insecurities

How to Feel Like You Belong

(Hint: It has nothing to do with them and everything to do with you)

When was the last time you felt accepted, like you truly belonged?

Would you feel comfortable going into a room full of strangers and hanging out by yourself?

I can say I would, but not for the reasons you might think.

It’s definitely not because I thrive in that type of environment (um, HELL no). In fact, it’s the exact opposite. I could do it because I’m a professional at making myself invisible in a crowd. I mean like Houdini-level disappearing.

It’s a trait I learned early, out of necessity.

When I was a teenager my family moved around a lot, I went to 3 different high schools in 4 years. And trust me, if there was one place I definitely didn’t want to stand out as an awkward teenager, it was high school.

Fortunately for me, I’m 4’11 so all I had to do to was keep my head down, hover on the outskirts of large groups, and avoid eye contact. I could go all day without anyone even noticing I was around.

(That sounded a lot less sad when it was just in my head).

Anyway, to say I felt like I didn’t belong would be an understatement. As far as my brain was concerned it was a concrete fact.

Looking back it’s easy to see how my lifelong pattern of not belonging was developed:

I didn’t believe I would be accepted so I acted small and invisible to avoid attention
By avoiding attention (and thereby, connection) I made sure I was by myself all the time
Being by myself all the time guaranteed that I wouldn’t fit in, which proved my belief that I didn’t belong

See what my brain did there?

I used to think hiding and playing small served me. And maybe it did when I was younger, in unfamiliar surroundings with no knowledge of how to protect myself. I wasn’t able to make choices for myself back then so naturally I felt powerless.

And I know my brain was just trying to keep me safe by convincing me to stay hidden.

But now I’m a 55-year-old adult woman, and I am no longer powerless. I get to make decisions about where I live and how I decide to show up. I get to choose what circumstances I put myself into and which ones don’t serve me or my goals.

But changing old patterns and beliefs definitely isn’t easy, they don’t go away just because we grow up.

One of the things we need to learn as adults (and that I continue to work on) is how the feeling of acceptance and belonging doesn’t come from circumstances outside of ourselves.

In the case of me as a teenager, it was my thought “I don’t belong” that lead me to feel like I didn’t belong, which made me act like I didn’t belong, which lead me to “un-belonging myself”, if you follow.

It’s the same for us as adults.

If we show up believing that we don’t belong, that we’re somehow less than the other people around us — at a job, the gym, or a party — then how do we act? And what will be our end result because of those actions?

Our belief in ourselves has to come from ourselves. The call needs to come from inside the house, as they say.

No one can make us feel accepted, or unaccepted, it comes from our beliefs first.

“Our sense of belonging will never be greater than our own self-acceptance”

-Brooke Castillo

We can decide ahead of time to accept ourselves and “belong” ourselves, no matter what happens outside of us.

It takes practice, but I’m willing to do it.

And you can too, I promise.

Discover What’s Possible

P.S.

I hear from a lot of women over 50 who want to make friends but don’t know quite how to get started, so I created a free pdf “3 Simple Ways to Make Friends in Your 50s”. You can grab yours here https://skilled-trader-6387.ck.page/eff75275a1

How Do You Measure Your Self-Worth?

Happy Monday strong humans 🙂

I know your time is valuable so let’s get into it.

How do you measure your self-worth?

Is it your hustle? What you can do for others? What you can produce?

When I was in my late teens and twenties I was a workaholic.

I went to high school during the day and worked at a fast-food restaurant at night, sometimes until closing, which could be as late as 1:00 am.

After graduation I got a “real”, 8-5 office job, I started as a receptionist but quickly proved myself to be a very hard worker and moved up quickly. In order to impress the ‘higher ups’ I started coming in early and staying late. I even worked weekends.

My bosses loved me, and I was making good money.

I lived like this, even after having my first baby, for several years.

My first marriage ended after just two years (to be fair we were both still children when we first got married).

In my early thirties, I remarried and had two more babies. By then my focus had shifted. I not only had to prove myself worthy to my coworkers and bosses, I also needed to prove myself worthy to my kids and my husband, and his family, while still working full time.

Shortly after that, my husband became sick, and I felt I had to prove myself as a caregiver.

Looking back at this makes me feel exhausted.

In a nutshell, I’ve lived my whole life feeling that I was only as good as the work I could produce, and what I could do for other people.

Because I’ve only known how to view my worthiness through their eyes.

Only their approval of me mattered, mine meant nothing.

And I feel like a lot of women are living their lives the same way.

Are you one of them?

Unfortunately, the answer isn’t as easy as repeating a mantra, or shoving down your current thoughts and swapping them for a “happy” one.

So what does it take to truly acknowledge our self-worth? To believe it?

First, we need to look at why we ever questioned ourselves in the first place.

Who told us, or got us to believe, that we weren’t worthy?

And why did we choose to believe it?

However it started, it’s in the past, and we don’t have to believe it anymore. We’re adults now, and we get to choose whatever thoughts we want to think now. Intentionally.

Do you want to believe you’re only as good as someone else thinks you are? Do they know you better than you do? Or do you want to finally believe in your own self-worth?

We live and breathe. Our brain contains chemicals that can generate enough electricity to power a lightbulb!

It takes six muscles just to operate the human eye.

We are capable of loving others. Our children. Our parents. Our siblings. Ourselves.

We are walking miracles. We are born being worthy of love. And that never changes.

The only thing that changes are our thoughts about ourselves.

But we can change them back.

Find that worthiness in yourself, it’s there, I promise you! You just need to see it, and accept it.

And if you need any help with that just let me know. No matter who you are, or what you feel you’ve done to lose it, I GUARANTEE I can show it to you 🙂

Don’t waste one more day giving away your power, your worth.

Decide to take it back.

Start today.

You’re worth the work. I promise. ❤️

Primal Vs Prefrontal – a Tale of Two Brains

Photo by That’s Her Business on Unsplash

Did you know that, as humans, we function primarily from two different parts of our brain?

They’re the polar opposite of each other, and their functions are the difference between sitting down and working on a college thesis, or binge-watching Tin Star (highly recommend!) the whole weekend.

Let me introduce you to them:

The Primal Brain

Its job is to

1) Seek pleasure

2) Avoid pain

3) Be efficient (which, in this case, is NOT a good thing!)

Back in the primal days being full, being warm, avoiding uncomfortable situations, and thinking ‘inside the box’ literally meant staying alive. (We weren’t always at the top of the food chain).

The Prefrontal Cortex

This is known as the ‘higher-thinking’ brain. It’s the workhorse, the intentional, problem-solving brain, and it’s available to us 24/7. We can tap into it any time we want.

Most of us just don’t know how.

The primal brain is considered ‘efficient’ because it runs on default, which takes no energy or conscious thought to operate. Because of this, it tends to generate the same (often negative) thoughts so often, for so long, that they become our unconscious beliefs:

“I can’t do that”, “I don’t know how”, “I’m not good enough”, “Things like that are only available to other people, not me”.

But imagine for a moment…what would be possible for us if we decided to challenge those default thoughts? If we chose an INTENTIONAL thought instead? How would those intentional thoughts feel in your body?

We don’t have to choose an opposite thought right away because most of us have found that forcing positive thoughts doesn’t work. But we could decide to choose a thought we can believe, one that would serve us:

“What if I could do that?”, “What if I could learn how”, “What if I AM good enough, right now, just as I am”.

Pick an intentional thought from your higher brain, make sure it feels believable, and make sure it’s a thought that will serve you. Then journal that intentional thought, every day. Make it part of your routine. “I AM worthy, just as I am”. “I AM capable of learning this new thing”. “I can do hard things”.

YOU CAN RE-TRAIN YOUR BRAIN to think thoughts that work FOR you. Tap into that prefrontal. Make it intentional.

It will change your life.

I wish you all a very happy, intentional week!

And Happy Valentines Day my beautiful friends ❤️

You are Enough. Right now. Just as you are.

So I’m probably not the first ’empty nester’ to start examining their life’s journey, trying to figure out who I am and how I got to Here. It’s probably a bit of a cliche by now in fact, but it’s all new to me so I’m going to put into words what I’ve figured out up to this point.

When I was a kid I unknowingly trained myself to become invisible. Being visible did not always lead to good things, and sometimes those ‘things’ were downright not good. So I learned to be quiet, avoid eye contact, and keep a very low profile.

I think that we all pick up behaviors when we’re younger that we use to survive, to help us navigate an adult world when that world is scary or uncertain. The problem is how do we let go of those behaviors when we’re adults and those behaviors no longer serve us? Especially if that world is all we’ve ever known?

I have finally figured out how to stop looking at life through the eyes of a scared, self-conscious, intimidated child. I’m a big girl now, but I discovered recently that I’ve never entirely let go of that old narrative, even after raising my own, wonderful, independent children. I’ve held on to it all of these years, because I never knew that I could let it go. That it no longer had to be a part of who I was!

I have no idea if you’ve ever felt the same way. If, at whatever stage you are in your life right now, you might still be carrying around your old narratives, your old insecurities. But, just in case you are, let me be the first one to tell you, NONE OF IT WAS YOUR FAULT. YOU WERE JUST A CHILD, AND YOU ARE WORTHY…of love, of attention, of security, of good things and happy days, of being SEEN! Don’t wait for someone to give it to you, take it!! It’s yours, and you have every right to it.

Okay, there, that’s all I wanted to say. Please know that you are worthy and you are loved and you are special.

Thank you for reading my little blog 🙂