We all have a natural tendency to try and avoid things that we see as painful or hard. This is especially true when pursuing big, long term goals that we’ve been dreaming about for years (can I get an amen?)! It’s easy to focus on how hard things are or how long we think it will take before we see any real progress and this is why most people give up before putting in the work!
The Stone Cold Facts:
Studies show that 91% of people do not follow through on their dreams/ideas because they are avoiding pain! They don’t want to sacrifice. They don’t want to let go of the things keeping them from growing. They don’t want to become who they need to be in order to get the transformation on the other side. And honestly, I totally understand that. I used to be a part of this group…like for years!
Growing Is Uncomfortable
Growing is not the norm! Even though we talk about it alot in the personal development space as humans the majority of us prefer to have an easy, predictable, routine life that does not include change (also known as growth)! We much rather live in comfort, familiarity, and stability. As a result most end up playing the survival game.
- Working to pay bills
- Blending in with the environment
- Not knowing who they are or why their here
- Living aimlessly
- Feeling purposeless
- …Need I go on?
But on the flip side there are a group of people who don’t settle, refuse to live a mundane life, and continually hit bigger and bigger goals! These are my trailblazers! These are the people that I coach and work with in 90-Days: One Goal. Regardless of what their life looks like today they refuse to give up on their dreams. These are the kind of people I love to be around because at my core it’s who I am.
Are You Living Your Best Life?
You’ll see a lot of people posting on the gram living My best life, but truly, when they look at the condition of their heart, they know there’s no way they would actually call this their “best”. How do I know? Living to impress others is not living your best life. Trying to win the applause, approval, or likes from strangers online is not living at your highest level.
Fear Is One of Those Things Our Mind Processes As Pain
A few nights ago, as I was journaling, I could feel in my heart that I was literally out of integrity with myself. I was purposely sabotaging my growth because I didn’t want to outshine the people that I was around. I didn’t want to make them feel uncomfortable by my growth and my success and the results that I was able to create. I didn’t want to make them uncomfortable, because, honestly, I didn’t want them to misunderstand me.
I Wanted To Be Accepted
I wanted to feel like I had a place to belong, a community of people I could trust, people who had my back and really did their best to understand me. And sadly I started telling myself (without realizing it) that if I keep growing, and achieving all the goals that are on my heart and have been inspired by my faith in God to do then these people that I care about and want to connect with will look at my results and think I have motives and intentions that are not true. So in an attempt to keep their imagination humble about me, I sabotaged my growth. Of course this was one big sob story I was telling myself that allowed me to play small and feel comfortable doing it. I was creating assumptions about them that may not exist and isolating myself from the connection that I desired.
Here’s What I’ve Learned Since Then
There is a tribe out there for everyone!
If your circle of friends is not pulling you up, challenging, you, pushing you, praying for you, and telling you to do more and to be more, and to step into all that God has for you, then they are not your friends. If you feel like you need to defend yourself or play down the calling on your life or become someone else when you’re around them and you can’t actually share the wins and failures with them then they’re not actually your friends.
People Are Judging You Anyway
Whether you live in your mom’s basement or are the CEO of a Fortune 500 company, it doesn’t matter. People will have assumptions about you and will misunderstand the things that you say and do. So it doesn’t matter what anybody thinks about you like really and truly, what people perceive to be true about you is based on their own limited perception, their own limited experience, their own limited worldview. It’s not the truth of who you are.
It’s just their experience of you. And this is why it’s important to know who you are and to understand why you do what you do. What is the point of your Facebook group? What is the point of your business? What is the point of your Instagram account?
What is the point of the things that you do? And the things that you’re striving to achieve is it so that you can become a millionaire and live in some fancy condo and travel the world and do all the things you want? And if that is your goal, great, beautiful. Go do that thing. But what is the purpose in that you feel me?
Are you doing all that you do so that other people can admire you and worship you and talk about how great you are? Because if that’s all there is to it, then of course, you’re going to be looking for people to like you and looking for people to approve of the things that you’re doing. But my friend, my trailblazers. There is so much more to life than living to please people. There is so much more to life than sacrificing every day at the altar of paralyzing fear.
There is so much more to life than choosing to give up your destiny, to give up your purpose, to give up the thing that you were made to do, the thing that you’re here to do your specific assignment because of what you think people are going to say, do feel and all that kind of stuff. Because the truth is, people will be offended whether you do something big or you do something small. It does not matter. People will judge you whether you’re living on the mountain or sleeping in the Valley.
People will always have an opinion about whether what you’re doing is awesome or not.
So awesome. So it doesn’t matter what anybody says or thinks about you, because at the end of the day, only you know what is true. Only you know when you’re in alignment or when you’re out of alignment. Only you know when what you’re doing is out of pride or if it’s out of integrity and love. So if you get nothing from this episode, the one thing that I want you to understand is that in life, we’re all wearing a mask to protect ourselves and for the people who are actually brave enough to take off this math and to live authentically and to follow their path.
Those are the ones that people will look at and criticize and judge and label. And so if you want to be someone who lives authentically steps into purpose and does, the more that you’re here to do, then get ready for it, get ready for it. I know people will tell you positive thinking and shut out the haters and all that kind of stuff. And believe me, I am not a hater kind of person. Like, I don’t pay attention.
I’m not even aware like, it’s nowhere in my frame, but because this was so recent and it’s so fresh, I wanted to share the lessons here with you. I wanted to be an example, be an open book about the things that I’m learning when it comes to being around people that drain you and drag you down truthfully. And it’s not that they’re bad people. It’s not that they have evil intentions, and they’re like, oh, I’m going to drag you down. You’re not going to achieve your dreams, and I’m going to criticize you and all that stuff.
No, they might have the best intentions in the world. They might actually love and care about you. They may actually feel like you’re my friend, and I really want to do life with you and all that kind of stuff. But if you in your heart know that every time you spend time with them, you feel drained and you feel like you got to defend yourself and you feel like you got to prove something and all that, even if you’re not doing that, even if you’re not proving yourself and whatever.
But you still have the ideas like you feel.
You feel weird, then that’s not the space for you. That’s not your tribe. Those are not your people. So instead of falling into this place where you begin to wear a mask and you begin to become guarded and you begin to try to blend in and you begin to just do what everyone else is doing just to get along with everyone else. Then I want to challenge you, check your heart and see what’s actually going on here.
Why compromise your life and your destiny for the sake of temporary friends that have no idea about who you truly are, and most of the time, they don’t even know who they are. So if they can’t see clearly, to challenge themselves and to push themselves to be all that God made them to be, how can they see clearly enough to push you into your destiny? How can they see clearly enough to believe in you and to encourage you and to love you into being all that God made you to be, they can’t.
And so instead of hardening your heart and getting upset or being offended, why not just choose to love them genuinely and deeply and still love yourself enough to live authentically? Sound good.
I hope so. That’s a rep for this week’s episode, and I hope that you found it helpful. I hope that it helped you to overcome your paralyzing fear because whether it has to do with people or your own thoughts or internal fears that you have been working through for years, it doesn’t matter. The process is the same. We will either choose to live a life that is authentic, or we will choose to compromise and bow to the Altera fear.
However, it changes to show up in our life. And so I hope that by me sharing my own personal fears and struggles and insecurities that it helped you to find your voice and lean more into your unique path so that you can experience the life that God created you to live instead of trying to blend in and be what everyone expects you to be. Because I promise you, when you live your life on the edge, when you live your life fully committed to your purpose, and when you create goals that help you to explore all that is wrapped up in your purpose for you, that’s when you really, truly start living your best life, that’s when you really, truly experience freedom and complete fulfillment.
I mean, there’s nothing better been waking up knowing that you’re living your own life. You’re walking down your own path, you know?
And I know that can sound a little weird. Like, what do you mean? You’re living your own path and you’re walking your own. You’re doing things their own way. I mean, that you’re actually alive, you’re present, and you’re making choices that are in your best interest, choices that align with your destination, not what people want you to do or where people want you to go or who they want you to be, but actually living your life.
So until next time, I love you, and I mean it. And I hope that you found this helpful. If you did share it with a friend and hit me up on Instagram, let me know what your big takeaways are. Let me know what stood out for you. Let me know what you enjoyed the most about this because I love hearing from you.
And as Accountability partners, I got to hold you accountable. You got to hold me accountable. And the only way that we do that is by talking. So hit me up. Let me know what you’re working on.
Let me know how I can better support you. And until next week. Stop dreaming and start doing chat soon.
