This is part two of a two part episode. The first five habits are in part 1.
If you find yourself overwhelmed, stressed, or completely out of control in your life, then these two episodes will have you examining what you might be doing to create the chaos. Most of the time, we overextend ourselves and actually have a choice if that’s going to happen or not.
Today’s quote is by Eckhart Tolle and it’s this:
“If small things have the power to disturb you, then who you think you are is exactly that: small”
A couple days ago, I met my girlfriend and some friends at Red Lobster restaurant. I don’t eat much seafood at all, but was looking forward to their cajun chicken pasta, which is something I always get anytime I end up there.
Well, the meal came and immediately I noticed my food had been sitting a while. You know how you can tell when your sauce and noodles look a little dry, right? Well, I could see it before ever sinking my teeth into it.
But, I gave it a bite just in case I was wrong.
I wasn’t.
It had gotten cooler. It wasn’t cold, it was just cooler than it should have been. This was one of those moments I could either settle and not honor my personal boundaries (you know, just eat what you get so you don’t have to be that person that complains about your food), or ask the waitress to have the kitchen warm it up a bit.
It is extremely rare I’ll send something back. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever sent something back for not being warm enough. But this time, something inside me kicked into gear, and I asked the waitress if they could warm it up a bit because it appeared to have been sitting too long.
Almost every restaurant I’ve ever been to wants you to be happy, and will bend over backwards to accommodate you. I don’t know what it is, but you rarely see that in any other establishment. It exists in other businesses, but restaurants are well known to satisfy you even if they have to eat the cost of the meal.
The waitress said, “Of course!” and brought my meal back into the kitchen. Within minutes, she returned, apologized, and asked me if it was okay. The first thing I noticed is that I had more than she originally brought out.
I said, “Wow, thank you!” The next thing was that it was considerably hotter than before. I bit into it and was completely satisfied with the service and the meal.
Kudos to Red Lobster for fixing things quickly for me, without question. My point of this story however is to share with you one of three ways this could have gone.
Which response would you have had? There are probably 1 of 3 typical responses to this scenario, and they are:
- You get angry with the wait person and tell them your meal is cold. You probably feel disrespected and slighted.
- You politely ask if they can reheat or give you a new plate so that you can enjoy a hot meal.
- You don’t say anything and probably tell the wait person that everything is great.
If you had a reaction of number 1, where you get angry, why is that? You aren’t a perfectionist, are you? 😉
Do you expect perfection everywhere you go? Are you more often disappointed than not?
Or, are you number 2 where you don’t get angry, but still want what you came in for and politely ask for another serving, or to warm your plate up?
How about number 3? Where you’re afraid to confront because you don’t want to look bad in front of others? And if so, do you find that you typically don’t get what you want in life?
There’s really no wrong way to be, but I’m willing to bet you’ll get more bees with honey instead of vinegar. In other words, if you have a choice between being angry or being polite, you’ll probably get better service by being polite almost every time.
Or, let me put it this way, you’ll probably get more authentic friendliness instead of contrived friendliness.
Believe me, if you are angry at someone and they put on a smile, it’s almost always contrived. And that’s no fun, because what kind of angry thoughts are now swimming around in their head?
I chose to be polite, but there’s a bigger reason I did that and it’s not just because I’m typically a calm person in most situations.
I didn’t get angry because I don’t want to be small.
Today’s quote is “If small things have the power to disturb you, then who you think you are is exactly that: small.”
Who do you think you are? Are you small or grand? Are you devolved or evolved?
Your level of growth and healing will be tested time and time again by situations that provoke reaction in you.
That doesn’t mean you won’t experience anger or other negative emotions, but who you become during a reaction shows the world where you are in your personal evolution.
My reaction was polite and understanding that these things will happen and that no one is perfect. There’s no possible way that Red Lobster or any restaurant can serve hundreds or thousands of people a day without the occasional glitch.
The law of averages says that having a glitch-free day is almost impossible. It’s a scientific reality!
So how could I possibly get mad that I experienced that glitch, if science proves that I will eventually experience these things in my life.
This is what you can do too: Just break down all the problems in your life to scientific reality.
The reality is that you will get the glitches that come with everyday life. Those glitches are the “small things”. When you let those small things disturb you, you are fighting a futile, pointless battle with scientific reality.
When you realize that overreacting is futile, you become larger. You evolve.
Sure, I could have sent it back, and the waitress could have brought back an even colder plate. And at that point, I have another decision to make, same as last time.
I could laugh, and politely say, “Well, this is even colder than last time. Would you mind trying one more time?”
And I would have watched the reaction of the waitress…
Is she going to react from an evolved state, or is she going to let this little thing disturb her, hopefully remembering that science proves this kind of thing is bound to happen?
And if she brought it back a third time cold or just slightly warmer, I then have the option to talk to manager. I have the option, and a right, to be angry, or at least assertive.
I could say to the waitress, “I’ve tried to give you two chances to succeed, but you failed. I would now like to talk to someone in charge. Please get the manager.”
Three times is enough for me to go, “You know, the scientific reality is that by this point I should have gotten a warm meal. Instead, I am receiving bad service.”
I would still be polite, but there’s a time to be firm. This is where you honor yourself and what you believe to be the right thing to do.
Fortunately, I’ve never had this happen. I’ve never had a restaurant experience evolve into yelling or anger. But this event did make me think about how we react to certain situations in life.
There’s a choice on how to respond to the challenges in life, and there’s a chance to connect and engage with people on a really authentic level so that they have an opportunity to make things right.
You won’t always be treated with respect and kindness, and some people will be downright rude, but for the most part, everyone just wants to get through their day and get along with the people they meet.
Remember that the science can’t really be refuted here, so why bother getting angry with most people? Scientific reality says that eventually, you will get a cold plate of food, or a ding in your car or someone will cut in front of you in line, or whatever.
Things are going to happen, and they have to happen, so that you can find out who you really are and how much you have grown and evolved.
Now, let’s get into part 2 of The Seven Habits of Highly Overextended People and figure out what the last two habits are that keep people getting overwhelmed and stressed out.
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This episode is part 2 of a two-part episode called The Seven Habits of Highly Overextended People. Last week was part 1 so if you haven’t heard it yet, check that out first.
Before we move on to the last two habits, here’s a recap of the first five:
- Get less quality sleep
Getting less quality sleep helps you feel completely unprepared and restless for the day. It’s a perfect start to an unproductive day. However, remember those 5 minute power naps to make you feel like you’ve slept for hours – they can make your day anew!
- Oversaturate yourself with too much work, information or tasks
Why stay balanced with enough work and play to level things out? If you really want to feel overextended, you need more of the stuff you don’t want in your life. In order to get more of that, remember habit 3:
- Say “yes” to everything
Saying No to things you really don’t want in your life is honoring your boundaries.
So if you would rather honor other people’s boundaries and not your own, say Yes more often, and do things you’d rather not do.
This will help you keep your doormat status so that people can continue walking on you and taking advantage of you.
Number 4 is:
- Obligate yourself to everyone
For a really overextended life, make sure you obligate yourself to people, tasks and events all the time. Volunteer to lead groups when you’re too busy and make sure to add more work to an already full work day.
It’s not just saying Yes to people, but planning in advance to take the lead on things when you are already overworked and overtaxed. It’s an excellent strategy in self-defeat and burnout.
Obligating yourself and over-volunteering for things is noble for sure, but sometimes you gotta remember that other people can do the job too, even if you think they can’t.
Overextended people like to think they’re irreplaceable, but most of the time, that’s not true. If you can’t do the job, someone else will. And if they can’t, everyone will adapt to a new system.
- Once you commit, never quit
Many times, overextended people never quit what they’ve committed to. This means they stay in terrible jobs, terrible relationships, terrible situations, and more.
Do you stay in something awful just because you committed to it? I can guarantee you didn’t think it was going to be awful when you started, so when it isn’t what you signed up for anymore, maybe it’s time to think about quitting.
And now that you are reminded of the first 5 habits, it’s time to talk about habit number 6, which is this:
- Highly overextended people lie to themselves
“Hey honey, I have one more task to get done, then I’m leaving in 15 minutes!”
Uh huh. Right.
This takes some explaining, but let me relate it to something I used to do. When I was working the 9 to 5, I would rarely leave at 5. In fact, I think I never left on time from what I recall.
At the time, I was married and my wife would call me asking me what time I was leaving. I would say, “I’m leaving in 15 minutes.”
And I really believed I was leaving in 15 minutes. But, that never happened. I would convince myself and her that I would be leaving at a certain time, but it never happened. I usually ended up staying sometimes up to an hour longer than I mentioned.
After a while, this got old. And one day, my wife said to me, “You always say you’re going to leave but you don’t. It doesn’t feel very good when you don’t show up after you tell me you’re going to.”
This really impacted me. I mean, I already knew I was doing it, but I wasn’t considering how I was treating those around me by making false promises.
The 5th habit has overextended people committing to too many things and never quitting, whereas this 6th habit shows that they commit and never follow through.
I know that’s a strange dichotomy. In one instance, a person who gets him or herself overextended commits to projects and other things that they don’t really have time for, and in this instance, the overextended person (me) commits to a time and never makes it, completely failing to follow through.
That’s strange, isn’t it? But what was happening for me was two things:
- I was putting faith into wishful thinking
- I was putting my priorities in the wrong order
Wishful thinking is when you hope something happens, but it probably won’t. But wishful thinking is what I relied on when telling my wife I’d be leaving work in 15 minutes. That’s pretty much like promising someone a huge return on someone’s investment, when you really don’t know if it will happen or not.
It’s setting up expectations that will almost always disappoint.
And my priorities were out of whack for sure. After all, why would I commit to the one I love most that I would be leaving to come home and see her in the next 15 minutes, then break that commitment?
Essentially, repeating this behavior creates a liar. But you’re not only lying to people you commit to, you’re mostly lying to yourself. Overextended people are often late to many things in life because they run out of time doing the things they’ve obligated themselves to.
15 minutes to an overextended person is about 2 hours to the rest of the world. I might as well have told my wife, “I’ll be leaving in an hour and a half”, so at least I’d be as close to right as possible.
But instead, I chose to believe my own story that I’d be leaving work in 15 minutes.
Come on, you know you’re not going to get it done in 15 minutes. If you’re an overextended person, you know it’s not going to happen because when does it ever?
Unless you’ve learned to be diligent with your time that is.
And that’s one thing I had to learn in order to get over this hurdle in my life. I had to learn to follow through on time commitments.
This is different than project and other commitments that I mentioned in habit 5. Time commitments, where you promise you’ll do something at a certain time are as important but treated separately.
The reason they are so important has nothing to do with a promise to someone else, but almost everything to do with what you tell yourself.
When you really believe that you are going to do something at a certain time, but 9 out of 10 times you don’t do it by that time, you turn into a compulsive exaggerator. I want to say you’re a compulsive liar, but it’s not intentional.
But looking at your track record, if you’re late more often than not, it’s time to stop exaggerating. And there’s a good reason why…
When you exaggerate or promise things that you can’t deliver in the time you say, your subconscious mind starts to no longer trust what you say.
I know it sounds a little odd, but your subconscious mind is like a computer that does what it’s told. If you tell yourself that you’ll be leaving in 15 minutes, but instead it takes 45 minutes, and you do this repeatedly day after day, you will start to lose faith in yourself.
You will start feeling like a failure. You’ll find that negative self-talk starts to creep in more and more saying things like, “You’re not good enough”, or “You don’t deserve good things”. The reason all this starts happening is because you start to lose connection with that deeper part of yourself.
When your subconscious mind can’t trust you, life gets much more stressful and things never seem to go your way. Your subconscious mind is what’s really running the show, and by telling it false information, you are reprogramming it to believe in the wrong things.
If it doesn’t believe what you tell it, you become distrustful of yourself.
This is kind of deep and hard to explain, but let’s just put it this way:
Your subconscious mind is like a child. The more you nurture it, the more likely your mind is going to be sharp and resourceful, helping you out when you need it.
The more you exaggerate and lie to it, saying things like you’ll be leaving at a certain time but never follow through, the more rebellious that mind becomes, and the more likely you won’t get what you want and need in life.
This was happening to me. I would commit to a time, then not meet that time. This made it appear to my wife that I valued work more than family, and my word could not be trusted.
This is not what you want. I’ve seen parents do this with their kids. They’ll say, get ready kids we’re leaving. And the kids get ready but the parents are still taking their time and checking email or changing clothes.
The kids eventually sit down and play their games or do other things. Then the parents come out and yell at the kids, “I told you to get ready, aren’t you ready yet?”
This repeats over and over again throughout the years, and quite soon the kids just ignore the parents because they never seem to follow through on their time commitments.
Do you have kids? Do they ignore you? My guess is that there has been a lack of accountability in your house if that’s the case.
But the trick is to start being accountable to yourself first. This is what I started doing at work. When my wife called me at work, I could tell she stopped believing me when I told her that I was leaving shortly. This was impacting our relationship, so I made a commitment to myself that I would honor the time I gave her no matter what.
If I said 15 minutes, I was shutting down my computer in 10, because I knew it would take 5 minutes to wrap everything else up.
Slowly over the weeks, I learned to speak what I really meant. I would never promise anything I couldn’t fulfill. I started really assessing how much time I needed and followed through almost every time.
It didn’t always work out, but even if I couldn’t finish my work in time, I chose to leave it until the next day. I made my family a priority over my work, in a sense.
I mean, I already got my 8 hours for the day, so those extra hours after work were me trying to make my life easier for the next day. But I almost forgot that life is better when you have happy family! So I changed my priorities and starting honoring my time commitments.
My wife got happier and I was happier overall because something wonderful happened inside of me and that is, now that I was making and honoring my time commitments, my subconscious mind knew that I was congruent. It knew that what I said, I meant. So I was able to be more consistent in my life.
I was able to honor myself more and more, giving me more confidence and more empowerment. Life shifted in the best way when I followed through on my time commitments. These commitments are just tiny promises to yourself that you’ll do something at a certain time.
The follow through on those time commitments however is what helps you create a less stressful life. Not only that, you end up prioritizing what’s most important.
It’s true you sometimes need to work late to make money to take care of your family, but how much is enough? Work will always be there and there will always be more than you can handle. Overextended people think they need to handle it all now to make their tomorrow easier.
I’ve learned to stop working when I commit to stop working so that I don’t miss precious time with loved ones. I know work is sitting there, but it’s always sitting there. There’s always more to do.
Habit 6 is to stop lying to yourself. Don’t lie and say you’re going to do something and not follow through. There are times, yes, when quitting a commitment is the best option like I said about habit number 5. But remember the small, daily commitments you make. These are even more important because of the compound effect of your actions.
If you commit to something daily and 9 out of 10 times you can’t follow through, either change what you’re committing to, or change your priorities and commit to it no matter what.
Either way, stop lying to yourself and others if most of the time you really can’t follow through. It hurts your connection with people and especially yourself. Once that inner self doesn’t believe you anymore, you enjoy life a lot less. Your instinct decreases and you start making bad decisions because soon you really don’t know what’s right for you.
If you promise someone a callback in a week, make it a week on the dot. You’re going to mess up now and then, but that’s just the way it is and things like that people will forget about.
But they’ll never forget being repeatedly told that you’ll do something and you don’t. That wears everyone out and reveals to them how much they can or can’t trust your word.
The final habit coming up next…
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And finally, the number 7 habit is this:
7. Highly overextended people believe if you want something done right, do it yourself
Overextended people are also typically perfectionists. And because they want perfection in what they do, they don’t trust others to be able to do the job correctly. So they take on the added responsibility of doing everything themselves.
This can happen even when there are others around that are willing to help! But, if you want to stay overextended, never delegate tasks and always do it yourself.
There are several problems with that logic of course. When you can only trust yourself to do it right, you get all the stress and responsibility and the blame when things go wrong.
This can work, especially if you own your own business and want to take on that role. But what about all the other areas of life or working for someone else?
Do you feel so compelled to take everything on simply because you know you can do it better than anyone else?
It’s quite possible you can, I don’t doubt it. In fact, when I worked in IT, I worked with a lot of people who I felt simply couldn’t handle the job. I didn’t trust them to handle the job so I wouldn’t give them tasks.
I would work with some really slow people too, and they were the last people to get the job done. So I was always able to justify my beliefs in what people were capable of, simply by assigning them a job and seeing the results.
However, I soon learned that just by expecting nothing more, I also tasked them with nothing more. In other words, I expected the slow people to stay slow, so when I assigned something to them, I would also give them a lot of leeway to finish it knowing they were slow.
But I soon found out that many, many people will do only what is expected of them and not what is asked. Since I usually didn’t ask slow people to do something fast, they never worked fast.
There are different types of people in the world, that’s for sure. Some are diligent workers and will do anything you ask. And they will finish quickly and ask for more work. Then there are others that do the opposite.
The fast and efficient ones aren’t the ones you typically worry about. But everyone else… we start to develop judgments about their performance.
I’m not just talking about work here, I’m talking about all situations where you could trust in someone else to do a task but choose not to.
What’s tough is that the more you don’t trust someone to do a task, the more that mistrust gets reinforced in them which causes them to become the performer you expect.
This is more true than you might imagine.
If you expect people around you to never get anything right, they probably won’t. Not only do you project that expectation on them, consciously or unconsciously, but all you end up looking for is what they do wrong.
Some managers are great at this. They micromanage their employees knowing they won’t perform well unless they are consistently told what to do and consistently monitored. The employees accommodate the manager by feeling bad about themselves and believing they will never be good enough.
But some managers will look for results by letting employees run with the ball until the project is complete, only checking in now and then.
Yes, there are some employees that can’t do well without constant supervision. Then there are those that will surprise you and get things done simply because you trusted them to do it.
Overextended people don’t tend to trust too many other people because they always look for what those people are doing wrong, instead of what they are doing right. So they take on more responsibility by taking on the tasks they don’t trust others with.
I won’t lie, there are people I’ve worked with that really didn’t deserve the job they were doing because they couldn’t handle it. I’ve let people under me run with the ball and found out they were terrible at it.
Though, one thing I did differently was give them positive reinforcement. Instead of saying how awful they were, I told them “great job” and what I wanted to see improve for next time.
This isn’t a career advice section so I hope you don’t mind that I’m giving you some details here, but I do want to convey that when you find yourself being the perfectionist and only expecting less from others, you might never find out if they could ever achieve results.
They may not get there the same way, but they may surprise you with how they did get there. And others may not surprise you at all and justify what you believed to be true about them.
But, without failure there is no feedback. Without giving someone a chance to mess up, you don’t give them a chance to learn experientially from their mistakes.
If you believe that in order to get things done right, you have to do it yourself, you are right and you are wrong.
You are right because when you do things yourself, they will get done the way you want them done. And you are wrong because only you know the perfect definition of what “right” is, so others will never fit into your mold of that definition. No matter what they do they will be wrong.
That’s a “damned if you do and damned if you don’t” scenario. No matter how well the other person does, it will never match your definition of perfection.
So, if you’re like that, what’s the solution? How do you break this cycle of not trusting people and believing no one can possibly do as well as you?
First, remember what you already know: It’s true! No one will ever do as well as you. And because that’s true, you can tackle the world all by yourself, and be the recipient of all the stress and anxiety that goes along with it, or you can surrender to the fact that when you let others fail, they will succeed.
What I mean by that is that by actually letting people fail, you are giving them a gift. I could never teach what I teach without the dysfunction and failure I went through in my life.
How did you become such a perfectionist? Because when it went bad, you made sure it would go good next time.
If you think your kid is going to break your expensive plates when they do the dishes, let them break them! I know it’s not what you want, but they’re probably going to feel really bad after it happens, but you’ll give them the gift of trust.
If you think your spouse or partner is incapable of doing something, let them do it if they want to. There’s no better way to empower someone than to trust them to do it on their own so that they can know what they’re capable of.
In the past, when people would tell me what I’m capable of, that would be the standard I lived up to. When someone told me I was bad at something, I’d find myself getting worse at it.
The same was true when being told that I was good at something. I remember a good friend of mine told me that I was worth so much more than I was asking for in my job. I was like, “But I don’t have the skills and certainly don’t know as much as you.”
He said, “You don’t have to have all the skills because what you have is the ability to lead, learn and improve, something a lot of other guys don’t have. Skills are attainable, intrinsic qualities like yours are more ingrained.”
When he said that to me, I decided to ask for five more dollars than what I typically asked when looking for another job. He gave me the confidence, even though I was still in a bit of disbelief of what he said.
But I asked, and because I did, I got what I was asking for and even more. This would not have happened had he not filled me with positive, reinforcing, motivational advice like that.
This is a gift you can give to others. Believe in them and tell them they’re great, and they may just live up to those standards. If you’re a perfectionist, you and I both know they’ll never live up to your standards, but their improvements might surprise the heck out of you.
This brings to mind what I did over last weekend. My girlfriend and I were volunteering along with many other people to help give school supplies and other necessities to homeless and poor children.
Six thousand children arrived that day, and all of us volunteers didn’t stop until it was over. But here’s what I want to share: There was a point where I was serving cups of soda to everyone in attendance.
It was mad, we had to fill cups with ice and soda over and over again. But each kid that came up, I wanted to see them smile so I would try to think of things that I could say to them to make that happen.
One thing I found worked more often than not was this – as they grabbed a cup, I would look at them and say, “Excellent choice. You’re gonna love that.” Almost always, they smiled as if they just did something right.
Do you know what it feels like when someone says, “Excellent job! Way to go”? Those kids left the table happy. Many would come up shy and hesitant, but when they were told how well they did in choosing, they just lit up.
There really was no challenge in choosing either. They came up and all they had to do was grab the soda they wanted.
But telling them they made a good choice? Wow, it made me feel good to see their smiles.
Positive reinforcement is so much more effective than mistrust and setting low expectations for people.
I always prefer telling someone they did well, but follow it up with honest advice to do better next time rather than just tell them how badly they did. It just seems to get through faster and keep everyone in a better mood.
Want to know what it feels like to be positively reinforced? Well, I’m going to tell you…
You chose to improve yourself today. You played this show, which may or may not be the only show you listen to. And because you chose to improve yourself in some way, that proves that you want to be a better person for yourself and the world.
There are times when you’re going to make mistakes and maybe even upset people, but that’s life! You are never going to be perfect and I don’t want you to be.
I just want you to move in the direction of greatness. And since you’re still here listening to these words, choosing not to fast forward and skip the most important part of the episode, it proves to me how dedicated you are to evolving yourself.
And why evolve yourself? Because you know that the more improved and evolved you can be, the more you can do in the world. It doesn’t mean you have to be Ghandi and fight for a great cause, because sometimes the great cause is within.
Ghandi said “Be the change you want to see in the world.” You are doing that today. You are the change, and you continue to be a role model for others to learn from.
Even if you don’t believe you’re ready to be a role model, I know you are. I know this because there is always someone that can learn from you. There is always someone who has less, feels less, and thinks they are not as worthy as you.
So know that you are worthy and you are a beacon of hope and light to others. Just being the best you brings out the best in others.
Sometimes those others might take longer to get there, and sometimes others won’t understand you and maybe feel awkward around you. After all, some people don’t like change (you know those people, don’t you?).
But being around someone who evolves and changes opens the door for others to change. So once you are the change you want to see in others, they have the opportunity to do the same. And you don’t have to do a thing but keep working on yourself.
Isn’t it great to be able to give that gift to others? The gift of growing and evolving, without having to do anything but work on yourself?
Continue to move in the direction of greatness and you will change the world.
Thanks for listening today.
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There are a lot more things that can overextend us but I wanted to cover the most prevalent so that you could get a firm grasp on what you need to do to start making room in your life for more important things.
Those important things could be loved ones, work, hobbies, or whatever you want to occupy your time.
If you’re like me, you don’t have the luxury of many free hours, however, sometimes when you’re doing something worthwhile, you feel like you’re working towards a good cause.
I don’t care if you think you have the worst job on the planet, it serves someone.
Serving people is what we all do in one way, shape or form. I serve you by creating this show and writing. You serve me by listening which hopefully helps you heal. Plus, the more people that listen, the higher the show can rank so others find it.
Sometimes a sponsor or a donor kicks in and helps the show stay on the air. It’s a cycle of give and take, and the system works well when it’s spread out fairly evenly.
We all serve someone, even if you don’t like what you do. Even the super wealthy pay for hotel rooms which serve the hotel and its employees.
But what does this all mean? It means that we all have purpose and meaning to someone else. The problem that happens sometimes is that
- Some people aren’t grateful for our service
- Sometimes we don’t like what we do for service
Which begs one, multi-part question:
If people aren’t grateful for your service and you don’t like what you do to serve others, why are you still doing it?
If that describes you, your answer is most likely, “I have to!” or “I need the money!”
I get this! We all need money because that’s how the world works. I want money just as much as the next person, but I’ve let go of good paying jobs simply because I was miserable.
I once choose a soup kitchen over a paycheck because I refused to sacrifice my significance. To this day, if I’m doing something that makes me miserable, I stop it if I can, then find an alternative.
There are alternatives I’m willing to consider that many other people won’t which is why I’m usually at peace in my life.
When you can accept a lower standard of living than where you’re at now, you’ll find that you are more empowered than you’ve ever been because you no longer make decisions from a place of fear.
It doesn’t mean you have to stay in this low place, it just means that you can now make decisions that come from power, not fear.
Making empowered decisions like this usually results in an empowered, liberated life.
This is what I want for you. So step into that power and be firm in your decisions and actions, so that you can create the life you want. When you do this, you’ll discover what I already know to be true about you, that you are amazing.
