About two months ago, I cut back all my beautiful roses so they’d bloom again before Fall hits. It’s so hard for me to do that because it takes all the color out. But cutting them back that much also means that I’ll get twice as many blooms later. So right now, I’m loving it! I’ve got bright pinks, purples and yellows gracing my yard and it’s magical.
Last week I talked you to about who you are to yourself and that you can just decide that you want to be a certain kind of person. Have you taken some time to think about who you want to be? And what kind of life experience you’d like to create for yourself? Maybe the person you want to be is a lot different than the person you are and so it’s difficult for you to see how you’re going to get there. And that’s okay. You don’t have to see the direct path for you to be able to start moving towards that. Or maybe you know each step that it’ll take for you to get to where you want to be and it seems too overwhelming thinking about it all.
I went to get in my car the other day. It’s one that has a remote start push button. I pushed the button to start the car and it told me it couldn’t detect the key. Apparently my keys weren’t in my purse like I thought they were. So I went back in the house to find my keys. I found them, got back in my car and, imagine that, it started right up! When I first got in the car, my destination was clear, but after a distracting treasure hunt to find my keys, I was off my game so, for a moment, I had to sit in the car and remember where I was even going.
Can you imagine waking up each morning, taking the time to get ready and then having no idea where you’re going once the car starts? Yet, if we don’t have some kind of goal for our future that’s kind of what we’re doing. We don’t really know where we’re going, we’re just…going. And that’s okay if you’re feeling stuck and need to just start moving. Sometimes it’s the moving that shows us the options of what’s out there. But if we did this each day, hoping the road would take us where we needed to go, I’m guessing we might end up settling for familiar destinations.
If, on the other hand, you get in your car and pulled up the maps because you knew where you wanted to go, the path would be all mapped out, and even though there may be delays like construction, accidents, or detours, ultimately you’d get there. How different would that be? Well, I can tell you that currently, one of my favorite places to go on this earth is Kauai. Combine the beautiful ocean and all the amazing creatures in it, with the gorgeous sunsets, the lush greenery, vibrant flowers and the slower pace and that’s why it’s one of my favorites. Well it’s no surprise that you can’t get to Kauai by car. So if I kept to driving aimlessly in my car each day, I wouldn’t have ever gotten to Kauai and had that experience and my potential destinations would’ve proved limited and much less fulfilling. Are you with me?
How much time do you spend sitting in the state of your future-self? How long do you spend visualizing yourself in the future with your goal already accomplished? Do you know what that looks like? Do you know how it feels? This is important. When we have really big ideas of who we want to become, our brains can instantly go into overwhelm thinking about all the steps on the path and what it’ll take. With any change, your brain is going to do some whining simply because it doesn’t like change, but when you’re thinking big, it will probably have a tantrum. So expect it. And what I mean by that is, when you’re feeling the squeeze of anxiety or stress from not knowing how exactly you’re going to accomplish the goal, you think to yourself, oh this is what Amber was talking about. I must be doing it right.
What’s your first instinct when you start thinking big? Well, unless you’ve trained it otherwise, your human brain with start to look to the past to see if you will be successful. This is a dangerous direction to look. If you’re not already where you want to be, then it’s your past-thinking that’s been holding you back. It’s what holds us all back. It’s normal for the brain to look that direction because it wants to know if you’re going to be successful so it doesn’t risk failure. But ironically, it’s the looking back that risks the biggest failure because either we don’t take the risk at all because it’s safer and we fail in advance or we take just a little risk and keep playing small.
Looking to the future is where your true power lies. You get to create the future you want. You just need to decide what that is for you. Can you see yourself there? Do you know what you’re doing day to day there? Do you know what you’re wearing? Can you visualize your surroundings? Do you know how it feels to be there? That would be good to know because everything we do in life is because of the way we think we’re going to feel. It’s why we want a certain job or promotion, why we want to lose weight, why we want to be a parent, why we to clean our house. It’s all because we think we’ll feel a certain way after it happens. So what do you think you’ll get to feel by finally becoming your future self? Confident? Joy? Satisfied? Fulfilled?
Did you know that you don’t have to wait to feel that? In fact, practicing feeling that now is what will drive you into becoming who you’re visualizing. Even if it starts with trying to visualize and feel it for one minute a day. That is the fuel you’ll want to use to get you from today to your finish line. If our feelings are what drive us to act, then our feelings are essentially our GPS system on our map. So it’s key to intentionally practice these feelings so you’ll start taking the actions required to become your future self.
When I was over 300 pounds, I had to do a lot of convincing to myself that I could have the confidence I needed to do my job. My past was telling me that I needed to look a certain way to be successful so that wasn’t going to help. That was not going to get me showing up how I wanted. No matter how much I didn’t want to be that heavy, I was not going to be able to close my eyes and have the scale all of the sudden register some smaller number just because I thought it true. My size wasn’t going to give me confidence and it wasn’t going to take away my confidence. It was only how I was thinking about myself that could do that.
So I started in small ways. I adjusted my posture and held my head just a little higher. I wore different clothes that I felt good in. I knew I was capable of feeling different even with my body not being different. The small changes became a habit and you know what, I started feeling confident more regularly. But in the back of my head, I still had thoughts of, you know, if you were thinner. So I started entertaining other ideas that maybe I could do. Maybe I could lose weight. And you know, if you’ve ever had a lot of weight to lose, it’s the beginning where’s it’s the hardest. Even when you see the scale moving down, you struggle to see a difference in your body right away. You start to feel better, but to see a difference is a longer game. At least for me, it’s not for 30-40 pounds freer. So in order for it to work and keep working, I really needed to keep my reasons for wanting it close to my heart and reminding myself of it daily. (And it doesn’t matter what your reason is, as long as it resonates with you.)
I also frequently visualized myself there. I actually saw myself living from that space. I visualized myself wearing the clothes I wanted to fit into. Shopping in the regular sized section of the store. I made up situations in my head and visualized how that would feel and used that feeling to motivate me in my current body. I visualized myself being more confident, more happy and more capable.
What are you willing to believe to get yourself there? You know that most great things that we enjoy now started with an idea in the mind. What if Thomas Edison didn’t keep trying to invent the light bulb? What if Ford didn’t keep working on the combustion engine? What if Martin Luther King didn’t share his dream? And none of that came easy for them. Did you know that if you don’t purposely give yourself empowering thoughts to believe, your brain will offer some to you; and it’s typically not the thoughts we need to move us forward. They are more like, this is too much or I can’t do this or I don’t know what to do and then it’ll find the proof it needs to back it up. When you take control of your thoughts it’ll sound different for each of you, but it could be something like, I’ve totally got this. I’m amazing! I have the power within me to do this. Or, I’m learning how to do this. Or maybe no matter what, I won’t give up. Whatever it is, you’ve got to genuinely believe it. Otherwise your brain will call your bluff and look for proof of the exact opposite. So even if it needs to be I’m learning to embrace my power. I choose to see myself differently than I currently do. Or I’m willing to look for ways how I’m amazing. All that’s pointing you in the right direction.
Also, choose to not focus on what you can’t change, but what you can change. Like my weight, I couldn’t change that overnight, but I could change how I thought about it. I could change my focus to how I wanted to feel, not how I was feeling. It’s okay to feel negatively, but if choosing is an option, I’d totally move away from feelings of disappointment and desperation to feelings of confident and happy. When I’m wanting to give up, I can choose for my future self and stop for a moment to visualize and revisit my reasons for wanting it in the first place.
We also can’t change other people. People are kind of like the weather. We can’t control what’s coming, but we can take care and protect ourselves with appropriate self-care. We can try and maybe even resort to manipulating them to do so, and it might work, but, it also might not. And we usually end up turning into someone that we don’t like ourselves because manipulating doesn’t really have positive vibes behind it. It’s kind of being sneaky and done with the intent to get someone to be different then who they really are so we can feel better about it. When we’re trying to change what we can’t control, we end up losing control of how we want to feel. And it is a little different when it comes to raising our own children because we need to teach them and have expectations of them with clear consequences, but even then, they ultimately choose how they are going to act, right?
Can you imagine if all the energy you put in to changing something outside of your control were spent on something you can control and how different that would look? Instead of putting all your energy into trying to change the unchangeable, tap into your energy that motivates you and align it with what you can change. It feels empowering to make changes for our good. It also feels a little scary and hard sometimes too. All completely normal feelings.
If you are wanting to become someone different then who you are, not that who you are right now is bad or less than enough in any way, but if you’re looking to level up in your life. If you’re wanting to progress in any part of your life, create a clear vision of what that is. What does it look like? How does it feel to be there? How do you act? Allow all your brilliance to shine through. Empower yourself with a compelling enough reason to keep you motivated to get there. Tap in to your feelings and allow them to guide you in the right direction and trust yourself that you will get there. Respect yourself for choosing such an incredible goal for you and then have patience as you fumble your way through it. It’s the consistent small habits that are going to get you there. The consistent visualizing, the consistent practicing feelings, the consistent showing up for yourself.
Kind of like cutting back my roses, becoming a better version of ourselves is rewarding, but challenging. If you need any help getting there, I’m here to help. Make it a great day! Make it a great week! And I’ll see you next time! Bye
