You Can Change! Yes, You Can!

All my life, it seemed, there was struggle. I struggled to be seen, to be unseen, struggled to be understood, accepted or left alone. I never quite found a middle ground. It was constantly one extreme or another. It was exhausting. Life was exhausting, and quite frankly, terrifying.

I carried on, like all of us do but, never quite felt like I had it right, as if I was doing it wrong. I had to prove myself to the world, hide from it, confront it. It seemed as if life was against me and I had to get by without it’s help.

As the decades rolled by I began to see how pushing against everything, with scorn, judgement, disdain, what have you, wasn’t productive. I met a small handful of people who were living their lives from an entirely different point of view and it was working for them. So, slowly, very slowly, I began to look at my way of doing things and my beliefs around those behaviors and began to shift them a bit.

Sometimes I had a bit of success, sometimes I slid backward and got stuck. We all do, I guess but, I persevered. What if I stopped pushing against things? What would happen if I stopped fighting everything that came into my life, as if it were there to hurt me? What would happen if I allowed myself to be a bit more vulnerable than usual, while reminding myself that life wasn’t as bad as I thought. Maybe, the world wasn’t such a dark and scary place. Maybe, it was my perception, that was skewed rather than what was actually there.

Moving myself into a place where I actually believed that how I viewed things would directly influence outcomes was a hard sell. To get here we actually have to get out of our own heads, out of our own thinking and look at the world from a neutral place, a non-judgmental place. It takes work and time. Meditation helped and so did breathing exercises. Dealing with my emotional blocks, childhood hurts and traumas, as well as culturally ingrained beliefs, all had to be reconciled.

This isn’t typically an overnight process. While I was moving through therapy, I was also reminding myself, relentlessly, that I was safe, that the world was a benevolent place, that not everybody is out to get me. We all have different hidden and not so hidden fears. Learning what they are, why they’re there and working to overcome them, will help shift our perspective on our world, internal and external.

Going through life believing that you’re unworthy, undervalued, fighting an uphill battle, etc.. is no way to live. And for many of us, our world didn’t teach us from day one that we were a valued, loved, always accepted, worthy being. Many of us have to teach ourselves. Recognizing that change is possible is half the process. We can’t change without admitting that there’s a need for it to happen in the first place.

Learning to believe that living in survival mode is really the lowest form of life and realizing, that is actually where we are, is also often a rough sell. We tend to gravitate toward what we know and if what we know is just surviving, most of those around us will also be in the same place, mentally. Leaving our group, family or cultural way of being is often frowned upon. Changing your beliefs to create a better life can be particularly tough, if our religious, family and cultural beliefs are very strong. Choosing to change in spite of these deeply held traditions, can keep some folks back. It’s truly a personal choice.

Getting out of where you are psychologically, changing your thinking and beliefs, rarely goes in a straight line. Healing isn’t linear. So, as you move through your life, remind yourself constantly, that it’s not all going to shit, that things will change. They always do. And rather than leaning toward the negative way you’ve been thinking your whole life, tell yourself that things will turn around, that they will get better.

Part of this shift in our perspective often feels like a big fat lie and honestly, it is. But, consider this, you’ve been lying to yourself all along about everything being bad. So, why not start lying about everything being good. Your brain is going to believe whatever you tell it. So, start telling it good things. The truth is you have nothing to lose. There are actually multitudes of studies out there that show how our thoughts create our realities. There are studies that show how our thoughts create chemicals in our brains, that inturn send those chemicals through our bodies and inturn affect our health. It’s actual science, not woo woo gobbly gook. Your thoughts affect your health and your beliefs about the world you live in.

What I’m telling you in this short little post, is that you have a profound influence over your life. What happens outside of you, is affected directly by what happens inside of you. You are a profoundly powerful co-creator of your reality. The cells inside your body are being affected by the thoughts you’re thinking right now.

Why are some people calm in the face of adversity and others come unhinged? It’s because of their thoughts and beliefs. Yes, their upbringing and life experiences influence their response, too but, all of it comes down to our beliefs and the beautiful truth is, that we can change our beliefs and our thoughts. We have complete control over these things. Like I said above, it’s simple but not always easy. Making these changes requires time, effort and a desire for change.

We, as humans are creatures of habit and change is often resisted. It often seems like an exception, rather than the rule, that profound change happens in anyone’s life. Those that completely turn their lives around are seen as some kind of amazing herculean beings, when in fact, they’re not. They just took the time and effort to make the necessary changes in their lives. There’s no secret formula that’s only available to a few of us. Shifting our perspective and reaching for more positive ways of thinking and believing is available to everyone, even you.

Here are some suggestions to get you started. Books I recommend, The Untethered Soul by Michael Singer, You Can Heal Your Life, by Louise Hay and Change Your Thoughts Change Your Life, by Wayne Dyer. Not a reader? They’re all available on audiobook. Do a search online for beginning meditation and/or breathing techniques. Take 5–30 minutes everyday for yourself, whatever fits into your schedule. Start small if you have to and work up to 30–60 minutes. Tell yourself nice things, like you’re a child that an adult is being kind to.

The trick here is to start, just start. We are all capable of change and growth, all of us. We are all capable of feeling better about ourselves and our lives.

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This post was previously published on medium.com.

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