You can give someone an opportunity, or you can show them a path, but they must choose to take it for themselves. It is something to remember when trying to help someone. You can give them all the tools and resources, but if they don’t want to help themselves, they won’t.

If you are like me and feel an innate need to want to help people succeed in life, this can be hard advice to fully internalize. It’s understandable that we want the people we care about to have every opportunity and to be healthy and well. But sometimes we lose sight of the fact that just because we want these things for them; it doesn’t make us the authority of their life or know what’s best for them. They have every right to refuse the opportunities, resources and tools we present to them. It’s their life, and they set their terms on how they live it.

If you are having trouble accepting this, know that all we can do is meet people where they are, show them a path and be an inspiration. We cannot control them and if we try to, we will push them away. People don’t like being told what to do with their life. Just think about how much you don’t like it when people tell you what you should do. Respect them and where they are on their journey. Leave the door open for them if they want your help in the future. Continuously work on being the best version of yourself so you can be an example to others. Be open about your failures and how you deal with them. Focus more on connecting with that person than focusing on what you feel is best for them and their journey.

While it may be easier to do something for someone else rather than take the time to show them how to do it, it doesn’t truly help them in the long run. If you take the time to teach someone how to do it for themselves, they gain mastery of it and they aren’t dependent on you or anyone else for help.

Think about this concept in your personal life. I would rather teach someone I care about how to do something for themselves. This isn’t because I don’t want to be bothered doing something for them – it’s actually quite the opposite. I would rather invest the time in teaching them, so that they can learn the basics and then fine tune it to their preferences or style. I want them to feel good about themselves learning how to do it, feel autonomous and gain confidence in whatever skill it is I teach them. The payoff for me is feeling good about teaching someone something that they can now use in the future to help or provide for themselves.

In what areas of your life are you giving someone a fish rather than teaching them how to fish? How can you begin to take steps to teach them instead?

Last month I spoke extensively about our intuition and how we can tell if it is truly guiding us, or if our past traumas misleading us. Let’s take a look at what our intuition, or gut instinct, really is.

Our intuition is our immediate understanding of something. We can’t really explain why we understand something a certain way, we just do. It is an inescapable, strong feeling of what we know in our heart is right – even if it doesn’t seem to make sense logically or there is evidence to the contrary.

I place a lot of trust and faith in my ability to just know what the right path for me is. But, like everything, our intuitions aren’t foolproof. There are some things that can interfere with what our intuition is telling us, and that is typically unhealed trauma.

There are four things that can mislead us: overthinking, getting caught up what we “should do”, seeking external validation and confirmation bias. Confirmation bias is easily the trickiest one and you can read more about it here. But these four culprits can really mislead us and trick us into believing we are following our intuition.

Remember, when we are coming from a place of trauma, we are operating from a place of fear. This makes sense because any kind of trauma is going to have fear attached to it. But fear has a way of distorting how we see things. And if we aren’t mindful, this distortion can infiltrate our feelings and convince us that those fears are really our intuition or gut guiding us.

Dr. Judith Orloff, author of Emotional Freedom, breaks down the difference between reliable intuition and irrational fear:

Signs of a Reliable Intuition:

• Conveys information neutrally, unemotionally
• Feels right in your gut
• Has a compassionate, affirming tone
• Gives crisp, clear impressions that are “seen” first, then felt
• Conveys a detached sensation, like you’re in a theater watching a movie

Signs of an Irrational Fear:

• Is highly emotionally charged
• Has cruel, demeaning, or delusional content
• Conveys no gut-centered confirmation or on-target feeling
• Reflects past psychological wounds
• Diminishes centeredness and perspective

You can read her full article about this here.

Take the time you need to really learn about what your intuition is really telling you. We all have traumas that will pop up and try to interfere with our gut feeling from time to time. They key is to acknowledge those traumas and distinguish what is coming from a place of trauma and what is really coming from our gut. 

Nothing worth having comes easy. It is often through our blood, sweat and tears that we arrive to the place we set out for long ago. This is a place where in our darkest hours we wondered if we’d even make it there. What’s curious is that we tend to put all of our focus on the destination, but less focus on the journey there. But it is in the journey that we discover who we really are and what we are made of.

Here are some things to remember when your road becomes difficult:

• Everything is temporary – even this struggle.
• Even bad times end.
• All these challenges and hurdles are helping you grow stronger.
• The hardest days shines a light on what is most important to us.
• All we have is now. Focus on the present.
• Change is inevitable, growth is optional.
• Sometimes the storm comes to clear our path for better things.
• You have survived everything bad that has happened to you.
• You have incredible strength and resilience to overcome anything.
• Trust the journey, even when you don’t understand it.
• This is your journey, no one else’s. Avoid comparing where you are on your path with where others may be.
• You have not come this far to only come this far.
• Keep going.

We tend to hold ourselves to crazy standards we wouldn’t dare impose on those we love. We forget that even when we feel like we are falling short, there is still beauty and something inside us that we can still give the world.

No one is perfect. We have all done things we aren’t proud of. Some of us are survivors of horrific traumas that cause us to feel broken somehow. But just because we might feel broken inside, our value or worth hasn’t changed. There is nothing that can happen to us that can decrease our value or worth.

We tend to lose sight of this because we are chasing perfection. Or the appearance of perfection. But none of us are perfect and honestly, perfect is boring. It lacks layers and depth.

As a matter of fact, the most broken crayons change world. Look at “successful” people who have impacted us and the world. These people failed many times and have been through hell and back and lived to tell the tale. They wear their battle wounds with pride. It gives them a credible platform to encourage and help others. They are broken crayons that color so vividly, it touches us on a deeper level. And we feel it. Because if we can relate to them, and they accomplished something we want to accomplish, we know that we can, too. It gives us hope.

If you are struggling with feeling broken, know that you still have value and worth. Your life experiences and what you have been through do not define who you are. You are strong and have the ability to reach others in ways other people can’t. Let your story be their inspiration.   

If you’re a Westworld fan, you will recognize this quote. Our darkest times give us the most clarity because it is only when things are dark, we can truly see what is most important to us. It’s like the kind of clarity that someone has as they approach death. They finally know what is most important to them, and they know it in their core. And those things outshine all the other things that maybe they thought was important.

Here’s the thing about being in darkness. Our darkness can be our ally, if we let it. If we are going to fall on hard times, why not let the experience and darkness become our teacher? It doesn’t take away from losses we face, or our struggle and experience of going through those things. A lot of things we face are unfair and unjust. But what if we took the darkness and used it to create the clarity we need for our next chapter?

Being in darkness tends to create emotional chaos for us. And it makes sense to feel that way when we are going through our worst times. The energy of chaos can catapult us in the direction we want to go. All we have to do is recognize it and harness that energy to work for us, rather than against us. We can begin this by listening to what we really feel and honoring the clarity that we have. And then we can take massive action towards making what we want for ourselves, our new reality.

If you are struggling with getting through these challenging times, know that you are not alone. You have the strength and ability to not only get through it but come out stronger, with more focus on the things that really matter to you. Remember, the only place to go when you are at rock bottom is up.     

Faking perfection can take up a lot of time. When we spend our time keeping up appearances, we are spending our precious, very limited time here, faking a reality that doesn’t exist. It may look beautiful or cool on the outside, but it isn’t real or authentic.

I look at it like this – the clock is ticking no matter what we choose to do. We can spend it trying to make ourselves and our lives appear to be perfect. We can curate our lives on social media and touch up our pictures and tell a narrative that we think is desirable or that others will admire. Or we can actually live the life we want to live, and it be imperfect and messy. We can make mistakes along the way and mess up in front of others.

The huge difference here is when you are actually out there, striving and making mistakes, you are taking massive action towards the life you want to live. When you opt to fake a perfect life, you choose to stay stagnant. You aren’t taking massive action to better yourself or situation because all your time is spent keeping up appearances. And it can be exhausting. Believe me, I’ve done it.

When you make mistakes, you are figuring out what works and what doesn’t work. You learn so much more from your mistakes than your victories. Mistakes lead to progress, which leads to success and happiness. It’s real and authentic. And it feels amazing.

If you are stuck in a cycle of faking perfection, hear this: You are worthy of living the real deal. It may take more time and a lot of effort, but I promise you it will be more rewarding and fulfilling in the end. 

Self-sabotage is when we engage in behaviors that create issues in our daily life and undermines our long-term goals. It can look like self-medicating behaviors, comfort eating or procrastination. Sometimes self-sabotage is born out of the bullshit stories we tell ourselves about why we can’t reach our goals. We rationalize our behaviors and thoughts so that they fit our story – or what we believe about ourselves or our situation. In the process we create limiting beliefs about ourselves.

What we need to understand about any goal that we set for ourselves, is that we are never going to be motivated 100% of the time. We can’t let ourselves slide down that slippery slope when we don’t feel motivated and sabotage our own efforts. What we need to do is get back up, dust off and rely on discipline. And sometimes we will fail at discipline, too. But it doesn’t matter. You still keep going.   

Jocko Willink reminds us how easy it is for anyone to fail at discipline. We all have moments of self-sabotage. But it is how we respond to those that defines us. What will you do?