Hi guys! Welcome to Episode 191 of the Wildly Successful Lifestyle podcast!
I caught myself wishing something would change this week, that I thought would make me happier. Something that was outside of my control. And then I remembered…
The world doesn’t have to change for me to be ok. If I’ve learned anything that I would want to hang on to and know forever it would be that.
Nothing external needs to be different for me to be ok, for me to be happy. And it doesn’t for you either. The majority of our suffering is self induced.
I get to choose to be ok regardless of what’s going on. That’s my choice. I’m strong enough to do that and so are you.
A couple years ago I went through a period where I was uncharacteristically having a very hard time being happy. Happiness was always my set point….but I could not find a way to get there… I could have easily ruined my life because when you’re in survival mode sometimes you do things that aren’t good for you long term, fortunately I realized it was a hormone imbalance and as soon as I got my hormones balanced I was right back to feeling happy again….That was a really hard time in my life and my husbands too but I wouldn’t change it because we both grew from it. I feel like I have so much more empathy for people that are going through chemical imbalances….its a real thing, but it also set me on this journey that led me to starting this podcast. I’m so happy it did!
We want to think that nothing should ever go wrong and everything should always feel good and life should be this straight path that’s predictable and always easy. If life were predictable and always easy we would all be silly, soft and bored and entitled. We can see that take shape with some of our teens today because they’ve never endured hardship. We would not have the advancement that we have today without struggle. Most of our advancement comes because someone struggled and figured out a way around it, they figured out a better way.
Because we have challenges and because we have these things that go wrong that are out of our control….We’re strong and getting stronger every single day. The key is we have to figure out what that obstacle is moving us forward. What about it is good? What could it be teaching us?
Let’s say we are hiking, hiking is on my mind because we are going hiking this weekend which I’m excited about. So we are hiking and we are on this path, everything is going along just fine and then all of a sudden we get to this point and there’s something blocking the path…It’s a huge boulder and this is the only path forward and we have to figure out a way to get to the other side of it.
Now we can have a tendency to look at whatever the obstacle is (I’m using a boulder for the sake of this story) but we blame it for us not being able to move forward…Now we’re mad because we think it’s stopping us so we kick it and we rage about it and we talk about it with the other people on the path, we even make signs about it, but then someone comes along and they aren’t joining in on the rage and the anger…They simply figure out a way to climb over the rock, which takes a lot of effort and is super scary but they do it anyway and once they get on top of it they see very clearly that there’s a better path, an easier one that they would have never seen had the boulder not been there. That’s how most of our advancement happens, it’s because someone got past their fear and pressed forward anyway.
You Don’t have to wait for that person to come along, you can be that person.
We have an inner guidance system that knows the easiest path forward and sometimes it may not be the one you want or the one you think you need, but when things happen, look for the way around it. You don’t need someone else to find it for you. You know what’s right for you and you know the answer, you just have to be willing to listen for it…you do that by finding a way to Quiet your mind every single day even if just for 5 minutes. Be so discerning on what and who you allow in. We live in a time where it’s more important than ever to find peace and calm whenever we can.
A majority of our suffering comes from our very own mind, it comes from the news we allow in, it comes from the things we give our attention to. You can control all of that.
That’s the way forward, yes, it seems like the world is a mess right now, but the world doesn’t have to change for us to be ok. There’s been much worse times that the world has seen then right now…in fact it’s relatively mild compared to things that happened in our past. But every single time we look at our phone or our computer or the tv we are being bombarded with the latest cris
True empowerment comes from managing what we focus on and limiting what we give our attention to. And when you do that…you become a creator not a consumer. And that’s when you change your own world.
I love you guys and I’ll talk to you in a few days.
