Hi guys! Welcome to Episode 503 of the Wildly Successful Lifestyle! What’s going on??? I’m so happy to be here with you. The world always seems to right itself doesn’t it? Isn’t that comforting to know? There’s something bigger than us looking out for us and I just love knowing that. But what I love even more is that we control so much more about our lives than we realize. We have gotten input over our entire life from parents, teachers, bosses, the news, so many things that influence how we think and it has a lot to do with the actions we take every day without even realizing it.
I remember when I wanted to start this podcast and I was talking to the team I was working with at the time. I love them and still love them to this day but when I said I’m starting this podcast, they said you can’t just start a podcast. You have to do all this up front work you have to set up a studio you have to do this and that, you can’t just start a podcast. I saw their point but I disagreed. And so I started my podcast. And 503 episodes later here we are. It hasn’t always been easy. There are things I thought I wanted from it that haven’t happened and things I had no idea I needed that have. And through it all there has never been one time I wanted to quit. I will be honest with you guys. When I meet new people sometimes I hesitate to tell them I have a podcast, because when I do and they find that I have 500 episodes there are always two things they ask me. Like clockwork, I know the questions are coming. They ask…How many listeners and do I make money. They want to judge the success of my podcast based on industry standards. Fair enough, I would do the same. The truth is..I don’t really know how many listeners I have. There are a lot of different ways you can listen. I know on Spotify and I can see on Apple. I know that there are some of you that listen every single time there’s an episode, I don’t know who you are, but I know you’re there. And I know you wouldn’t still be here if you weren’t getting benefit from it. I would never want to let you down on that Monday when you really need it or that Friday when maybe that little 10 minute episode gives you a thought that makes your coworker not so annoying. So I’m glad you’re here, truly more than you know. I also know I wouldn’t still be here if I didn’t get benefit from it. I hope you love listening as much as I love doing it. Now, my point of this episode is to not listen to the peanut gallery. Listen to your own heart. Follow your gut way more than you follow other people and you’ll live a life that is very rewarding. So many times other people will put limitations on you that are their limitations, not yours. They may not be malicious, they could be trying to protect you but in that protection they are training you away from your own internal guidance and if you want to live a life untethered, a life that brings you joy and freedom, you can’t allow that. You have to follow your intuition more often than not and you have to let go of past baggage.
I read in the book laws of life that a study was done about jumping fleas. These jumping fleas were put into a jar and as they would jump, they would hit their head on the lid. Over time they forget they can jump and for fear of hitting their heads they never go beyond the limits of the jar even when the lid was removed. Through continued failure the fleas have become conditioned to their own confinement even when the confinement is no longer there, it’s all in their head.
So is the same with us. So often we unknowingly confine ourselves to our little glass jar where the lid is our mental prison. Our thoughts often create that mental prison. Thoughts of I’m too old, I’ll never be able to afford that, l’ll never truly be happy again, thoughts of this bad thing happened to me and it has defined me and everything I do.
Sometimes our mental prison is a resentment that tears at the fabric of our relationship or a hurt that never heals because we keep picking at it, maybe an anger that poisons us and with that everyone around us. Living in this world with other people brings lots of opportunities to feel joy but also pain. We are going to experience positive and negative emotions of course we are human. But suffering, that’s a choice. Suffering is a mental prison. Suffering is a lid on the glass jar you live in. So is resentment. So is anger. So is self doubt. So is any negative emotion you hang onto. It’s a lid that you keep bumping your head on and you don’t have to. That bad thing that happened lives only in your mind, that fight with your sister, it’s over and it lives only in your head, maybe hers too. That thing your partner did or said that you like to bring up, you don’t have to use it as a weapon. You can let it go. Thats a mental prison. Anything that makes you second guess being kind or doing something loving or from reaching out to say I love you. Any little or big grudge you hold. Any limits you put on yourself based on old habits or old ideas…these are all mental prisons. They are all lids that we keep bumping our heads up against and we wonder why we so often feel defeated. Every time you bring up past hurts and resentments, every time you hang onto anger, every time you listen to the limitations other people have for you, I want you to mentally remind yourself that you are bumping into that lid again and it hurts and you don’t have to. If I had listened to other people I would have never started this podcast and if I worried about what other people thought about its success I would never keep doing it.
My challenge to you this week is to be real with yourself about your own mental prison. What thoughts are keeping you there? Maybe it’s one big one or maybe a bunch of little ones.
We may live in a glass jar, but whether the lid is on or off….That’s up to us.
