Change your life

What if I told you the formula for changing your life was simple and easy?

What if I told you that you can begin changing your life within minutes?

What if I told you that you can begin pealing back the layers of negativity and lies away immediately?

All of the above is true. What I left out is the hard fact that executing the above is far from easy.

As before mentioned, the formula for all of it is simple.

Change your story.

We all have a story. And we all have a story we tell ourselves and have been telling ourselves for as long as forever.

Our story is sometimes irrelevant. However, the story we’ve told ourselves is absolutely critical to the process of changing our lives.

One can use pretty much any example of our life that we struggle with or have struggled with. I for example was deeply depressed as a child. At times I wondered if it was normal adolescent hormones and growing pains.

“You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards”. Steve Jobs

As a child I felt (the story I told myself) that I was abandoned by my father, my mother and my siblings. I felt deeply unwanted, therefore I became depressed to the point of making some very dumb decisions at an early age.

Again, this was the story I told myself which ended up ruling my life for way too long.

In reality my father died, my sister grew up and left the house, my brother joined the Navy and my mother sent me to a different state for some time for my benefit. Nevertheless, that’s not exactly the story I told myself.

It wasn’t until well into my adult years that I realized that I didn’t have a “bad” childhood. I might have had some challenges and I might not have been given a silver spoon but I was healthy, well taken care of, given support and was brought up with great morals.

I had to change the story I was telling myself about me in order to change my life.

Another example was the story I believed and told myself about going to college. After being expelled from multiple schools and not having a license, car or college fund, I just can’t go to college.

Then one day I told myself a different story, faced my fear of possible rejection and rode my bicycle to a community college and signed up for college. I was accepted! That changed my life.

Playing the “poor little me” card is much easier than telling ourselves the truth. It’s Our fault why we are where we are. I take credit for my success the same way that I take credit for my failures. I own them both. That’s my story now!

Self talk is underrated. The story we tell ourselves is crucial to the rest of our lives.

Way too much of the time we are giving outside entities the power we should own. If it’s someone else’s fault I can’t resolve it. But if it’s my fault I can deal with it right then and there.

I admit the execution and process is far from easy and not fast at all.

“A Year From Now You Will Wish You Had Started Today”. Karen Lamb

I’ve changed my entire life by changing my story. But I told myself that story for a Very long time and some details have deeper roots than others. Hence, some of those fights and demons are still fighting to keep their story. The story I made up.

An example of a battle I still fight is that of deep anger. The story I told myself forever and a day was that it was in my DNA. Why? Because I remember as a child seeing anger all around me. I saw anger in the older kids at my babysitter. I saw anger in my neighborhoods. I saw anger in my father. After my father died I saw anger in my brother and sister. For a long time after my father died I saw anger in my mother.

Thankfully as much anger surrounded me, love also surrounded me by my immediate and extended family. Amazing love that has helped me be the human being that I am today and that still drives me to always love and always become the best version of myself that I can be.

The journey doesn’t have to be horrendous and/or harsh. However the journey must be made if you want to change your life.

Change your story today. Begin to peal those layers now. Your future you will thank you.

Stay in the Fight