Kill Assumptions and Prove Yourself Wrong
/“Ask yourself the tough questions that will help you paint your own picture of success, of happiness, of self-love.”
Have you ever had someone tell you that you can’t do something? I have, multiple times. And each time my stubbornness has driven me towards action. It’s like someone lit a fire under my ass and I find the strength and courage to do what I have to do to prove them wrong. But when my own self-doubt creeps in, it is difficult to have that “prove ‘em wrong” mentality. Instead, I find my big ego cowering in a corner whimpering “I can’t.”
Self-doubt can be crippling. You find yourself wanting something so bad, but you fear that you’re just not good enough. The negativity taunts you and you’re literally stuck. It strips you from any self-confidence and you’re left with fear and insecurity. And you try to “think positive” as a countermeasure, but it doesn't work. So you quit. Or worse, you don’t even get started.
2 years ago I was fat, unhappy and sad all the time. I kept thinking, “I will never have the body that I want. I just can’t do it.” And I didn’t realize it at the time, but that thought was self-limiting. I wasn’t allowing myself to think about what I needed to do in order to get the body I wanted. I wasn’t allowing myself because I was too scared to change my entire life for this one goal. But I was finally ready to prove myself wrong. I was tired of constantly failing at losing weight. I was tired of having the same New Year’s Resolution year after year.
When I finally embraced my goal, I was willing to do whatever necessary to achieve it. I knew I needed a drastic lifestyle change in order to reach my goals. But I was scared. I was scared that my family and friends wouldn’t understand my goals and what I needed to do in order to achieve them. I was scared to tell my boss that I wanted to quit. I was embarrassed to tell my coworkers it was because I wanted to lose weight. But again, this was a wrong assumption. Everyone was incredibly supportive. I wouldn’t have known this if I hadn’t had the courage to go against the grain and do what I wanted.
Live the life you want. It seems so easy, but often times it’s not. Every day we are exposed to various opinions on how we should advance our career, how to improve our home life, and how to strengthen our mind and body. But if we are constantly consuming everyone else’s idea of the perfect life, when will we ever have time to ask ourselves: “What do I want?”
I urge you to think outside of the box and challenge the status quo. Stop buying into your parents', your friends’, and media’s picture of what life is. Starting looking within. Ask yourself the tough questions that will help you paint your own picture of success, of happiness, of self-love. And when you start goal setting, be bold enough to take on the challenges.
If you could do anything, what would it be? What’s stopping you?
