Beliefs Will Change Your Circumstances
If you want to change your circumstances, you must change your beliefs. Beliefs will override almost any bad choice or undesired outcome. When I was seventeen, I overdosed on speed. My mother sat in a hospital room while a doctor told her, basically, that she had a useless drug addict for a daughter. That is the word he used; useless.
A person assaulted me sexually at a party five weeks later. Not at gunpoint, not at knife-point — more like the kind of date rape a lot of women my age don’t even bother reporting because nobody would’ve believed it counted. A couple of years after that, I got pregnant.
If you’re keeping score, that’s the tone of a life that’s supposed to be over before it starts. And people told me so, plenty of them, right to my face. “Your life is ruined.” I heard some version of that sentence more times than I can count. It’s explained in greater detail in my memoir. https://wellnessgardentoolshed.com/product/manifesting-me/
Does Rock Bottom initiate Change?
Here’s the thing nobody tells you about hitting rock bottom that young: you get to decide what it means. I must say it didn’t really feel like it was a rock bottom moment. Change was all I needed.
In my heart I didn’t consider myself a drug addict. Being a Gen X kid, was to experiment with sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll, the way half of us were in the 80’s — not something I was going to be doing forever, not something that was me. I wasn’t in denial. Not doctor’s assessment was going define my identity by meeting me once.
I knew my life was going to change in a very dramatic way. Having my daughter is what actually grew me up, faster than I ever expected to grow. And here’s something that surprises people — the assault didn’t traumatize me the way everyone assumes it should have. My past gives me plenty to be traumatized about. That particular thing just isn’t one of them. I’ve made peace with saying that out loud even when it makes people uncomfortable.
So no — by every outside measure, I should have been the cautionary tale. The statistic everyone was quietly worried about.
What Are You Willing to Sacrifice For Change?
Instead, at twenty-one, I was a single mom trying to rent an apartment, and in the early 90’s, landlords did not want to hand keys to a woman in my position. So I took what I could get. My first apartment was in a neighborhood where drive-by shootings happened a street over and the working girls were not even a whole block away.
Nothing sharpens your problem-solving like watching someone smoke crack in your laundry room just feet from where your baby sleeps. You either sink into that environment or it lights a fire under you. I went the second way — not because I was special, but because I made a decision about what I believed I was capable of doing. I find when I’m in problem solving mode, I can really get creative in my thinking.
My parents helped shape that in me, in their own tough-love way. They wouldn’t hand me money. But they were relentlessly encouraging about my ability to figure it out myself. That combination — no safety net, full belief — turns out to build something in you that comfort never will.
Hard Changes
The first real change was when I sacrificed my happiness to get out of my apartment. Moving required me to put up with my daughter’s biological father in order to look like a happy couple. That allowed us to move into a better neighborhood. Thank goodness he moved out 8 months later. After he left, my life was looking up. I had a temporary roommate that allowed me to save money.
Having liked saving money, I asked my grandma if I could move in with her for awhile to save up for a down payment on a place. Talk about change. She let me move in one of her rooms for a minimal amount of rent. That was definitely a tough change. My grandma had rules to live in her house. As a twenty-four -twenty-five year old mom, I had a curfew. However, it did pay off.
Personal Development Changed My Life
In 1993, I began exploring personal development and fell in love with it at once. It validated my strong belief that there is more to this life than what’s physical. That there was a universal energy that could enhance your life if you let it: Law of attraction, manifesting, law of action, neuroplasticity. I didn’t just read about these ideas, I put them to work on my actual life, in real time.
Because my memory is pretty good, I could recall how I used the law of attraction and action without my knowledge. By the end of 1994, I bought my first condo. As a single mother. Four years after that, I married, owned three properties, and had my second child.
If I hadn’t found that work when I did, I wouldn’t have discovered how to intentionally set goals. The cycle would’ve continued; responding to the stimuli in front of me. That’s the difference of intentional living and reacting.
Here’s what all of this taught me, and what I still teach today: change is always available to you, but it costs something. Most people prefer what’s comfortable, and change is never comfortable. You have to actually go looking for what you believe about yourself — the beliefs sitting underneath the beliefs — and be willing to do the uncomfortable work of changing the ones that are lying to you. Skip that step and you can read every self-help book on the shelf and still get nowhere fast.
That’s the difference between someone who read the material and someone who lived it. I’ve done both. I know which one changes lives.
Circumstances And Choices
Going from being told I was going to be a loser for the rest of my life for choices I made in my late teens and early twenties, to where I am now is vastly different. Thank goodness I had the belief and ability to change. Had I let anyone like that doctor that didn’t even know me or even my loved ones dictate how my life was going, I’d never have a thriving business, a healthy marriage, become an author and publish two books, have healthy relationships with family and friends, spend time on vacation enjoying the beauty of nature, hiking the Camino Inca to Machu Picchu, race dirt bikes, or any of things that bring me joy. None of those things would define loser, nor should anyone decide for you how you will live your life.
Oprah is a prime example of circumstances and choices. She was sexually assaulted, pregnant at 13 or 14 years old, had a stillborn, African American, poor, and a woman. Many things going against her. She was once told that a potato would get better ratings than her. Boy did she prove them wrong. And I love it!
Time and time again an opportunity will arise, usually some sort of contrast, that will offer you the chance to overcome an obstacle and give you a chance to grow and evolve. The choice is yours if you are willing to change. After all the definition of insanity is repeating the same behaviors and expecting something different. Her story. https://youtu.be/dJ0tXc-6P4c?si=6W_1JHR2iY1RUIp0
Do you believe that you will be taken town by your circumstances? Or do you believe you can triumph over your trials?
The Take Away
If you take one thing from this: pick one belief you’ve never questioned — about money, about relationships, about what you’re “supposed” to become given where you started. Write it down. Then ask yourself honestly whether it’s true, or just familiar. That’s where the actual work begins.
If you haven’t had a chance to see this video, it touches a little more on beliefs and a pick-a-card. https://youtu.be/tANnD-5Q-l8?si=24aPWJ_8mQXqpQiG
“Our beliefs determine how we experience the world.” — Glennon Doyle
