Are you living the life you want? And if not, what are the reasons you’re not changing that?
If you’re living the life you want and feel amazing pretty much every day, then this isn’t for you. Well done on creating that and long may it last! But if you’re a woman who isn’t living the life they want, read on, because I’ve lots of tips and questions for you to help you turn that around.
That’s if you want to turn it around. And that’s my POINT 1.There may well be a secondary gain from you staying stuck. Do you benefit in someway from not having the life you want? Sympathy and support from those around you? Attention even? Maybe it’s because you’re too afraid to make changes, so you’re choosing to stay there. It’s easier to stay there even thought it’s miserable. Because you’ve convinced yourself that the pain and misery from being stuck, can’t possibly be as hard as the pain you’ll feel from being scared to step out of your comfort zone.
On BEST, I call it the T-junction analogy. Easy to turn right, not scary at all to start with, not out your comfort zone. But keep doing down that path it won’t be very pleasant long term. Or take a big deep breath, roll your sleeves up and turn left. Hard to start with, can be awfully scary and frightful even. But once you’ve turned and face the fear everything becomes easier, better, more enjoyable. You see fear never goes away unless you take the plunge, feel the fear and create action that creates change.
Are you maybe someone who is living a life that they didn’t thought they’d have? Maybe in a situation you’d never thought you’d ever be? Don’t worry, you are NOT alone! So you’re not where you are. This is GREAT news. Because whilst you can’t change your choices, behaviours, thoughts and actions in the past, you CAN change what you think and do, how you behave and what you create from this moment on. Also sometimes to have a better life we have to LET GO of the life we thought we’d be living. It can be hard but also a huge relief.
My POINT 2 is do you know what it is that you DO want? Not what you don’t want, but what you DO want? Not what others think you should have, but what YOU want to have.
Have you ever taken some time to think what it is that you do want? People often say to me ‘ Janey you’re so lucky!’. I’m not lucky, I have created my amazing life (which by the way still has it’s challenges and is far from perfect!) and I’ve embraced my life plot twists positively and been pro-active in turning things around.
Yes, I have a job I love, a flexible job that means I work from home in school hours term time, I live in a lovely house a few minutes walk from the beach. I have a great au pair, I have the time to exercise 4-5 times each week, I go to bed at 830/9pm each night and sleep well (albeit it interrupted by my nearly 3 year old!), I have a weekend to myself each month without the kids (I’m a single mum of 3) where I rejuvenate myself and reconnect with myself. I spend lots of time in nature, live in a wonderful community and I go on nice holidays. I really, really like and value myself, I am a great Mum and love and enjoy being a Mum, I have great self-esteem and body image, wake up happy and find the joy everyday, I could go on.
But I made this happen! I choose to live my life this way. I choose to think this way. And I’ve invested in myself. Thousands and thousands of pounds worth of self-development and coaching sessions over the last 10 years or so– often when I didn’t have enough money. Because I asked myself ‘can I afford not to?’ over ‘Can I afford it?’. I’ve pushed myself out my comfort zone, written my bucket list and am working my way through it because you only get one life. Living by sea the was something I always wanted eventually, but in 2017 I thought why not now and upped and moved to Devon. But I also moved to a town with my 3 kids where I didn’t know one single person, with no family or friends here either! But I followed by gut instinct and never looked back. I am clever with my money so that I have money for me as well as my kids, I don’t waste money, I’m ON my money (Check out my Money Manager program if you need help with this!). I work smart not hard, I don’t waste time on social media, I say NO to people a lot, I sometimes say NO to things even thought I’d quite like to do them (but they take me away from balance and my goals) and say YES to me more.
Now if you’re reading all this and you’re saying to yourself ‘yeah but’ or there’s some bitter emotions, write them down – because that’s what you need to work on (see more in point 3 on this!).
Take some time (I do it every day now) to think about what you want. Be creative and visualize how your life could be. What’s your ideal day, your optimum week, what’s on YOUR life list. Create the desire and you’ll be more tempted to start working towards it! Learn and lower your fears so you can create the life YOU want. And don’t feed the fears, something that so many women do without realizing it!
Point 3 is that women should be utterly happy to see other women create the life they want. They should be buzzing for them! If that’s not you, that shows something inside you that is keeping you stuck. Keep challenging your thoughts, beliefs and mindset. And most importantly get help with this – I wouldn’t be where I am today without learning what my core beliefs are, where they came from and how to change them. I got help with this by a variety of training and coaching and reading. It doesn’t just happen.
A self-limiting core belief is something you’ve had usually from childhood. It was formed to help you make sense of the world and once you have it, you take it with you and look for evidence to back that up. These beliefs are stored in your subconscious mind, the most powerful part of your mind that works AGAINST your conscious choices and statements.
An example good be ‘ I must work hard and earn very good money to be a success in life’ This is not fact, but a belief. And if you have that belief you’ll think it’s fact. And if someone else around you has that belief they will think it’s fact and tell you it’s fact.
Maybe you’re a burnt out working Mum and you want a slower pace of life, maybe to downsize or simplify your life, get a part time job. That’s a conscious decision.
The beliefs will show up, often as a negative voice and often in the voice of the person who gave it to you too! Maybe with this example here your Dad was a real stickler for good education and achieving. He will have projected this on you (and it usually comes from a good place!), so you’ve lived your life thinking the same. Perhaps he was also someone who praised you highly for achieving good grades and getting the promotion (over being happy or content with the simpler / smaller things in life). He will have got something from this too and bigged it up even more to you, provided more evidence for you on this belief and so the beliefs build.
If you were wanting to downsize you’re most likely to hear some (like I say maybe in his tone of voice!) “What if….”, “But what will you do when…” or ‘Yes but..” and then you won’t create the changes in YOUR life that YOU want based on YOUR values, or of course your conscious choices.
This example can be easily transferred into body beliefs as well. A mother who wants to be slim, fit and attractive, most likely has a belief that you can only be successful and liked if you’re slim, fit, attractive etc., and will project those beliefs and fears onto their children (usually daughters). Maybe you’re that daughter. You might be exhausted from trying to be a size 10 and would like to see if you can live a happier, healthier life being s size 14 or 16. And the inner voice will kick in ‘Yes but, no one will like me like this’.. “What if people laugh at me”.. “What will my mother say? Will I embarrass her”, you get the picture. So you get stuck without realising and you stay stuck. Without realizing there is another way to think and live.
Because all beliefs can be changed, the inner dialogue can be overridden, you can learn to manage other people’s stuff and you learn to ignore their projections and fears they are putting on you. AND (and most importantly!) find the confidence to go on YOUR path, YOUR way.
If you don’t create the life you want, no one is going to do it for you! And that’s my POINT 4… Don’t sit around praying for change, work out what you want and make it happen!
So let me give you an example of something I’m doing. Yes I have an amazing life at the moment and very happy where I am. But I have more that I want to be / have / do / achieve / create / give / help. I’m busy, 3 kids by myself, work, home, exercise sessions etc. and in my life every minute counts. I don’t like to waste any precious time we have on this amazing planet. I can still be work in progress (a core message I teach on BEST), there doesn’t need to be self-inflicted pressure, but I can make my life even better.
So I discovered an online course that I wanted to do just before Christmas and I decided to sign up. It’s 50 hours of training, all audio based. I was worried ‘how will I find the time to do this?’ and ‘can I afford it?’. But then I asked myself …. What do I want? Will this course help? Do I want to do the course? Can I afford not to do it? How can I fit the training in my already busy life?
And I signed up. Because I wanted to do it, trusted it would help me and I knew I could find the solutions to the time needed to complete it – see barriers as hurdles right? And get over them!
As I type I’m now over 25 hours in. I listen to the audios in the car once I’ve dropped the kids off at school, I listen whilst cooking dinner, emptying the dishwasher, whilst I’m power walking, in the gym, when the kids are watching a bit of TV. In the evenings when the kids are in bed over listening to crap TV, or scrolling on social media. And my god what I’ve got from the program since starting it, is already soooooooooo much more, and I mean SO much more than the price I paid for it. In fact I’d say it’s been invaluable so far and I’ve not even implemented 20% of it – YET.
Don’t wish for it work for it. But make your work SMART not hard. Remember Parato’s 80/20 rule. 20% of what you do is responsible for 80% of the output in your life. Be clever, not overwhelmed or exhausted!
And my final POINT 5 is this. You deserve anything you want and you can create anything you want. But self-belief is absolutely key in this. As is being really clear on what you want and being really ON your time, choices, behaviours, boundaries and actions. And, and this is very important understanding that not everyone around you might be comfortable or happy if you changed or lead a life that’s different to theirs (called ‘their stuff / pls ignore it’ mindset).
So let’s say you want to create flexible work and simplify your life to give you more time. Maybe set up a new business, or create a 9 day fortnight at work, or negotiate working 3 days a week. You need to be SO behind this so that you’re able to manage other people saying things like:
Really?
Aren’t you afraid?
Are you sure your boss will allow that?
Wouldn’t you be the first to go if they made cuts?
What about your pension contributions?
What if you can’t make that business work?
What if you can’t sell your house?
Yeah but what about what that will look like on your future CV?
You’ll never do that!
Are you sure?
You get the drift.
But all the ‘yeah buts’ and ‘what ifs’ and ‘aren’t you’s’ are all THEIR fears and THEIR maps of the world and THEIR stuff. Not yours. But can you see how easily it would be if you weren’t sure of your choices and values, and didn’t believe in yourself or worried what others thought of you, for example. How hard it would be to go for something.
And this is the sad thing in life, in fact it was documented in one of my favourite articles of all time, ‘The top 5 regrets of the dying’ and number one is I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.
And feeling like you actually deserve something amazing is another big road block for women. And that’s because women’s self-worth is usually not very high. That again is because of those self-limiting beliefs that are so very strong. I’m yet to meet a woman come to me for coaching or join my programs who can say to themselves (like I can now). What a wonderful woman you are, you really deserve whatever you want, you are worthy of a truly enjoyable life. Let’s go get this. A woman who’s truly on her own side.
And that’s really why I created BEST, to help women do what I’ve done, create a life authentic to them, where the can override those beliefs and tell the inner voice to shut the F*** up. To feel so good about themselves they become invincible, not by their status or money they earn but by HOW THEY FEEL!
You do deserve anything you WANT
You are WORTHY of an effortless, enjoyable life
You can make ANYTHING happen.
But perhaps like me you need support and you need to invest in yourself. And I’d highly recommend you take the plunge and join my 2019 BEST program (it only starts once a year in January and next starts January 14th 2019) and let’s go together and find that amazing life where you truly thrive and shine each day!
If BEST isn’t for you, or maybe you’d like a bit more insight as to the kinds of things I teach on BEST and my style first, please check out these free videos and webinars!
Free videos
How to tell your negative voice to F*** off
The number one mistake women are making with their health and their lives
How to have an incredible 2019 and incredible life
If you’re stressed, worried, overwhelmed, worry what others think and compare yourself
Free webinars
Understanding and removing comparison
And if anyone wants to book a chat with me to see whether BEST or any of my programs are right for you, please contact the office (info@janeyholliday.com)
Janey x
