone else will not fit you and that is where we are all as individuals given our own vision & unique gifts to bring to the world.
Ask yourself if you only had one year left to live how would you choose to live your life. Would you continue to work yourself into an early grave living pay check to pay check, spending the time constantly scrolling on your phone, binge watching Netflix or would you get out there and make the most of your last 12 months on this earth feeling alive with your family and friends creating memories.
You always have two choices in every decision you make. So which one will you choose?
We are all given special gifts & special dreams that are unique to us. It doesn’t matter what you do, but who you are! Yes, people might be doing what you would like to do but your job is to put your unique twist & spin on it and make it your own. But in order to reach your dreams we need to align ourselves with people who can help us reach our goals and see the true potential in what you have to offer the world.
Imagine what it feels like to experience the magic that is YOU! It usually starts out as a whisper that gets louder and louder. It’s paying attention to that gut feeling or intuition that you feel inside.
There is always a lot of negative talk in our heads, shaming us, guilting us saying “how could you do that, who do you think you are”! This is when you must be stronger than this negative talk and use it as fuel to unlock and un-lease the force that is within you and know you were meant for more.
True happiness can only come from within you.
We have come to rely on others to make us happy. We seem to focus on what other people think of us rather than what we think of ourselves. How often do you stand in front of the mirror telling yourself that you love yourself, that you are awesome or that you are proud of yourself and who you have become.
A lot of our self-sabotage starts first thing in the morning when we look in the mirror. We might find a new wrinkle, a new grey hair, an extra roll in our stomach that we don’t like. We have now already started the day off on a negative note, instead if embracing these changes.
Negative talk will always be the first thing our brain thinks of as its job is to protect us from danger. It’s only through positive self-talk that we can override this.
Take for example weeds in a garden. They pop up everywhere on their own without us looking after them (negative self-talk). When we plant flowers/vegetables we need to water them & remove any pesky weeds that have popped up around them to be able to see a beautiful, colourful, enchanting garden (positive self-talk).
I personally am a huge believer in positive affirmations on post-it notes. I have them scattered all throughout my house (much to my kids dismay), but they are used a visual to remind myself every time I walk past one to stay strong, and that I have got this!
If you can’t think of anything positive to say about yourself, ask your friends! When I was in between jobs I personally went out on Facebook & asked 10 friends/family what they thought my strengths were. Use your friends to guide & help you as they see things in you that we can’t always see in yourself. Their responses are now used as my wallpaper on my laptop as another visual. Yes, I am a very visual person!!
So how can you start finding your purpose & passion and leave survival mode behind.
- Start having the hard conversations with yourself and start getting comfortable with the uncomfortable. Get to know yourself from the inside/out. Don’t fair being alone as when we are silent this is when we really hear what our true purpose is.
- Know that we only grow when we move away from our comfort zone. Take some uncomfortable risks and see how you feel when you achieve something you never thought you could do. This could be changing jobs and trying something new or joining a club or gym as a way to meet new people. This is also a great place to start networking and talking to others about what you love.
- Rewrite your future. What do you want your future to look like? If you don’t know where you want to go, focus on where you don’t what to go.
- Write some goals for yourself. If you don’t know where to start, then start at the end. Think about it in reverse. Write your own eulogy.
The most important thing is you bet on yourself, trust & believe in yourself to change your life and become the version of yourself you truly desire to be.
Say to yourself “wouldn’t it be great if…..then go out and do it“!
I saw this quote that I love from Brene Brown
Don’t go through the woods looking for evidence that you don’t belong, because you will always find it.
Our worth and our belonging are not negotiated with other people. We carry these inside our heart. I may fit in for you, but I no longer belong to myself…..and that’s a betrayal I’m not willing to do anymore.
There will be a time when standing alone feels too hard, too scary, and we’ll doubt our ability to make our way through the uncertainty because someone, somewhere will say don’t do it. You don’t have what it takes to survive the wilderness.
This is when you reach deep into your wild heart and remind yourself “I am the wilderness”!
Remember if you don’t succeed, you didn’t fail as each time it teaches you a new lesson.
