My Personal Truths

By looking at many of my posts from the past it seems I've made a lot of swiping declarations about getting certain things done and wanting to be this or do that. Most of the things I'd still out to accomplish I didn't follow through on and recently I realized why. I've realized that a lot of the things I set out to do didn't actually come from me, they came from external pressures such as friends, family and society in general. I was also putting the pressure on myself to achieve these things in order to get external validation which I believed would make me feel better about myself. Obviously this is not true and I've realized some universal truths that I'd now like to share with you.

The first truth being that external validation never leads to real longterm self-satisfaction and happiness. 

I feel like I've heard this so many times but it didn't really register until I experienced freedom from many of the external sources which had been adding pressure to my life for so long. In gaining this freedom I've come to realize that the only way to be happy is to live a self-approved life. The love, validation and approval that I seek needs to come from myself, otherwise I'll always be chasing the unattainable, like a metaphorical cat chasing the laser pointer.

The second truth is that self-approval doesn't happen overnight and it isn't something you do once and you're 'fixed', it's something that takes constant upkeep and re-evaulation. 

This may sound exhuasting but it doesn't have to be, it simply involves doing what you love, making time for yourself and your own needs and following your heart. This is obviously going to be different for every person and it's not something I can tell you. For me it's taken moving away from my childhood home and family as well as many of my longtime friends. At the time this seemed like it would be a really hard move and it was in many ways but it's turned out to be the best deicison of my adult life. In breaking away from many of the toxic situations and people that previously surrounded me I've been able to figure out that I'm a really capable human being who deserves love and I work on given it to myself everyday.

The third truth being that doing x, y or z will never lead to love and validation. 

Doing x, y, and/or z should be things that I love to do and that bring me personal satisfaction and self-approval. I've realized that I don't have to be or do anything in order to be deserving of love.  I'm perfect right now in all my messy and beautiful imperfectness and I deserve love no matter what. For example I've struggled for a long time with being overweight and I thought for a long time that all my problems would vanish and I would finally be happy if I could just lose the weight. I'm finally realizing that the fat doesn't matter, no matter what anyone says about it, I'm beautiful and deserving of love no matter the number on the scale. 

The fourth truth being that I'll never be healthy by bullying myself. 

Living a healthy lifestyle by eating good foods, working out and taking care of myself is important to me because it makes me happy. Prior to this realization I was making myself unhappy by berating and bullying myself into being healthy, which seems kind of counterintuitive now. I was unhappy and I was fighting myself every step of the way because I was being mean to myself. When other people have treated me in a similar mean way in the past I haven't reacted favorably and I haven't felt much like cooperating. So in a similar vein I was treating myself badly and I was reacting badly leading to an unhappiness spiral that didn't lead to a healthy me. So now in order to make positive and healthy changes in my life I do so with positive reinforcement, compassion and love. "Kill them with kindness" as I've heard said before. 

The fifth and final (for now) truth is that I've learned to take control of my life by realizing what is under my control and what isn't. 

I've realized that I have control over my feelings and actions and really that's it. I can take control in other ways throughout my life but these things can change at any time and most of the time the things that happen to us in our lives are out of our control. But what is under my control is how I react to life and what my attitude will be moving forward. I can choose to believe that life in unfair and blame the world for my problems or I can choose to believe that everything that happens in life is for me and move forward with this freeing notion. It truly is a beautiful and freeing feeling to know that I have control over what I choose to do and how I choose to react every single second of every day. 

Life isn't perfect but it's all we've got, this is it, this is life and we have free will and the freedom to choose how we want it to go, what are you going to choose?

Until next time, here's to your uncommonly wealthy life! :)