I Believe In You, Do You?

Everything in your life is exactly the way it is because of you. It's all about you and your perspective. You are a creator. You create your mind space, not the world. Don't get that confused. Yes, you are powerful. Yes, you can change your life however you want to. Yes, you have control of everything in your life. You are a creator of your own path in life, the writer of your own story. You really are in control, and you are responsible for everything in your life. Once you understand this true level of accountability for yourself and your life, you can really start paving your own way. You are the author, editor, and publisher of your very own life story.

There is no other you. We are all unique in who we are. Our experiences make us different. Nobody can live out another person's experiences, we all live our own.

You are who you are. That's granted, set in stone, but are you the greatest version of yourself right now? Ask yourself, are you happy? Is your life the way you want it to be? Is it fulfilling? If your life was over right now, and you looked back, would you feel like your life has been accomplished? Did you live out your dreams? Did the people in your life feel loved and cared for?

These are important to think about. When you really think hard about these questions, they can help you understand where you are in your life's trajectory. You need to know this. The more accurately you can pin point the exact direction of your life, the easier it will be to navigate.

Having feelings of underlying sadness can be very disruptive to overall productivity in our lives, and by "productivity", I'm not talking about cleaning your house or running errands, I'm talking about doing things in our lives that are getting us to the next level, expanding horizons, pushing ourselves further. We feel sad when we do not feel fulfillment, yet we do nothing to fulfill ourselves, or we do what we think will be fulfilling, only to be wrong and disappointed. For some people, this turns into a cycle.

You have to ask yourself what you want in life, and not worry about how. If you want something expensive, don't worry about how you'll be able to afford it. Just keep the dream alive. You deserve to have everything you want in life, and you have to believe that you deserve it. Continue dreaming and don't change your dreams before they have a chance to come to fruition. Be patient. If you continually give up on your dreams, just to follow new dreams and then give up on those dreams, you're going to be a sad person, because you'll find that you're literally chasing after nothing.

You have to be willing to see things through to the end. If you're struggling to bring your dreams to life, you need to consider the reality of your expectations, or just understand that things take time. Start with smaller things and work your way up to bigger things while understanding bigger dreams will take more time. Time is a good thing. Time is what makes it all seamless and gives it meaning. We would not be experiencing the human experience if everything we dreamt of happened right away.

You cannot dwell on how you'll do things because that's something you're going to have to figure out as you're doing it. If you ask yourself how you're going to do something you have never done before, you will not be able to come up with a legitimate answer, because you have never done it before.

"I want a million dollars but I don't know how I could ever make that kind of money."

Of course you don't know how! Nobody knows how to do something they have never done before. You're not expected to know how to do something you've never done before, stop expecting it of yourself. You stand right in your own way when you ask yourself how you're going to accomplish your dreams, and expect yourself to come up with an answer. Instead, ask yourself how you're going to accomplish what you want to do, and let the question be. Let the question resonate in your mind, and allow the answers and opportunities to come to you. Ask yourself how, and then get out of your own way.

You must have the courage to take action when your instinct tells you to. The answers to how we're going to accomplish our dreams come to us in the form of instincts. Don't be afraid to follow your gut and take chances! Make bold moves if you know they're going to give momentum towards accomplishing whatever you're trying to do. Do not be afraid to take risks, make sacrifices, and open yourself up to the unknown.

Dreaming of something until it becomes a reality is called manifestation. Being able to manifest whatever you want in life is key to fulfillment but it can only be done if you can truly look into yourself. Manifestation is a very useful skill, learn it!

I think you should be yourself! I know how generic that advice sounds, but it is important. Think about it, how could you possibly be anything other than yourself? You can't be anything other than yourself and nobody else can be you because they can't be anything other than themselves. You cannot be who you love, what you think, or what you feel because otherwise who would be there to feel those feelings or to think those thoughts?

So often, I see people who are not happy in life because they're not living true to themselves. You must love yourself. Love who you are. Take care of yourself. Value yourself. Cherish yourself. You're the only you that you have. Okay, that one might be a little redundant, but I hope you see my point.

Here is a bit of experience I had in my life where I learned about loving myself;

At one point, I did not love myself. I didn't love myself to the point I attempted suicide. It's not the reason I attempted suicide, but you have to really not love for yourself if your going to hurt yourself like that.

In the aftermath, while I was recovering from the mental trauma of trying to kill myself, a voice of concern came to the surface of my conscious.

"Why would I hurt myself like that?"

"How could I do such a horrible thing to me?"

This voice was the part of me that truly loves me. It was buried beneath the horrible woes of life. I was upset in the same way I would be upset if somebody else tried to hurt me, except that person was me. Holding myself accountable for my own abuse meant that I do value myself. When I came out of it, I knew that I didn't deserve what I did to myself, nor did I deserve what lead me to that place to begin with. I deserve far better than that, I told myself.

It was then that I realized, I was living a life of sadness and unfulfillment because my dreams and true self were buried beneath a life I thought I needed to live, living up to expectations that were nothing of my own. My life was catering to others and the external world while leaving myself behind until it was almost too late. I left myself so far behind, I was willing to let myself die.

Several years later...

I love myself now. I tell myself I love me all the time. I treat myself well. I put myself above all other things in this world. I believe in myself. I support myself. I value myself, and I always hold myself up. It feels good. I believe that everybody should do the same for themselves, and so many people don't! Stop projecting all that love outwards. Stop draining yourself of all that beautiful positive energy you just give away and give away for no return. Give that love to yourself, and accept that love from yourself. Don't ask other people what they want, ask yourself what you want for once.

When I was drained, emotionally depressed, I had no energy within me. I could barely get up and deal with a regular day, any day it didn't matter, it took everything I had to get through it. If I had barely enough energy to cope with life, I clearly had none to give away. Don't get me wrong, I wanted to love, or to give love. I love to love people. I love caring about people. Whether I have the energy for it or not, I have an abundance of love in my heart. I continued to give despite how much I was hurting. I'm not selfish by any means. For a dark period of time in my life however, I didn't have much love for myself therefore had very little love to share with the world.

During my emotional journey's voyage out from underneath of the deepest heartfelt depths of depression, my heart and my energy turned to ice. Frozen. At first it was a defense mechanism, my cold icy heart. In order to not feel hurt, I developed a strong sense of protection for myself, and a major factor in that is being less empathetic for others, and by "less empathetic" I mean just straight up not caring about people if they gave me a good reason not to. This surprised a lot of people as I was transitioning away from the "push-over" personality.

I had to stop myself from being the highly empathetic person I am, and it's still hard. I don't like it. If it were up to me, we would all get along and be happy, and nobody would have any problems ever and we all just love and care about each other, and we do what's right. I had to cut bad people out of my life no matter the relationship and that was tough. It gave me strength though because it showed that I valued myself enough, I wasn't going to allow negativity from anybody. For the first time in my life, I was willing to sacrifice relationships instead of myself.

I was willing to sacrifice whatever relationships in my own honor despite whatever guilt I may feel due to my empathetic nature. For me, that was a huge step in loving myself. You have to cut the bad fruit. It hurts, of course it hurts, but it's important to consider the long term, and if you're in a bad place trying to heal, or you're in a good place trying to do what it takes to get to an even better place, and someone is bringing negative toxicity to your life, it does not matter who they are, they have to go. Get rid of the bad people in your life. Get away from them. It's worth it. Do not let anybody hold you down or keep you away from succeeding.

Do not be a people pleaser. Do not be a suck up. Do not be a kiss ass.

Depressed + Empath = Not Good

Once you're depressed and you're trying to dramatically improve your life, you sort of enter the matrix where you have to be aware of the people around you. Weigh out the conditions of relationships in your life; the people who have your back no matter what, the people who will walk away when things get tough, and the people who will pull the trigger when you're not looking. Consider who to keep close, who you keep an arm length away, and who you stay away from. Be aware of people who put up a front, trying to manipulate, the users. Pick up on bad vibes and keep bad people away. Be independent as much as you can. The less you rely on others, the more confident you'll feel, and the easier it is to dismiss those who are a not good for you in your life.

I think the ideal position to hold in life would be where you don't need anybody necessarily. You're purely content within yourself. You are totally fulfilled, then the people who come into your life are only positive contributions to your overall happiness, but not necessary to be there in order for you to be happy. When people are truly fulfilled within themselves and understand this, it becomes easy to dismiss people if they're negative rather than allowing negativity to hold them back because they empathize with the people that cause them grief.

Focus on your dream, and don't care what anybody thinks. In fact, don't even share what you're doing. It's easy to want to talk about your dreams, goals, and ambitions. It's also easy for someone to talk down your dreams, tear apart your ideas, crap on your goals, or even intentionally get in your way or hold you back. If you try to talk about something you're working hard on or you're passionate about, and people don't even seem to care, that can really be hurtful too, especially if the people you're sharing with are important to you.

In order to accomplish what you want, you have to believe you can do you it. You need all the positivity in the world. We would think discussing our goals with people would be beneficial towards positive reinforcement, but this can backfire resulting in negative responses that are not helpful. It can actually hinder your process, or worse completely discourage you.

For the most part, it's best to play your cards close to your chest with whatever project you're working on, or goal you're trying to reach. Don't take the risk of letting that kind of energy in. Your dreams need to be nurtured. We must be gate keepers for ourselves and do what it takes to keep negativity away.

I think we all know or knew that one person that has the greatest plans and is going to do all these things and accomplish all these goals they're always talking about while in reality they're living the same minimalistic life, and they do nothing productive to move to the next level. They are all talk. People would always tell me what they're planning to do, but in reality they're not doing anything. Often times, these same people are blaming the world for the reasons they can't get anywhere. They aren't holding themselves accountable.

Don't be the person that is all talk and no action. Be one step ahead of everything you say. It's another reason you don't want to share every project you're working on, because some may not work out, or might take more time than you originally announced and you start looking like the person that is all talk. It's a little easier to fail behind closed doors than in front of people so long as you can help it.

Share ideas, when they're ideas. "Oh, I'm thinking about doing this." It's just a concept at that point. Discussing concepts can be a very productive thing to do.

When the idea becomes more of a reality as you bring it to life, when you're planting these seeds, and putting things in place so you can move to the next level, because you are very much deserving of the absolute best quality of life, and you can do it, but it is a top secret covert operation. You cannot be detected by the enemy, and the enemy is bad energy.

Outside support is a good thing. We all should have a team, or at least a few people that we can trust. That is very important. What I like to do when I have things that I'm working on that I'm excited about but can't share, I discuss it very vaguely the way people do when they have an upcoming project but they can't share much details yet. It's fun, I get it out of my system without opening the door for people to talk it down.

Figure out how to comfortably be alone if you haven't already. If you're like me, you feel like you need people. You have to have people around, or you always need a partner even though relationships don't last. You have to stop with the people and focus on yourself. Stop worrying about what everybody else wants and think about you what you want for yourself. Really think about it.

Take extraordinarily good care of yourself. Hold yourself up on a pedestal. You deserve it. You deserve the absolute best for yourself. If you are hurting because you feel unloved, and alone, you don't have to feel like that because you have had yourself all along. Ask yourself how you can help yourself, what makes you happy? Taking good care of yourself will provide you with so many wonderful benefits. Your life will improve.

Nobody can do this for you. Nobody can tell you who you are, and nobody can be who you are. If you're looking for someone to make you feel special or tell you are valuable, then you need to assess what you actually think of yourself. Nobody should think more highly of you than you yourself. Ask yourself questions. Cater to your own needs and desires. Love yourself. Nurture your own dreams and ambitions. I believe in you. Do you?