Have you ever thought about how much your mindset matters in relationship to how it feels to live your life? Most people don’t. Most people just feel what they feel and they think everyone else is responsible for it. I used to, too. But, I’ve learned, there’s another way to be; one that’s freeing.
I used to think that everyone else was responsible for how I felt in any given moment. And I had to feel this way. I had no other way of thinking and no other way of protecting myself and my feelings — no other model by which to follow and no one else to show me another way. If someone shamed me, I felt ashamed. If someone didn’t like me, I didn’t like me. If someone yelled at me, I either cried or got inwardly angry. If someone smiled at me, I felt happy, seen. If someone blamed me for something, I felt hurt, defensive, and upset at myself. If someone judged me, I believed them. If someone withdrew their love, I felt unworthy of being loved.
My entire way of being and feeling was predicated on how others treated me, how others felt about me. How, and if, others loved me.
And it sucked.
What I think sucked more, looking back, is that I didn’t even know I was like this and I didn’t know there was any other option, another way. For my entire life, how I felt in any moment was determined by 1) how I made others feel and/or 2) how others felt about me. And I needed them to feel something good about me. I needed them to so that I could feel something good about me, too.
Ugh. I was stuck without even knowing I was stuck. Someone might call that co-dependent. And, I’d agree. I was totally and completely dependent, energetically, on other people’s energy. My life’s energy (my life force) came from others and I needed every ounce of anything they’d give me; I just could never feel like I got enough.
Golly, even now as I look back, it’s hard for me to remember a single time (before the age of 33) when I wasn’t completely dependent on another person to fulfill me. As I sit here right now, typing this out to you, a decade later, I am actually shocked to be typing what I’m typing and shocked to be remembering just how much I needed other people in order to feel even a slight ounce of happiness in me.
At the time it didn’t feel like a prison because it was just the way I lived, but being the woman I am now, I look back and think “Damn, girl. You were in a complete and utter prison.” You see, the only way I could feel happy is if someone else did something that made me feel happy. Which, of course, meant that the same person who had the power to make me feel happy also had the power to take my happiness away from me in an instant. My happiness was at the mercy of other people, places, and things.
I had no strong and solid way of being happy from within me. Not a single tool. Not a single skill. Not even the thought or the idea that it was possible. Truth is, it never even occurred to me back then that I was depending on other people to bring me happiness. It was just the way things were — all my life. It was an expectation that I had. It was my mindset. A learned way of being and believing. A programming.
Fast-forward to today, in the year 2021, and I look back now and I can’t even imagine living a single day like that again. Over the last decade, I’ve worked so hard to develop the skills that I needed to learn to find happiness from within and to ensure that I learned how to keep it — no matter who or what was trying to steal it or feed it. What I’ve learned is that it is our mindsets that dictate so much of our life’s experiences. And it is our mindsets, coupled with our understanding and control of our energy, that can keep us stuck or set us free. Because these two elements combined — our mindsets and our energy — hold the power to affect nearly all of our programming.
We humans have and hold programming much like a computer does. And just a like computer, you can change your programming too.
If your programming has told you that life is hard, happiness is something someone else gives you, you’re not worthy, etc. then believe me when I say each of those thoughts, each of those scripts, and each of those programs (that are likely running on repeat in your life) can change. Every one of them. Years ago, if someone would have told me this, I’d have called bullsh*t on them. But I look at my life and all that I’ve learned over these last nine years of healing and growing, and I can honestly say that we hold that power. We really do.
If this article resonated with you, shoot me a note or leave a comment below. If you’re feeling like your programming, mindset, and energy could use a reboot, tell me what’s up, sign up to receive our newsletter, and stay connected to this website so that you can continue to receive free personal growth content.
If you’re feeling stuck and feeling like other people control your feelings, emotions, and experiences in life, I get it. Write to me. I’d love to share with you some tools and mindset strategies I’ve learned that totally and completed changed my life for the better and helped me to take back my power to be free and my power to feel peace, love, joy, and harmony as a normal, predictable way to be.
I’ll also leave you with a little video I created that includes a few of the mindset strategies that proved most helpful to me as I was breaking through my pain, and rewiring my old worn-out, dysfunctional patterns and cycles so that they no longer prevented my growth and my healing. I hope these strategies are as helpful to you as they were to me. And I call them “strategies” because they are not just pretty quotes or words. If implemented, and integrated into your ways of being, these thought-methodologies will change your entire perspective and your energetic make-up and they can and will change your life, and your programming, for the better, if you let them. My life, and countless others’ lives, are living proof.
May my deep share help you to see the places within you where you may be ready to heal, grow, shift, and reprogram yourself, too. If it does, and you need help, you know how to find me. It would be my honor to help you.
With love, gratitude, grit, and grace,
