Life Lessons | It Happened to Me | Mindful Expressions | Change | Spirituality

Changing the Stories of Our Lives

Tips to facilitate the art of change

Do you ever look in the mirror and ask, “What’s wrong with me?” I know I do. I feel like a misfit and broken sometimes. Do you? Is it a misalignment of values and goals? Maybe, just maybe, I’m not broken at all. Perhaps it's just an old worn out story that keeps repeating itself.

Is it fear? Is it a lack of self-trust? Or something altogether different? These questions run amok through my brain a lot lately. I question what holds me back from feeling connected to my spirit energy and achieving what I feel is my purpose. I have spent most of my life living in the shadows of fear — of being judged by others, making mistakes, never being good enough, and not living up to my potential.

Fear is as an unpleasant emotion caused by the belief that someone or something is dangerous, likely to cause pain or a threat, while trust is a firm belief in the reliability, truth, ability, or strength of someone or something, including myself.

Both terms are based on our personal beliefs and experiences.

Perhaps you have heard the phrase that fear is False Evidence Appearing Real. Our brains keep us in the perpetual loop of stories we grew up with. We come to believe the false evidence as our truth and it clouds our ability to trust anything besides the fallacy.

I believe in order to learn to trust ourselves, we need to re-write those stories and exhume the evidence of our inner truth, strengths, and abilities. That starts by becoming a detective and uncovering the clues riddled within the truth and the lies.

Living Life Backwards

Years ago, I read the concept that we live our lives backwards. In our pursuit of happiness and success, we tell ourselves:

“Once I have/achieve/ _______________ , then I will be happy.” Instead, we should focus on “Once I am happy, then I will have/achieve ___________.”

I am still working on this, but there is so much truth in this statement. I always believed that if I followed my heart and my passion, then I would be happy. I saw glimpses of this at different times, but occasionally I still have to remind myself.

A couple of years back, I went through yet another life crumbling disappointment. The type of event where everything I believed in shatters into a million pieces. A betrayal that leaves shards of broken dreams scattered on the floor. All hope and faith vanishes in the blink of an eye. It’s hard to breathe and the booming question, WHY?, flashes like a neon sign in my brain.

Have you felt this type of disappointment?

I set out, once again, on a journey of recovery. Recovery of happiness, I guess you could say. I immersed myself with things that brought me a smile, even if just for a few seconds. I cocooned myself in a blanket of time to get back in touch with my spirit and the person who was beneath the layers of labels and supposed to’s. It became my daily survival technique.

It brought me the awareness and deeper understanding that I am the only one responsible for my choices. No one else is to blame or approve of my choices, circumstances, or my definition of happiness. It was solely up to me. I am 100% responsible for my choices. And yes, there is always a choice.

Choices

In life, it sometimes appears that we have no choice. We always have a choice. We may not like our options, but we still have the freedom of choice. That’s free will in action.

The choice that I often struggle with is security versus my Myers Briggs INFP personality — Introverted, Intuition, Feeling, and Perception. People with this personality type are described as introverted, idealistic, creative, driven by high values and considered a mediator. They do well in careers where they can express their creativity and visions.

Security of a steady paycheck and benefits often come with a nine-to-five structured work place. Often, I feel like a misfit in the day-to-day of work structure and small talk. This struggle between security and my personality type doesn’t meld well within me. Yet, I almost always fall back into the safety level, according to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.

I learned years ago, when I was at a financial low point and forced to look at my wants versus my needs, that what I thought I needed was a misconception. The same goes for needing help versus wanting help.

Revisiting the hierarchy opened my eyes to the fact that it isn’t just climbing the pyramid or mountain to self-actualization, it is about survival versus growth. Maslow considered the bottom two needs as deficiency needs, yet I see them as our survival needs. At the foundation are physiological things like breathing, food, water, shelter, and sleep. The second tier is safety and security. Things such as health, employment, social abilities, and family fall into this category.

Once the foundation of those two tiers is in place, we move further up the pyramid into the growth categories. Our sense of connection through love and belonging, our esteem through a sense of self, and then the actualization of who we are and living toward our full potential.

We hear a lot these days about emotional intelligence and growth-mindset. But here is a key. Until we can embrace the mindset change needed to move from surviving to thriving, we will always fall back to that one element within surviving that puts up roadblocks and causes train wrecks in our psyche.

For many of us that have experienced trauma (in all its many forms), we need to look deeply at that one thing in the bottom two tiers that limits us and keeps us in the fixed mindset of it happened to us. When we take responsibility for our choices, the ones we perhaps didn’t have in our younger days, is when the new story begins.

“Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual.” — Viktor Frankl from Man’s Search For Meaning

I know in my past story, searching for answers lead me astray and gave my power away. I like how Steven Covey defines responsibility. It is response-ability. I take responsibility to find the right responses to my problems to fulfill the tasks which are given to me individually.

Facilitating the Art of Change

Over the years, I have learned that there is an art to making permanent changes. It always takes me back to the serenity prayer.

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference, living one day at a time; enjoying one moment at a time; taking this world as it is and not as I would have it; trusting that You will make all things right if I surrender to Your will; so that I may be reasonably happy in this life and supremely happy with You forever in the next. Amen. — − Reinhold Niebuhr

Taking chances that grow into changes is a form of artistic expression. One subtle change can make a difference in the outcome. That is where my question of is it a fear or a lack of trust comes into play. As I change my responses, I see trust in myself grow. It gives me a renewed reliability to see the strength in myself again. I no longer give my power away to others because I am confident in my choices of what is best for me and my well-being. It isn’t just forcing myself to do things differently; it is living one day at a time, enjoying the moments as they come. Slow and steady wins the race, so to speak.

Is it happiness or freedom we are searching for?

Perhaps freedom is when we stop judging ourselves and others. But, I have quite a few years to listen for the answer to that one. — the last question in my “The Life I Didn’t Know I Wanted” post.

When I wrote “The Life I Didn’t Know I Wanted” I was passing through the 60th mile marker on my road trip of life and looking at my pursuit of freedom of living as a woman in a man’s world and settling in to my femininity.

Ironically, today I am looking closer at the subtitle — The powerful feminine energy I needed.

Masculine and feminine energy have nothing to do with gender. Masculine energy is being action oriented with structure and rules mapping out the steps for logic to be applied. Feminine energy follows natural rhythms that are circular rather than linear. It provides us with the nurturing traits that enhance our ability to connect with other human beings.

The best analogy I can relate to is the Ruby Red Slippers in the Wizard of Oz movie. The magical power contained within the shoes. Click 3 times and it can take you home once you discover a belief within yourself.

The color of red symbolizes power and boldness. The energy of passion, love, strength, courage, danger, and aggression. However, in the original books about Oz, the shoes were silver. They changed the color as they were introducing the new technology of technicolor with the release of the movie.

Silver symbolizes warmth, grace, elegance, and wealth. As a metal element, it becomes innovative, sophisticated, and refined. That description, for me, represents feminine energy. Once I realized my power lies within my softness and grace, is when I felt freedom. Yet, living life as a hard-working, single mom, I felt the need to project my power and boldness to protect myself and survive. It gave me a misguided sense of security.

The chain links of limiting beliefs broke, one by one, when I applied self-compassion and nurturing to myself.

Most of my life, I have heard, I am SO independent and give off an air of not “needing” a man. Often, sounding like it was a bad thing. Honestly, that is what I believed I needed to be in order to get through my life. Nobody taught or showed me how to rely on a man for protection and love, so I had to do it for myself. My female ancestors had the strength and tenacity to step up and do what they needed to survive, even when it meant giving away their power. You know that belief — women are weak, men are powerful.

In women, masculine energy often shows up as competitiveness. That leads to comparison and judgment. Feminine energy is learning to embrace slowing down, stepping back from the “rat race” and creating from compassion and kindness. It means aligning with and supporting other women in our lives.

I find the more I embrace the feminine energy; the more I find my voice and slowly come out of hiding the powerful energy within me. It allows room for the natural rhythms of self-care. Not simply bubble baths, massages, candlelight or flowers I can give to myself, but the balance of establishing boundaries, asking and accepting nurturing while knowing my value and worth.

As I travel my spiral path on my yellow brick road, I continue to see my experiences of supposed shattered glass as a mosaic of creative energy. The feminine energy sparkles and mirrors all that I am inside. I am not broken, I am okay being all that I am.

Goals and dreams

For several decades, I used a personal acronym for goals — Good Orderly Actions Leading (to) Success. I followed a path influenced by my definition of success. As I grow older, that definition is changing.

Chasing my heart’s desires, what I defined as success, takes me away from the natural value of who I am and gives my power away to people and things. The chase leaves me running after things that feel just beyond my reach. As I run after things outside of myself to make me happy and feel successful, I am farther away from what I desire the most — freedom.

It isn’t about things, its about the quality of my moments. The goals and dreams I have are not my final destination. I can facilitate the changes in my life toward freedom. My acronym, starting today, for goals is Good Orderly Actions Leading (to) Serenity.

So, is it fear or lack of trust? Honestly, no matter how I label it, it doesn’t matter because my freedom comes as I break the tug-of-war rope of questions and see the beauty and sparkle of my mosaic moments.

Isn’t it your turn to do the same?

Jules — Miz Mindful is the “Juggler” of part time passions. A jewel of all trades, expert of none. After many attempts to fit in to societal pursuits, I discovered that mindfulness is an anchor to keep me grounded in my pursuits between spirituality and practicality.

Her life adventures live in the part-time realms of a mixed bag of labels and roles. Daughter, Mom, Grandma, Friend, Confidant, Artist, Writer, Clerical Healthcare employee, Coach, Canva Champion and Designer, Certified Moonologer, and Solopreneur.

But , at the core of it all, I’m just jules. Please call me jules — all my friends do!