When our hearts are hungry, we come from a place of lack and increased vulnerability. We are so starved for intimacy and companionship that we overlook red flags and the ability to look at things clearly. We are willing to suspend our disbelief about our partner because we seeking to fill a void within us and looking to feel like we belong or are loved.

Think back to some of your relationships. Whether it was a romantic partner, business partner or friend, have there been times that you have wondered how you could have believed what they said? Or fallen for their lies?

You aren’t stupid. You may have overlooked ref flags or believed what they said because you…needed to. You may have settled for less than you deserve because you were afraid to be alone. And you know what? That makes you human.

All that being said, it is our responsibility to do all that we can to protect our hearts without losing the ability to be vulnerable with others. We are still going to experience heartbreak because that is just part of life. But if we nourish our own hearts, we can put ourselves in a better position to not be taken advantage of and know when we are being mistreated.

Here are some ways to nourish yourself and give yourself the unconditional love you deserve:

• Accept yourself flaws and all. No one is perfect and we are going to make mistakes along the way.
• Forgive yourself for mistakes you have made. We learn a lot about who we are and what we want by making mistakes. They are just part of the process.
• Practice self-care daily. Whether it’s getting in physical exercise, writing in a journal, meditating or doing something that recharges you, make it a daily habit.
• Make peace with your inner critic. Be nice to yourself. It’s okay to be unhappy with yourself about some things. Just stop attacking yourself. Acknowledge your feelings about it and focus your energy and thoughts on what you are doing to change the things you don’t like. We are all works of progress and we are not in a race.
• Prioritize relationships that inspire you or make you feel recharged.

If you are struggling with ways to practice self-care, we have a whole section on this website that talks about it. You can check it out here.

When we focus on all the reasons why we believe something won’t work, we are creating a buffer to protect our ego. If we have low expectations, then when we fail, we won’t feel disappointed.  The funny thing is, we put all our effort and energy into the outcome we don’t want, rather what we do want.

Whether we are conscious of it or not, what we believe about ourselves, and our situations determine the results we get in our life. Our focus becomes our reality. If we focus on all that can go wrong, guess what? A lot of things are going to go wrong. Our brains will actually look for it. In an older post, I talked about the science behind the law of attraction. 

If you focus on all that can go wrong, your brain will look for evidence and data that supports that belief. Our brains are always looking to validate and confirm what it believes. But the flipside is also true. If you start to focus on all that can go right, your brain will seek to validate that belief, too. And when you start to see where things can go right, you open your mind up to new opportunities you never knew existed.

Fear stands for two completely different things:

AND

F – Face
E – Everything
A – And
R – Rise

How we see fear determines everything – our mindset, choices we make, etc.

Don’t limit yourself by refusing to face your fears. Fear is here to challenge is, to push us out of our comfort zones and allow us to level up.

So many of us run back to what hurt us, looking for happiness. It is human to want to resolve unfinished business. Somehow, we think that if we go back and fix what caused us unhappiness, we will actually be happy. The problem is, often times what needs to be fixed is out of our control.

You cannot change someone else. They can change if they want to bad enough, but they have to want it. If you find yourself going back to a relationship that has made you unhappy, you have to start looking at yourself and asking some real difficult questions.

For many of us, myself included, we get caught up in what I call crazy making dynamics in relationships. These behaviors become vicious cycles. You can read more about it here.

One of the traits, I think many of us are vulnerable to is inconsistent praise and affection. The crazy maker will give you praise and affection, and you will feel good about things, and then they quickly take it away. There have been numerous studies that show how addictive inconsistent praise can be to people and how praise from someone who doesn’t give it often, is more meaningful. It’s actually been equated to the inconsistent reward of gambling addiction.

If this sounds like something that happens in your relationships, the key to fixing it is working on your self-worth. Someone else getting us doesn’t define us. Their praise or acceptance of us isn’t what makes us a worthwhile person. You are worth so much more. Once you start seeing the value you already have, the harder it will be to stay around people who don’t see it.

In Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Harry notices similarities between him and Tom Riddle. Tom Riddle grows up to become Voldemort and Harry is worried that there is evil inside him, too.

Dumbledore agrees that they share some traits, but then he tells him, “It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.” 

Our choices reveal what is really in our hearts. What we choose to do will always triumph over the mere fact that we have certain abilities. If you accept the difference between who you are and who you want to be is what you do, then it all comes down to choice and action. But choice can be a funny thing…some of us fall into the trap of forgetting just how much choice we have. And not taking action is also a choice.

When we chose things and take a course of action, we need to take full ownership of ourselves. That means taking responsibility for what’s going on with our lives – both the good and bad. It means not relying on other people or events to define our happiness. It’s being willing to go against the grain and do what you need to do to achieve the results you want, even if other people don’t get it. It’s about being honest with yourself about your strengths, weaknesses and shortcomings and seeing these things as an opportunity for you to grow and improve yourself.

Choice is action, and action speak louder than words and abilities.

It’s completely human to care about what the people who we love think of us. We naturally want to be liked and accepted. Where things start to go off track is when we start listening to other people’s opinions over our own.

The truth is, what other people have to say about us can only affect us if we allow it to. We have the say in whether or not their opinion of us is valid. And just because they might see us a certain way, does not mean that it is true.

Let’s go back in time for a minute when you were a child, playing in your backyard. You did your own thing and you didn’t care what anyone thought. You were fully present and engaged in what you were doing.

As a child I felt like my life was limitless. I could be whoever I wanted to be, and I could do anything I wanted to do someday. I was definitely a weird child, but I knew deep in my soul that I was born to stand out from the norm. I didn’t care what anyone thought of me or who they thought I should be.

But as I got older, other people’s opinions infiltrated my heart and mind. And it happened slowly. And before I knew it, I lost sight of who I was because I was so busy trying to manage what other people thought of me. Don’t let this happen to you.

Remember that the people who continuously attack your self-esteem and confidence are quite aware of your potential, even if you are not. For them, it feels better to focus on tearing you down, rather than work on themselves and feel better about how they see themselves.

When it comes to the people closest to us, we tend to tolerate a lot more nonsense than we typically would, with say an acquaintance or co-worker. And there is something about familiarity that makes people feel like it’s okay to unleash hostility onto their targets and treat them in ways they would never treat someone else.

About a year ago, my brother and I got into an argument. While he had some very valid points in what he had to say to me, but he expressed it in a very toxic, destructive way. He also had unrealistic expectations of me and was expressing so much entitlement, it left me feeling flabbergasted. He can be very intimidating and for lack of a better word, scary. He refuses to compromise, and he always has to be right. There is no reasoning with him and he refuses to see another person’s perspective. He also unleashed holy hell on me when I told him that he needed to take accountability and responsibility for himself.

Now I had seen him get into altercations with other people before like this, but he had never come at me in this way. Long story short, I made the decision that how he treated me was unacceptable and I wasn’t going to put up being treated like shit. If he had chosen to apologize to me, I might feel like the relationship can be worked on, but he hasn’t. Why? Well according to what others have said, he doesn’t feel like he was wrong to treat me the way he did.

The truth is, if this had happened a couple of years earlier, I wouldn’t have stood up for myself and would have tried to fix things to keep the peace. But last year, I was at the point in my own journey, where I just couldn’t accept or tolerate his mistreatment and lack of an apology. My new sense of self-respect demanded that I take a stand. I was finally at the point where compromising myself to “keep the peace” was more harmful and anxiety inducing to me than there being some serious awkward conversations and situations in my family because of this argument and distance between me and my brother.

When it comes to people around you, even family, be careful what you tolerate. You are teaching people how to treat you.

If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you already know how I feel about social media. As a culture, we have become enmeshed with posting our “highlight reel” and curated life online. It’s fun to post things online, but far too many of us are preoccupied with likes and comments because we crave that external confirmation that we are good enough. We care about how our life appears, more than how it really is.

Remember that if you live for people’s acceptance, you will die from their rejection. The only approval and validation you need is from yourself. And once you break away from focusing on what people think of you externally, a whole new freedom comes about in your life.

I’ve noticed that for me, when I was active on social media years ago, I did care about how my life looked to others. I wasn’t posting about my family issues or serious fights with my husband. I didn’t want people to see me as a mess or that my life was out of control.

When I stopped being as active on social media, a funny thing happened. All of a sudden, I had a lot more time to sit with my uncomfortable feelings of how my life really felt. I wasn’t distracting myself from my feelings when I was curating my life in social media posts and videos. I was left sitting with my reality, which prompted me to make some serious changes.

I’ve been off social media now for going on ten years. I don’t have any personal accounts, just business/brand accounts that I’ve created that are super specific to the brand, like Mindset Made Better. It would actually be advantageous for me to have a personal account and promote this website on it, but I would rather grow it organically and stay off the platforms personally.

When I think about how my life has unfolded over the last decade, it’s pretty unbelievable. I’ve had some incredible experiences and I have been so blessed with opportunities to travel all over the country and be in nature. And not a second of it has been documented on social media.

To be completely honest, at first there was a part of my brain that was like, “don’t you want to share what you are experiencing with others? This is amazing content! Don’t you want people to see these adventures?” But for me, these feelings faded quickly. I asked myself what my real motivation was. Was it to show how great my life was? Was it another highlight reel I wanted to queue up and project out into the world? What kind of feeling does doing that really give me? Do I feel connected to people? Or does it make me feel kind of empty or like I am bragging?

We’ve shared photos and videos with friends and family from various trips, but they are a small group of people we know in person and have real-life relationships with. In these years, I have learned to value my privacy and focus on how my life feels, rather than how it looks.