You are born an innocent, adorable little baby entering this world with inherent worthiness of love, without having to do anything to earn or deserve affection. Imagine you grew up feeling loved and safe, yet empowered to test boundaries and explore new realms. When you inevitably got hurt in your exploration, you were met with an encouragement to express your pain, and a comforting reassurance that you will be okay. You were taught that pain is a part of life and getting hurt is not something we have to be afraid of because we are strong and can handle it.
You were pushed to work hard for what you want, building a work ethic, confidence, and pride in your ability to make things happen. You were encouraged to fail often because it means you are taking risks, putting yourself out there and on the path to succeeding. Your unique talents, passions and interests were championed, encouraged, and celebrated, allowing you to forge a unique path, authentic to who you are and what lights you up. You went on to study things in school that interested you and forged a career path that is meaningful and fun, without a care or concern for what other people think.
Your dedication to embark on purposeful and passionate endeavors, develop your skills fully, take risks, put yourself out there, fail, keep going, ask for help, receive constructive criticism, learn, grow, pivot, innovate, and evolve, leads to incredible financial success and professional fulfillment. You continue to grow and push your boundaries your whole life, leading to perpetual passion, aliveness, and pride.
Your genuine confidence and happiness allow you to open up and connect with people easily and effortlessly. You foster a vast community woven with genuine and deep relationships with people mutually supporting and caring about one another— feeling a profound sense of belonging and love. Your wellspring of innate security, joy, and abundance allows your cup to spill over onto others, freely sharing support, warm smiles, and random acts of kindness with both strangers and loved ones alike. When people you know hurt you, you talk about it with them openly and honestly, working through your differences, and growing together.
You wake up with excitement for your day and go to sleep with peace and fulfillment, knowing it was a day well spent. When your life is done one day, you smile knowing you left it all on the field and made the most of the time you were given. You lived, you loved, you mattered, and now you are ready for the next great adventure.
It is likely your life experience feels vastly, and maybe even laughably, different than this idyllic picture. In fact, it may feel something more like this…
You are born an innocent, adorable little baby entering this world with inherent worthiness of love. But soon you learn that affection must be earned. Early in your childhood development, you begin to study your parents, learning which behaviors please them, earn their affection, and create peace in your home. And conversely, you learn which behaviors seem to lead to disapproval, abandonment, or volatility. You internalize a deep fear that you aren’t enough and won’t be loved unless you can perform in all the right ways.
You go on to lead a life determined to prove your significance. You study things in school and choose a career path that you think will make your parents proud, earn lots of money, sound impressive to your friends or just feels safe, never considering what you enjoy. Soon you feel the pressure to settle down, get married, buy a house, maybe have a few kids—so that’s what you do. You work hard and achieve some degree of success and feel like you “should” be happy with your life, but deep down you feel a profound sense of unfulfillment, wondering “Is this it? Is this all there is?”
Your seeking of external validation creates patterns of people pleasing, social anxiety, and a life-long performance of who you think you need to be to be liked and loved. All of which leave you feeling some degree of exhausted, insecure, bitter, unworthy, anxious, alone, and uncared for.
You look at other people’s lives on social media and it feels like you are behind. It feels like you should be better, life should be more than what it is. You feel the potential within you for so much more than this. You fantasize about changing careers, changing spouses, changing addresses, changing yourself in some sort of way that just seems better.
You have lots of ideas. You set lots of goals and make lots of plans and do lots of research and think about it all a LOT… but alas nothing ever actually changes. You can never quite seem to take action or put yourself out “there.” At least not long enough to be successful. And so you remain stuck in analysis paralysis, perpetually planning to start, trapped in a purgatory between being fully here and somewhere else, enslaved by the never-ending obligations and responsibilities of your life.
You have lots of stories and excuses about why you can’t and haven’t done anything to change, but deep down you know the truth… you’re afraid. Afraid to make a mistake. Afraid to fail. Afraid to let people down. Afraid to make the wrong choice. Afraid to start over. Afraid of what people will think. Afraid of rejection, abandonment, looking stupid. Afraid you are wasting your life. Afraid you are going to die alone. Afraid of pretty much everything. Ultimately, afraid that you aren’t enough and won’t be loved.
And so you remain stuck in your familiar and comfortable routine, hidden away from the world, choosing the familiar pain of your present circumstances over the uncertain abyss beyond what you’ve known. You beat yourself up for your failure to change and for settling for this mediocre existence, gathering further evidence to support your deep-seated fear that you are not good enough.
The inner screaming of your soul that you are wasting your life manifests as anxiety, trying to wake you up to make a change. But that internal alarm is quieted by a blanket of helplessness and hopelessness called depression. And here you remain, swaddled in apathy, sucking on your chosen pacifier of comfort to get you through each day.
You’ve found enough sources of pleasure to numb, distract and escape from your pain— whether it be endless busyness, food, alcohol, pain pills, weed, shopping, video games, online puzzles, extramarital affairs, social media scrolling or Netflix binging.
These coping mechanisms provide just enough pleasure to dampen the pain of disappointment, loneliness and self-loathing that may otherwise motivate you to make a change and grow beyond your current circumstances and limitations. These low-quality sources of pleasure provide a temporary high, followed by a comedown and feeling even worse about yourself and your life, creating a downward spiral taking you further and further away from the person you might have been and the life you might have had.
Other people trigger you easily and often, causing you to either erupt in anger and meanness, hurting the people you love; or you go cold and pull away— protecting yourself and hurting them silently with your withholding of love. You pass along the pain you feel inside like a contagious pandemic, until eventually it seems that all people suffer from the affliction of being a selfish asshole. Believing that all people suck, you seek further refuge in the cozy isolation of your nest at home.
You put your head down and do what you have to do to get by. The days, months, and years blow by in a monotonous blur that feels like blink, until one day you lift your head up from the hamster wheel you’ve been mindlessly running on and realize you’ve reached the end. You are flooded with regret for all the things you wish you would have done differently. You wasted the precious time you were given just existing and settling for the distraction of entertainment instead of the rapture of aliveness that existed just outside your comfort zone. You didn’t live, you didn’t love, and you didn’t matter— and even though you aren’t ready, now it’s over. You are being forced to exit your life much the same way you lived it—feeling terrified, inadequate, and powerless.
Unless, of course, you decide to take your pen and rewrite the end of your story.
You cannot change the beginning. Your parents and your childhood were what they were and it’s not worth wasting any more energy wishing they could have or should have been different. You cannot change your past, but you sure as hell have the power to change your future. At any moment, you can choose to step up and step out of your comfort zone. You can break free from the fear, insecurity, limitations, and other dysfunctional patterns you inherited. You can start living the life deep down inside you know is possible. A life full of passion and purpose and love. A life where you feel confident and fearless, and worthy. A life that ends with no regrets.
Much love,
