Are You Truly Living by YOUR Rules or by Others?
Release the beliefs and rules that were never yours to live authentically and step into your true purpose.
What Are You Holding Onto That Doesn't Belong to You?
When was the last time you stopped long enough to look at your life and the rules you are living by?
I mean, you are no longer living in your parents' house. You are no longer in school, so you do not have to be ruled by those rules anymore. We go through life wondering why things are not working out for us and feeling stressed because of the rules we are following, yet most of those rules are ones we did not choose for ourselves.
Think about it for a minute. Did you ever stop after moving out and ask yourself, What rules, fears, and stories did others teach me to live by, and do they still serve me now?
So, I challenge you right now to stop and think about how you were taught to complete tasks by family members or through past relationships. If needed, write them out. Writing things down often helps you see what is really going on faster than simply thinking about it. This is why journaling is so important.
What did you find or realize?
Are you doing the dishes in a specific order because that was how you were taught? Do you avoid certain things because someone in your family did? Maybe you do not even realize that you have been keeping yourself at a certain level because those around you said they could never get past it. Their belief stuck with you, and now you are hitting a ceiling you did not even create for yourself.
So many of my clients find that something they learned from someone in their past is blocking them from having the life and/or business of their dreams. The reason is that they have allowed something to stay with them that does not belong to them, which, in its own way, becomes a limiting belief.
You are most likely wondering how the heck someone else's belief could become a limiting belief for you.
Well, I will tell you.
The story you are carrying is someone else's belief. You carry it because of your connection with that person. If you do not consciously decide whether the things you are carrying are truly your own beliefs, they can cause you to self-sabotage and hold yourself back in ways you may not even recognize.
By carrying other people's beliefs, stories, rules, and fears, you are not being fully, authentically you.
We have all heard, by this point in our lives, that you need to be authentically you to live your life on purpose.
I have to say, for the longest time, I would ask myself, How the heck do you do that? I thought I was being authentically me, but I wasn't.
So many times, you hear high-end coaches talking about how you have to "be yourself," but somehow, you can only learn what that really means when you work with them. I would have meetings with my coaches, and they would keep saying I needed to be authentically me, and I would say, "I thought I was."
Yet I would never receive any real guidance on what that actually looked like or how to even get there. Because it is different for everyone, most would say you simply had to figure it out for yourself.
Here is what I figured out: You have to go inward.
What does that look like, and how do you do it, you ask?
You have to ask yourself some hard questions and be real, raw, and, most importantly, honest about the answers. You need to get uncomfortable with who you currently are and become eager to meet the next version of you.
You may even need to look up words you use regularly because you could be using them differently from their actual meanings. Your words matter in more ways than I can tell you. If you are using a word all the time but its true meaning does not match what you believe you are saying, something will feel off. You may even find that the language you are using is working against where you are trying to go.
Yes, it truly matters that much.
You could also work with a guide who will push you by asking the hard questions and encourage you to journal in a different way than you may have been doing—or push you to journal if you are someone who does not like to write.
You could use tools like an Oracle deck and/or a journal with the right prompts, like the ones I have created, to guide you deeper into who you are. The right questions make you face the things you try to hide from yourself.
Yes, you need to face those things. However, you need to do so in a way that does not completely tear you apart.
You need to face them while understanding that you will only feel that moment for a period of time. You are not going through everything all over again exactly as it happened.
Facing the things you are holding tightly to can set you free and allow you to find your peace and your purpose.
Once you start facing those things, you may begin seeing doors open and noticing new opportunities that were always there—you just couldn't see them before. And those around you may start wondering what changed.
One of the things I love hearing most when working with people is how those around them begin to change and level up simply because they did.
When you work on yourself, there WILL be a ripple effect.
People may start coming to you more often and wondering what has changed about you. We are all called to be of service to others, and sometimes we help others simply by doing the work we need to do for ourselves.
Some of the things I have heard from my clients are that their partner or spouse begins shifting their perspective or starts doing more for themselves. They may even begin complimenting their partner on how differently they are showing up.
At work, others may start coming to them to talk about both professional and personal things because they feel drawn to them. They sense that new confidence, and confidence is contagious.
Most people will not come right out and ask what you are doing. They just know something is different, but they cannot quite put their finger on what it is.
Some even land new positions because they stopped bending over backward for everything at work and started standing up with confidence in who they are and why they are actually there. They begin leading with confidence in what they do, and people start taking notice.
Then others want to be around them, sometimes without even realizing why, because they want to understand how they, too, can have that same confidence.
So again, I ask:
What are you holding onto that does not belong to you?
Take inventory and start recognizing what you are doing in your life that is not aligned simply because it was never yours to begin with.
First, notice it.
Then, each time you catch yourself slipping back into that old behavior, rule, belief, or story, work to correct it. It will take time to break a habit you may have been carrying for years.
But over time, you begin rewriting that piece of yourself so it aligns with who you actually are.
And that is where you begin to live more authentically, find greater peace, and step more fully into your true purpose.
