Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 7:57 — 15.5MB) | Embed
Who you are is realized by interpreting your circumstances, relationships, and experiences and identifying with them. You personalize those circumstances, relationships, and experiences and add feelings with them. It’s now a belief – limiting or empowering, depending on the thoughts you attached and the feelings and emotions packaged with them.
You take your circumstances, relationships, and experiences and create a monogram from them and stamp the large bold letters M.E. in your soul. Now that’s your identity. That’s who you are, and like I said, depending on the thoughts, feelings, and emotions you combine with them is how you experience every situation. You’ve now taken ownership, good or bad, right or wrong, empowering or destructive.
My life experiences, circumstances, and relationships have included abuse – mental, physical, and sexual; addictions – alcohol, drugs, food. I also experienced poverty, lack, rejection, abandonment, rape, murder, and mental institutions. Needless to say, I was a mess mentally, emotionally, physically, financially, and relationally.
I was born into literal hell without a means of escape and no one around me teaching me anything, or loving me.
In contrast, my niece, who grew up in a loving Christian two-parent upper-middle-class home. She attended quality schools, surrounded by numerous family members who worked very hard to provide her with all the advantages she needed to realize her full potential. Be a productive member of society. Know how to make good choices. Understand how to be self-sufficient, requiring no aide or support from anyone. Always told she was intelligent and beautiful and could have whatever she wanted in life if she worked for it. It was also instilled in her that she didn’t have to accept the opinions that other people have of her life and her choices. Or accept the options others want her to choose. Instead she was trained to understand that her options are of her own making and that she doesn’t have to accept limitations or characterizations of who she is or who she is supposed to be.
Consequently, fortunately, and by design, my niece never had to unlearn and suffer the consequences of the destructive mindsets that I experienced. Her foundational mindset is beneficial, and her thoughts start with what is best for her and filtered through her Christian beliefs. Our family continually told her that she was smart and beautiful, and she believes this as truth. She thinks she can do and have whatever she wants. And she owns who she is because that’s what she knows.
Over the years, I have done a lot of work resetting my mindset and renewing my mind from what I was born into and experienced initially from no fault of my own. It wasn’t easy or comfortable, and I often felt like I wasn’t going to make it and that I might as well give up and stop living. There have been many times I have discouraged myself by thinking, “I might as well give up, nothing has changed, and I’m never going to get past this.”
But God had different plans for me, just like He has for you.
While I was working on myself resetting my mindset and renewing my mind, I had to override destructive thoughts and the idea that I was defeated. I look at those old mindsets like scars on my body after an injury.
They are there as evidence of the injuries, but I am taking ownership of my life and applying cocoa butter on the scars, and one day, they will no longer be visible to the untrained eye.
My life is not worthless, and it’s definitely nor more valuable than my niece’s life because she didn’t have any of my negative experiences. Both of our lives are valuable. Both of our experiences are valuable. Both of our lives speak to and encourage different people’s experiences.
My niece can’t relate to having a mother and father that was drunk and fighting and committed suicide. I can’t relate to growing up in a loving suburban upper-middle-class family and going to cheerleading camp.
I can speak from my destruction, and she can speak from her advantage. I’m no longer ashamed of the devastation I came from, and she doesn’t have to be embarrassed because she came from an advantaged life.
Whether you originated from destruction or advantage, take ownership of your life. Live it out loud. Actively look for and take hold of opportunities that come your way. Speak to fear and doubt harassing you from a destructive mindset, and do the work to reset and renew your mind.
Part of my job description is to get you ready to do the work you were created to do, so listen to me when I say that, for some reason, everyone wants what everyone else has. Instead of accepting who they are.
Get clear on your value, and leverage it. Use force if necessary and propel yourself into service, your career, your passion, your life’s work, whatever you call it. But get moving. People are waiting on you to show up exactly as you are; adverse and beneficial experiences and all. I can only influence and speak to and do my work. I can’t show up as you and talk to the people who need to hear your voice or learn from your expertise. Only you can do that when you accept yourself and own your excellence.
Be proud of who you are and where you come from. You are one of a kind. There has never been another person on earth exactly like you, even if you are a twin, and there never will be another person exactly like you. You are fearfully and wonderfully made; an extraordinary work.
Remember this. When you recognize thoughts of fear and doubt or when you start to feel anxious, remind yourself that means your thoughts are destructive and you have the opportunity to think beneficial thoughts of success, peace, abundance and feel excited and happy about your life.
Tell yourself, “I got this.”
If you are ready to do the work, join me during the 5 Day Mindset Refresh – A free challenge to renew your mindset.
Learn:
- How to stop doubt and unbelief from tormenting you.
- What to do about a destructive thought life.
- The process to change your mindset.
Sign up for the 5 Day Mindset Refresh at TheTrueSelfSchool.com/refresh