Category: Growth

Do you ever get stuck in your past? 

I certainly do, and sometimes without even knowing it. Thankfully, over the years, this tendency to get stuck in my past doesn’t happen often. But it has taken practice and an understanding of triggers that can send me there in the first place (and then avoiding or pushing past those triggers).

Sometimes getting stuck in the past means that I think about a specific event and get sad or upset. For example, for a few years after my breakup from my college fiancé, I would get upset and sad whenever I thought about the events surrounding our breakup (and I thought about the a lot). I found out he had lied to me often and even cheated on me during our three-year relationship and I was devastated.

Even as I slowly learned how to accept the reality of the situation, and even as I moved on, the negative feelings associated with that experience didn’t leave me for many years. While I did heal and find happiness in a life with someone new, the scars of that experience remained for a very long time.

But eventually I realized—and it took me years to see this—that the scars ran so deep because I had allowed certain feelings to become engrained into my very identity. After I discovered my ex-fiancé’s deception, it stripped me of my sense of worth. As a sensitive and rather insecure young woman, I had struggled with my confidence and self-worth even before knowing about his infidelity, but after we parted ways, I began to see myself as ugly and unworthy of love. Somewhere deep inside of me, I worried that I was responsible for his behavior. Maybe I wasn’t good enough. Maybe I wasn’t sexy enough. Maybe I wasn’t adventurous enough. Maybe he never really loved me.

So I allowed those feelings to fester in me and they spilled over into my next relationship and even into the way I saw myself. I became depressed, withdrawn, and very doubtful of my abilities to succeed in life in general.

Ultimately, I did not take ownership of my feelings and push myself to look at the situation in a healthy, logical way. I simply wallowed in feelings.

Of course, it sucked that my fiancé was deceptive and that he cheated on me, but that was not my fault. We were both young and we had a lot to learn about being in a relationship and becoming mature adults. This is not an excuse for his behavior, but an acceptance of the fact that he was simply not fully ready to be in a committed relationship.

In the end, his choices did not determine my value as a human being. When I finally came to embrace this truth—after years of secretly feeling ashamed, devalued, and unworthy—it freed me.

As I talked about in a previous post, I never thought the word responsibility could equal freedom, but that is exactly what it means when we start taking responsibility for every single thing in our own lives.

This can related to things other people have done to us—bullied us, cheated on us, backstabbed us—or it can related to things we have done to ourselves—failed on an important exam, let a relationship fall apart, quit a job in an irresponsible way. When things happen to us or because of us, we can either ruminate in negative feelings or we can choose to look at the situation from a realistic perspective and learn valuable lessons we will carry with us into the next chapter of our lives.

I certainly believe in allowing yourself a period of mourning over loss—whatever that loss might be for you—but then it is important to let go and move forward, armed with the knowledge that you can choose how you are going to live your life from this day forward. You can either let that negative experience shrink your sense of self or you can allow that negative experience to be a springboard for learning and growth.

Don’t allow your past to control your future. Don’t let yourself get stuck thinking more about the past than the future. Give yourself grace and understanding for mistakes you made and hurts you experienced, but then turn your sights on the horizon of the future because it is full of possibilities!

What is your identity? Recently, a good friend and I have had a few discussions about our self-identity and how influential that identity can be in the choices we make. Sometimes we might not be aware of how we came to this sense of identity though, and I am a big believer in trying to understand the whys behind what we do and how we think. It can be detrimental to our life journey if we don’t. 

So, who are you? Some people might not be as clear about their sense of identity as others, but if I told you to fill in the blank on the following question, what would you say: “I am ______________.”

Personally, for years if someone asked me that question, I would say, “I am a writer.” That was my strongest identity of myself.

When I was a teenager, I identified as a writer because I wrote all the time and had a dream of becoming a famous writer. But when I got into college and then after I left and life continued on, I wrote less and less and less. Over time, I identified as a writer less and less, and this is because I lost the courage to believe I could make it as a true writer, as a well-published author. 

I let my fears hold me back from pursuing who I really wanted to be and that created conflict and unhappiness in my life. I took a job proofreading legal documents, which I didn’t enjoy or find fulfilling. Sometimes I would write in my spare time but not consistently. I let my identity slip farther and farther from me until I practically lost it altogether.

It was an unhealthy pattern of behavior that led to me often feeling adrift and discouraged with the course of my life. Even as things in other areas improved as I hit my thirties, I still felt this nagging sense that something was missing from my life. I was missing purpose.

My friend, on the other hand, has always locked her identity into her work. She would reply to the above question with this answer: “I am a hard worker.” She has been working full time since her early teens and she grew up with the conviction that it was incredibly important to be useful and to help out in her family’s business. It doesn’t matter the exact work she is doing per se, but what matters most to her is that she is working hard and pushing herself to give 110% on the job, always.

Lately though, this identity has been creating friction in her work-life balance and she is questioning what steps to take to bring that balance back into alignment with her biggest priorities.

When we are at our best, who we identify as will be what we spend our time doing—but only if we have the courage to believe in ourselves. For years, I was too afraid to step into my identity and my friend was too afraid to step back from her identity.

The greatest discovery I made over time was this: we can choose our identity—our identity does not choose us. Yes, there are a few people who, like me, knew from a young age what they wanted to do with their lives (and there are a few who actually live out that identity in adulthood, unlike I did throughout my twenties), but the realization that really freed me was the fact that I could choose to change my self-identity.

I had to take a look at my life and ask the hard question: Do I still want to be a writer? And if so, why? Yes, I had that dream at thirteen years old, but I am no longer thirteen years old. People change, interests change, goals change. And that is okay.

None of us should try to force ourselves into identities that no longer align with our core values, desires, and goals. But we also shouldn’t shy away from who we want to be because we are afraid of failure.

I find it interesting that my friend and I came at this concept of self-identity in such different ways. I kept pushing farther away from my sense of identity and that caused me to feel adrift and disappointed; she clings very hard to her sense of identity but that has caused her to feel overwhelmed at work and unable to be fully present in some other areas of her life.

It is very possible that you haven’t experienced either extreme, but chances are you have experienced a struggle with your self-identity at some point in your life. We humans tend to have a hard time making good choices that will lead to us creating a fully fulfilling life for ourselves. Usually, we sabotage ourselves in one way or another.

I want to examine some of the pitfalls that can come with us focusing too much on identity.  

1. We don’t have the courage to pursue the identity and goals we believe will make us happy. Example: I’m not good enough to become a real writer or I’m not smart enough to become an attorney.
2. We are worried about what people will think or say about us. Example: She used to be a financial planner making six figures and now she is a travel writer making a third of that—what is she doing?
3. We do something because of family pressure. Example: My dad was a doctor so I need to become a doctor and follow in the family footsteps.

Or perhaps we don’t even know why we do what. For example, some people choose a major in college, get a job in that field and don’t really even question if they are experiencing joy in that field until they are already five or ten years down the road.

I think it is important to ask ourselves when our sense of identity has helped move us forward, but also when it has hindered us and held us back.

Are there certain aspects of your identity that you cling to that might be unhealthy? It could be that you identify as a procrastinator or as overweight or as disorganized. These probably all fall into the category of a sub-identity (though perhaps not), but they are just as important to examine.

They ways in which we identify ourselves and relate to ourselves are incredible important. If you see yourself as overweight or disorganized as a person, you will make choices that align with that identity and you will never change that image or the behavior that got you to the place of being overweight or disorganized in the first place.

I’ve heard many people use phrases like, “Well, that’s just who I am” or “I’ve always been that way” and I’ve used them many times myself. But these phrases are tied to our self-identity and we actually have the power to change our identity.

Most of the makeup of our lives is comprised of choices. Choices that we make over and over again until some of those choices feel like a part of who we are. Some have been happening so long that we don’t remember when they started.

If you identity yourself as overweight and say to yourself, “This is just who I am,” I would encourage you to examine the choices that brought you to that mindset. Were you fed too much unhealthy food from a young age? Did you start stress eating as a teenager when that boy you liked was mean to you? Did you overeat in college because you felt like you could get away with it and only packed on the pounds after you got married and had two kids and now it feels impossible to lose them?

There is a transition where our choices eventually become the identity we take on, which is why it is so important to examine our daily choices and parse out how they play into our sense of self.

Our minds are the most powerful tool we have and the mind is what shapes our thoughts about ourselves. We need to start asking ourselves not who we are at this moment but who we want to be. We can choose to become anyone.

You can choose to become a cyclist even if you haven’t been on a bike in twenty-five years.

You can choose to become a writer even if you have never written in your life.

You can choose to become a stellar gardener even if you have never owned a single plant in your life.

It is a choice. You can start making new choices today to become a new person.

Take a few minutes today and find a quiet place to think. Ask yourself who you want to be. Ask yourself what self-imposed identities are holding you back from becoming the best version of yourself. We can each choose who we will become, and that means the possibilities are endless. 

My baby only naps in half hour increments most of the time. I have tried a lot of tactics and read a lot of information on how to increase his naptime but nothing has worked as well as I’d like. Sometimes he will take a good hour and a half nap, but most of the time his naps are short. I usually have just enough time to get in a short workout or wash a few dishes or write a few lines. I was three lines into this paragraph when he woke up this morning. 

This is why time management is so important for me. It feels critical that I learn how to become more efficient with my time or I will never keep up with this blog.

I struggled with time management long before having my baby. But I find it interesting that we can be so disciplined in certain areas of our lives and not in others. For example, in college I never turned in a paper late; in fact, I never once pulled an all-nighter to complete an assignment on time. My assignments and papers were usually done days in advance of the deadline. I liked being in school. I liked the structure and I enjoyed looking over each syllabus to plan out how I was going to get through each course. 

That is why it was baffling to me that I struggled so much with time management after I finished college.

Over the years I have come to realize that becoming an effective manger of your time means knowing what is important to you, but also understanding what scares you. You have to figure out what compels you (pushes you forward) and what terrifies you (holds you back). You have to recognize the purpose behind your choices and the implications behind the ones you veer away from. 

You also have to learn how you operate best and then set in place habits that optimize your natural best ways of operating. For example, some people might like to read first thing in the morning while others might like to exercise first and still others might like to write in a gratitude journal or meditate. You need to learn what works best for you.

When I was in college, I was compelled to turn my papers in on time for a few reasons: I genuinely enjoyed the subject matter I chose as my major (English) and was generally energized by school; I was scared of my dad’s wrath if I didn’t perform well (he didn’t expect perfect grades but he did expect good grades obtained through persistence and hard work); I was fearful of disappointing people and appearing lazy. The first reason I listed definitely was the strongest reason, which is worth noting because I think it is always better to be pushed by positive reasons rather than negative ones (and quite honestly, if I hadn’t genuinely enjoyed my classes, I don’t know if the second and third reasons would have been strong enough to ensure my success in school).

The point is to step back and begin to understand the purpose behind our choices. If we can parse out what is most important to us, we will begin to give those priorities more of our time, and thus become more effective with our time. 

We all have the same 24 hours in a day but if we are not mindful, those hours will fritter away faster than we can catch them and we will be left feeling frustrated and empty.

Instead of rushing through each day without a plan, which ends up leaving me frazzled and drained and unproductive, I have started making conscience choices about what I will do with my time based on my priorities.

For example, below are a few of my biggest priorities:

1. It is a priority that I spend a chunk of time each day with my son where I am fully present and engaged. To accomplish this priority, for at period of time each day, I put my phone away and don’t engage in other activities, like doing the dishes, working on my blog, or vacuuming the floor. 
2. It is a priority that I get in at least 20 minutes of exercise each day. To accomplish this priority, I do this by either exercising during one of my son’s naps, taking a walk with him, or, on really busy days, getting in my lunges and squats (etc.) while I chase him around the house.
3. It is a priority that I perform an activity every day that contributes to the success of my blog. To accomplish this priority, I generally sit down at the kitchen table as soon as my son is down for his first nap and I will write or edit a post, research blogging tips, take a course on web design, or something along these lines, even if the particular action takes just ten minutes. 
4. It is a priority that I spend a little time working on my own personal development each day. To accomplish this priority, when I am doing the dishes I often listen to educational podcasts or audio books. When my son goes to bed for the night, I also spend a little time reading blogs on personal development, money, and parenting. 

Some of these priorities felt unrealistic to me just months ago. Even though they all sound reasonable, I often felt like I just didn’t have the time, but when I began to think about time management in terms of living out my priorities, my perspective on time shifted.

I also now make it a practice to write a kind of Master List for the week on Saturday or Sunday where I put down all the things I want to get done for the entire week. These are activities that need to get done beyond my top priorities. Then each night I look over the list and try to prioritize what I will do that next day. I don’t try to get everything done in a day but I do prioritize at least three things on the list that MUST happen. This not only helps me actually get things done but it also gives me a sense of accomplishment.

Keeping the list of top priorities small each day helps me feel the wins and drives me to want to keep going. If I have ten top priorities every day and only accomplish four, I will feel like a failure. But if I have only three top priorities for the day and I accomplish all four, I will feel like a success. We need to set ourselves up to feel successful because it helps us want to reach for more.

In summary, time management is a developed skill but it is one that we will never fully master until we figure out what our biggest priorities are and then build our lives—and use our time—around them. 

Okay, so I made it one of my goals for the month of February to wake up early every morning—at 5am specifically. I wanted to carve out time for myself to focus on personal development and also simply have some quiet time before the busyness of the day takes over. 

But full disclosure, I failed at this goal already. Yesterday morning I woke up at 5:45am and this morning I woke up at 7:30am!

My initial reaction yesterday was some frustration that I had hit the snooze button twice and had wasted 45 minutes of precious time, but I still managed to read a few blogs, have a cup of coffee, edit one of my blog posts, and spend a few minutes listening to a lesson for a blog course I’m currently taking.

Honestly, I felt tempted to scrap the whole goal.

Sometimes when we fail—on a small or large scale—our first thought is to give up, to retreat, to simply abandon the project.

As I sit back and examine why this is my first thought, I realize that it is about my ego and my fear probably more than anything else. My ego feels hurt because I failed at a simple task. I feel weak and even a bit silly. And my fear is activated because if I failed at such a simple task as waking up an hour and a half earlier than usual, what chance do I have at accomplishing bigger tasks and goals?

Rather than allow my thinking to stop there though, as I would have done in the past, I realize it is important to step into a growth mindset in moments like these. It is true that I failed to accomplish my set goal for two days in a row now. But the truth does not have to stop right there. That does not have to be the end of the story in this saga that is my monthly goal. It does not mean I am doomed to fail at accomplishing the goal tomorrow and the next day and the day after that.

Each day is a new day. I have the ability to make a different choice tomorrow morning than I did this morning. 

Each day we have the chance to re-examine and renew our goals and our commitments to ourselves.

On that note, I think it is important to remember that these are commitments to ourselves. Generally speaking, I find it very easy to follow through on commitments I have given to other people, but it is much harder to do this for myself. Perhaps it is because I place a different level of value on myself than I do on other people. If that is the case for you to, I can only say this: we need to stop. 

You are incredibly valuable and important. What you want and need is important. Your goals are worth the effort. 

This is where we can always re-examine our goals and make sure they align with what we really want. Make sure you are setting goals that you actually believe are important, not goals that you feel pressured to make for the sake of someone or something.

Why do I really want to get up at 5am every morning? Once I clarify the reason for my goal, and once I reiterate to myself that it is a goal I actually want, I can set about creating additional strategies for accomplishing that goal.

I want to wake up at 5am this month because I want to have some quiet time to focus on my own personal development and my blog. For me, this will include some the following activities: reading a few of my favorite personal development blogs; reading a personal development or education book; journaling about my future goals; reviewing my daily planner and mapping out my day; editing blog posts; writing new blog posts; listening to my blog course and implementing the strategies I learn about into my own blog; listening to educational podcasts.

Reminding myself of all the reasons I want to get up early actually makes me feel excited about my goal again. Rather than focusing on my two days of failure, I feel renewed in my commitment to continue with this goal. 

We will all fail. We will all fail many times in our journey toward our goals, but that is part of the process. Try not to focus on the act of failing but rather the act of getting back up again, and remember why you are working toward your goals in the first place. If you have a strong enough why, you will set aside your ego and your fear and your frustration to press toward your goals. You will stand up a little stronger and a little taller next time, and eventually the failures in that specific area will become less. You will learn how to fight better against the things that hold you back and you will employ better strategies to push you forward.

So today, set a small goal and don’t be afraid to fail at it. Be afraid of getting stuck in a fixed mindset. Be afraid of not trying. Be afraid of becoming stagnate. Don’t be so afraid to fail. If you fail, you can always try again. If you don’t even try, you will wake up one day and realize you didn’t go anywhere. 

Some days it is hard to know what topic to focus on for this blog. I love writing and I love exploring different topics as they pertain to personal development, but there are times when I will admit that I feel redundant. There are times when I feel like my words might be irrelevant or that I might be under-qualified to write about the topics I do. After all, I am still a work in progress. I don’t have all these things figured out completely and I still struggle with many of the issues I write about when it comes to personal development. 

Self doubt. I supposed that is what I am struggling with today, and it can be such a powerful feeling. It is one that has overwhelmed and consumed me many times in my life. Self doubt has often made me shrink back in a moment of opportunity rather than push forward. 

Self doubt is a sneaky bastard because it makes you believe things about yourself that aren’t true. It makes you believe you aren’t good enough, aren’t talented enough, aren’t pretty enough, aren’t smart enough, aren’t you-fill-in-the-blank enough. Regardless of the area in which you feel inadequate, self doubt can come in and beat you up and taunt you to feel worthless. 

But we can’t let our doubts win. I wish I had realized earlier in my life that I have the ability to rise up and fight against those doubts. They do not have to control me—in fact, it is my responsibility to push back against those doubts.

We’ve probably all heard the advice that while a person shouldn’t go looking for a fight, they should not back down from a bully. I don’t know why I didn’t look at my own self doubts through a similar perspective. Self doubt is a bully. Probably the worst bully we will ever face. But we are responsible for how we feel and it is our responsibility to push back against a bully. 

It is within our right—and it is our responsibility—to push back against self doubt when it pops up in our lives. This feeling of self doubt is very natural and will absolutely rear its ugly head from time to time, but the more we let the feeling go unchecked, the more it will begin to rule our lives. In the reverse, the more we push back against the feeling and counter it with self confidence, the less control self doubt will have in our lives. 

This takes a lot of practice. I know this on a very personal level because I’ve let self doubt keep me from pursuing many opportunities. Self doubt is the very reason I did not start a blog years ago. Self doubt is why I never attempted to submit any of my written work to publishers all through my twenties even though it was a dream of mine to be a published author.

And today, as in so many days past, doubts flooded my mind the moment I opened this Word document to write. But I’ve started to find ways to combat these doubts and shift my thoughts.

1. I put someone else in my mind and imagine talking to them the way I talk to myself. This helps me gain some perspective for how negative and inconsiderate I am being to myself. When I let negative thoughts fill my brain about how I am not smart enough or my writing isn’t good enough (or whatever the doubt might be), I think, “Would I say that to my sister?” If she expressed doubt about her abilities, would I agree with her and point out all the additional reasons she isn’t good enough to pursue the goal she has in mind? Or would I counter her negative self talk and point out the ways she is smart and accomplished and capable? If I do that for her, why can’t I do that for myself? 
2. I reflect on how my past self talk either helped me push forward or shrink back. This helps me these days because I remind myself of how I feel when I’ve managed to push self doubt down (I have rewarding and positive emotions) verses the times I let self doubt overtake my mind (I have unfulfilling and negative emotions).
3. I recognize that I am fully responsible for how I feel. Honestly, for years this wasn’t even a solution that was on my radar. I used to think, “This is just who I am,” whether it pertained to my fear of meeting new people or my bouts with depression or my aversion to networking to further my career. While it is true that I might have certain feelings that come up in regard to an event (a new social setting that gives me anxiety) or an action I need to take (improving the design of my blog when I don’t know how to go about doing it), I have the ability to change my feelings, or at least reframe them and keep them from having such power over me. 
4. I focus on the fact that I can move forward with action regardless of how I am feeling at the moment. Feelings are fleeting, and if they are negative feelings they can paralyze us, but actions propel us forward and forward motion is rewarding. 

The struggle to control self doubt will probably always exist for many of us and what I finally realized is that this is normal. Having doubts does not say anything about our abilities. It will say something about our ability to be happy and fulfilled in life if we always let our doubts win though.