Sometimes it can feel like time is just passing by, I mean, 2 months has already gone by in 2022!
Since today’s March 1st, I’d like to ask you something.
Is there anything you want to change in your life?
Maybe you want to have a better relationship with your family.
Maybe you want to be able to say no to others.
Maybe you want to have more fun in your life.
Maybe you want to eat healthier.
Whatever it is, you may be thinking, oh it’s so daunting or defeating...
I mean… you probably had set it as a goal before. You’d tried changing before, but it didn’t work.
So you gave up on it because you thought that it wasn’t for you, you thought you weren’t meant to do it.
And now thinking about it again, it made you sad. you may be beating yourself up for not having followed through.
Or maybe you started comparing yourself with other people.
Here's something I’d like to offer you, and this was something that really changed my life.
Whenever I felt overwhelmed or defeated thinking about the changes I want to make in my life.
Rather than going to the place of what didn’t work, or what I could have achieved.
I brought myself back to the present moment.
That’s because if I feel defeated, my thoughts are either in the past criticizing myself. Or they are the future doubting myself.
So I bring myself back to the present moment, and I say this to myself: I am just ONE thought away from a different life.
I only need to take one little step, what do I want to do now?
Right? Because I can’t jump from now to the future version of myself in one big leap.
But I can take a tiny tiny step toward my goal.
And that first step is just as small as changing the way I think about it.
I haven’t done anything yet, I just changed internally, on how I think about it.
If let’s say I want to have more connection with my kids, I can choose to think: I‘m going to pay a little bit more attention to my kids for the next 5 minutes.
So I deliberately put down my phone and I interact with my kids for the next 5 minutes.
Really pay attention to them, listen to what they’re saying, get curious about them, get to know who they are.
And after 5 minutes, Celebrate! I pat myself on the back and say, Look! You did it! Great job!
And now try to choose another thought.
And you keep doing it again and again: one thought at a time to change the trajectory of your life.
You’re always just one thought away, just one tiny step, from the life you want.
Jeremy Anderson did an excellent job at explaining self-worth, so I really wanted to share this with you.
(Note: I watched a few other versions, but this video makes me cry each and every time)
I shared the above video with you because I want you to get this.
For me, seeing my own self-worth is the KEY in breaking through my own limitations.
Throughout my life, I had built up so much self-doubt, guilt, and shame.
The life I lived, was one of me doing whatever I could to prove my worth.
Other people might have seen this as ambition.
In reality, I pursued because I wanted to prove myself.
I wanted to prove that I wasn’t dumb. I wanted to prove that I have what it takes. I wanted to prove that I am capable.
It was only until I understood the meaning of self-worth, did I change the energy of why I do what I do.
Now I’m doing it because I want to, not because I have to prove anything to anyone.
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You are 100% worthy.
It means that no matter what happened to you, no matter what you did, no matter what you didn’t do, no matter what other people did to you, no matter what they said to you..
None of that could diminish your self worth!
You may feel like you’re not good enough, not smart enough, simply not enough, only because you’re seeing yourself based on your previous experiences.
Your brain has been trying to keep you safe up to now.
And the thoughts and beliefs it holds are not serving you anymore.
So maybe it’s time to let go of your current reality.
If you’d watched the video, and if you’re reading this, and if you feel something resonates with you, that’s because deep down, you believe that you’re ready to question this reality of yours.
Is it really all there is to life?
The simple answer is No.
Because you have a whole universe inside of you.
And you’re only seeing part of yourself.
You are more, so much more!
Yes there is also a lot of pain.
There is a lot of pain, frustration, anger, resentment, doubt, fear… etc.
There are also fun, excitement, gratefulness, anticipation, possibility.
They are all part of you.
And I want you to know that you are worthy to live the fullest life you want for yourself.
Today, I’d like to share this with you, which is my journey through dealing with envious/jealous feelings.
It all started when my mom compared me to someone else.
I was probably 11/12 yo, and one of my dad’s friends came to visit, who had 2 daughters.
We were playing, and my mom made a comment about how I should cut my hair short like the older daughter.
My mom really likes short hair, and always wanted me to have short(er) hair. (Even now, whenever she sees me, she’d ask me when I’m going to have my next hair cut).
And funny enough, I wrote about it in my journal, and she found it, read it, and dismissed it altogether.
Simple innocent comparison?
Maybe?
But at that moment, as a 12 yo, I felt like my mom approved of her and loved her more than me.
That was how the seed of jealousy was planted for me.
Ever since, I’d been “battling the demon of jealousy”.
It wouldn’t matter what the other person’s background was, or what they were going through, if I saw the other person doing better, I would immediately start comparing myself.
I could totally be comparing apples to oranges, but it wouldn’t matter.
Right after feeling envious of the other person, I’d start beating myself up, believing that I wasn’t good enough.
They were very dark, all-consuming, exhausting battles.
I remembered so many times I wrote in my journal, begging God or someone or something to take it away.
Because it was poison running through my body, and I had so much hate and resentment inside of me.
I literally had to shield myself away from other people, because I couldn’t tolerate the amount of hate I carried.
It was only after I started working on myself, did I start loving this part of me.
It hasn’t fully gone away, it still comes up from time to time. But I feel so much better and lighter!
If you have ever felt jealous/envious before, this is what I learned:
Nothing has gone wrong. It’s a super normal reaction.
It is a part of you, it’s the wounded part of you, so you can’t push it away. In fact, it is the part of you that needs the most love.
And you have to learn to recognized it instead of letting it consume you.
What I mean is, many times, instead of being aware of it, we react to it.
You reactions may include:
- Gossiping about people
- Intentionally being unkind to them
- Being snappy at others
- Judging others/ Criticizing others
- Keep one-upping yourself, so you feel you’re better than others
- Beating yourself up
- Hiding from others
And you may have your own version of it.
So the first step is to recognize it.
The second step may sound really simple, but it’s the hardest thing to do.
You have to love it. You have to feel it and accept it.
What does this mean?
This is a process I do with my clients, which is to feel the feeling.
It is through feeling it and not push it away, can you start accepting it as being a part of you.
We’re so used to seeing these negative emotions as bad, so we push them away because we don’t want them.
We think being jealous is a sign of being a “bad girl”. It’s unacceptable, so we try our hardest to cast it away.
But the more we reject, the more it builds up in our system.
To deal with it, we have to do the exact opposite.
We have to look at it, and see it in its rawest form, so we can accept it and love it.
Loving this jealous part of me lifted the heavy weight off.
The best part is I could finally celebrate other people for who they truly are, and feel so happy and proud of them.
All because I could fully love myself.
I am so much more joyful than before.
It changed me so much, and I hope that you’ll get a chance to enjoy this for yourself too!
Happy Valentine’s Day!
On this day, I’d like to share a very important message with you.
Which is you DESERVE to be successful and have the best life!
Even if you believed you’d done something before that had made you feel guilty.
Even if you believed you’d done something that had hurt someone you love.
You are still worthy, and you still deserve to have the best life ever!
This concept is very easy to throw around, but it takes a lot of time to process. It takes a lot of compassion and acceptance to process.
Because logically, we know that whatever we’d done, it’s in the past.
But in our body, the guilt, the hurt, the pain had been embedded deep into our body. And it takes time for those things to heal.
To give you an example, when I was dating my now husband, my parents were extremely against it.
We fought A LOT. The energy in the house was toxic.
It went on for a few years, to the point where my mom got extremely sick because of it.
She developed chest problems, she had full on anxiety attack, and at the end she developed breast cancer.
I remembered one night, she screamed and cried so much, that she fainted in front of me. And my dad and brother were also yelling at me, saying that, if you love mom, you should let it go.
The hurt, the guilt, the pain, the shame, it penetrated my body, my psyche, and it lived in my body for these 10 years.
And I seriously believed that I was not a good daughter.
After I got married and moved out, I tried to build various business, and I jumped from one to another.
And each time, when it was about to take off, I shut it down.
I thought it was because I lost passion, or that it wasn’t meant for me.
But after processing all of my emotions this past week, I realized how much pain, hurt and guilt had resided inside my body.
I was desperately trying to prove myself.
I wanted to prove my worthiness.
But when things were about to get better, my guilt shot everything down.
I believed that because I had hurt my mom, I wasn’t a good daughter, and I didn’t deserve success.
I didn’t deserve happiness.
That I was supposed to stay here in the very spot, to be blamed, and to suffer, over and over and over again.
But that is not true.
I do deserve it all.
I love my mom. And I know she loves me.
She was meant to oppose me, because I was meant to stand up for what I believe.
And I didn’t hurt my mom. She still love me the way that I am.
Here's the thing, whatever you want to work on, the moment you want to work on it, an "obstacle", or a learning opportunity will come at you.
I needed to stand up for my own voice. That's why the people in my life were stopping me, because they were offering me these learning opportunities.
I have to learn to process all my emotions, so that I can stand up stronger.
I have to learn to understand what exactly I want for myself, and not be led by how other people want me to live my life.
I get to decide what I want, and it is okay to feel guilty.
I felt guilty, not because my mom got sick.
I felt guilty, because I believed that I wasn’t a good daughter (which is just a thought)
That is NOT true.
I can only be the best daughter I can be by standing up for what I want.
So I’d like to challenge you to think of a time when you felt guilty for doing something.
Did you stand up and say no to someone, and feel really guilty afterwards?
Maybe you believed you’d hurt someone.
Maybe you believed that you’re not a good daughter, wife, mom, aunt, cousin, neighbour, employee.
But I want you to know that you still deserve to be happy, to have all the success in the world.
You are doing it to learn to be a better version of yourself.
You are worthy it, and you deserve it!
Happy Valentines Day.
You know what's funny? For the longest time, I don't know what I want. After doing so much work, I realize that I'm here to help people figure out what they want.
And it is such a tricky question! I was thinking about this, and came across this post by @nakedpastor
We are raised to deny our wants since we were young. Whatever we wanted, they were rejected, frowned upon.
I mean I can share the simplest story with you.
My son kept saying, "He doesn't want to go to school."
And deep down, I know he really doesn't want to go to school, not the fact that it's not fun for him, or anything bad is happening at school. But he just prefers not to go (like myself, as I always prefer to stay at home instead of going out).
But I had to make him to go school.
His want, denied.
Or let's say we go to the store and he wants to get a toy. Or he wants to play with something at home at a time that doesn't work.
You know what happens? His requests get rejected.
And so many times, he had expressed how angry he is with us, "because we keep saying no" to him.
These are really simple and basic things that he wants, and they get denied.
Then there are bigger things along the way.
What do we want to do with our lives? Are our actions "appropriate"?
What if we don't want to visit a relative but we're "forced" to?
What if we don't want to study a subject, but we're "supposed" to?
What if we don't want to do this for a living, but we're "made" to?
Our decisions get judged.
For so long, we've been guilted into doing things that go against what we really want.
We've been made to feel wrong when we choose not to do something.
We've been made to feel bad when we decide to do something.
So when I ask you this question: What do you want? I understand that it's not an easy question to answer.
And I'm going to tell you one thing: deep down, I believe you still know what you want.
It's just that you aren't able to trust it because you haven't worked on this for the longest time.
And maybe you're even afraid to verbally say it out loud, because when you do, you feel that you'll be judged for being too greedy, or selfish, or childish.
They are not! If that's what you really want. They are not greedy, they are not selfish, and they are not childish. They don't have to contribute to society. They don't have to do any good to anyone. As a matter of fact, you don't need to explain anything to anyone.
And if you feel strongly about it, you are allowed to go after it!
You may say.. but I still don't know what it is I want! Well, if you really want to find out what it is you want in life, there is a way.
We need to do a little more work to uncover it.
Not only that, we have to give you that space, so you can feel safe first and foremost!
We can't judge it. We have to allow for you to explore, discover, and accept whatever comes up. It is not a straightforward answer, but it will be truly worthwhile!
What is your view about going after what you want? What do you think is holding you back from going after it?
You'd been doing many things for others, and you can't seem to be able to say no to others!
1. You think it’s because it’s your obligation.
You feel that you are expected to do them because they're part of your "expectations."
But It’s really because you believe you only deserve to be loved if you do what they want. You've attached your worth to making sure other people are taken care of.
2. You think you’re being a good person when you do things for others.
You feel that you're only being a good person, because you don't want to be labelled as "defiant" or "uncoporative".
But it’s really because you’re afraid that other people will reject you if you say no. They're going to shun you, because you're not playing team.
What can you do?
The first step to getting out of this, is to fully understand that you are 100% loveable, AND you have to learn how to love yourself!
That way, you won’t need to depend on other people’s love.
When other people don't love you, no problem! Your worth is not attached to it, because you can love yourself!
You can take full responsibility for yourself, so when other people reject you, you will be able to stand tall.
You don't need them to approve of you, by setting the boundary for yourself, you respect yourself, and other people will respect you.
Would you be willing to do that for yourself?
You don’t have to do more to prove that you’re more worthy.
Or there isn’t anything you’ve done that made you less worthy.
Who you are is enough. You just have to be.
That’s why we’re called human beings. Not human doings.
And here is the fun part!
After knowing that you are enough as you are.
And knowing that you’re loved no matter what,
What do you want for yourself?
Is there anything that you WANT because it’s fun?
This is where the “doing” comes.
You’re doing it because YOU WANT TO!
Because you can! And You have the potential!
People want to do things because they want to challenge themselves, Not to prove themselves
So my question to you is
What do you want to do just for fun?
How do you want to challenge yourself just for fun?
What area do you want to see yourself grow just for fun?
