Our brains process millions of bits of data every day. To keep our brain from becoming overwhelmed and overloaded, we have a filter located in our reticular activating system (RAS). Think of this filter as place where information comes into the brain, and then is neatly filed into different boxes, so we can actually make sense of it all.

How is this filter created? Well, we actually create the guidelines for it ourselves. We do this by telling our brains what is important to us, how we feel about ourselves, what we believe in, how we process past experiences, what our fears are, etc. Think of it as a personalized lens we use in how we view the world. 

Here’s how our RAS works. When you buy a new car, all of a sudden when you’re driving down the road, you notice just how many people have the same kind of car, right? Those cars were always there. The information is just being filtered through to you now because it is relevant. Before your RAS didn’t deem it relevant because well…it wasn’t yet. 

The RAS is incredibly powerful because it determines what information filters into your mind consciously, and how you perceive that information.

What we believe, both consciously and subconsciously, deeply influences our RAS. Say something happened to you where you felt like you weren’t good enough and that really impacted how you see yourself. Now the RAS will filter new experiences through the same lens and seek out information or “evidence” to push through the filter that validates and confirms what you believe about yourself – that you aren’t good enough. This is both fascinating and scary. It is based on belief and not fact.

But here’s the flipside. If our beliefs can create our filter in which we see the world, then we can determine the parameters of that filter. We can decide what we focus on and what we believe. This idea is basically the science behind the Law of Attraction.

It works like this. If you have a negative outlook on life and believe people are going to screw you over, your RAS has been programmed to look for the data that supports that belief and filter it through, so it can validate and confirm those beliefs. It is confirmation bias.

Likewise, if you look at the world with optimism and that there are plenty of opportunities, your RAS has been programmed to seek out information and data that supports those beliefs. So, you will actually have more opportunities because you see them.   

Tony Robbins has often said, “Whatever you hold in your mind on a consistent basis is exactly what you will experience in your life.” What you focus on consistently, you create. What you believe consistently, you create.  

Mindset truly is everything. That is why once you believe anything, signs are everywhere. Our brains seek out that data and information to support the belief.

What lens do you see the world through? How can you start programming your filter to work for you, rather than against you? 

When we are in our darkest times, it’s easy for us to forget all the times we have risen, healed and overcame situations. But we overcame these obstacles by sheer perseverance. What creates a true champion in anything is consistently showing up and being willing to fail to win. It’s knowing that success happens through facing your fears, through falling down and getting back up again.

What trips us up is fear. But fear, is an emotion and we create it. It isn’t based in reality like danger is. And if we can create it, we can destroy it. Because if we allow fear to take over, it will grow roots and destroy the person that we can be.

We also have to remember that in every transformation we have in our life, things are going to get worse before they get better. Nothing worth having comes easy. You cannot grow without struggle or develop strength without resistance.  And there will be days where your resolve is tested.

But here’s the thing…There are many times you have overcome adversity when it has hit you – and you can overcome anything. I truly believe that if you are still here and still breathing, you still have some fight left in you.

And if you find yourself questioning that, here’s something to think about:

Insecurity is really uncertainty about yourself. It’s not feeling good enough as you are, or feeling uncertain about where you fit in, in this world. And we all experience it some point in our lives. I consider myself fairly confident with myself, but I had periods of extreme insecurity. I really struggled with feeling good enough and needing external validation. And once it took root in my life, it became a very ugly thing. And it took a long time to undo it all and fix myself. I wrote about some of those struggles here.

When you feel insecure, you develop a lot of presumptions about yourself and the world. You are presuming that you aren’t good enough or liked. You are presuming things about other people, which may or may not be true. There’s a lot of speculation happening. And it’s born out of fear and uncertainty – which are not exactly reliable narrators.  

These beliefs, whether true or not, can easily become facts in our minds. If we truly believe we are not good enough, our brains are actually wired to seek out information that will support that belief. It’s confirmation bias.

There are many causes to insecurity, and it’s totally normal and okay to have it every now and again. But when there are deep rooted causes, like past traumas, having a critical parent or partner, experiences of rejection or failure that really affected you, social anxiety or perfectionism, it can take some time to undo that kind of thinking.

In my worst struggles with insecurity, I completely lost sight of my value and chose relationships and situations that confirmed what I believed about myself – that I simply wasn’t good enough and probably never would never be. And I stayed in those situations trying to prove my worth. And in the process, I lost myself.

It wasn’t until I went to a therapist and really started to challenge the beliefs I had about myself that I began to undo some of my flawed thinking. I realized that I was surrounded by negative reinforcers and completely lacked the ability or fortitude to set healthy boundaries with others. I also learned that by needing external validation so badly that I was giving up a lot of personal power that I had.

I had always thought that I was a person who was super accountable and responsible for myself, but when it came to my own happiness and quality of life, I quickly learned that I was really not living up to it. I was allowing other people’s moods to affect me, and I had a hard time holding onto myself. I was taking on too much responsibility for others, and not taking enough responsibility for my own wellness.

Are you struggling with insecurity? How can you start challenging faulty beliefs that you have about yourself?

Some day we are all going to die. We don’t know when or how. Some of us fear this loss and the finality of it all, yet we forget to live while we are alive. When we think about what will really make us feel alive or feel joy, we put off actually doing those things. We think about it in terms of “someday”.

It goes something like this:

• Someday I am going to leave this crappy job and start my business.
• Someday I am going to go on the ultimate road trip.
• Someday I am going to get my shit together and leave this relationship that’s killing me inside.
• Someday I am going to quit my addiction.
• Someday I am finally going to write that novel.

The list is endless. We need to remind ourselves that “someday” is a disease that will take our dreams to the grave with us.

We are all here for a reason. There is something inside you that only you can bring to this world. All these things we categorize into “someday” are the things we should really be doing. Everyday. They are our passions and purpose.  

If you found out today that you only had one year to live, what would you do? How would you live like you were dying? Would you take the chance like you have nothing to lose?

How we take care of ourselves sets the unconscious standard of how other people will see us and treat us. If you’re like me, sometimes you really struggle with putting yourself first, or making time for self-care. I often will want to get a bunch of things done before I make the time to do something for myself. And the reality is, I never get to the bottom of the list where that special line item of self-care resides. Yet I always think I will get to it.

It is so important to make the time to do the things you enjoy and nourish your soul. You aren’t being selfish by doing so. In fact, by treating yourself well, you are building a better version of yourself who will show up in a better way for the people in your life.

I started Self-Care Sunday to keep myself on point. I know that I am apt to fall into the trap of spending too much time on work, getting bogged down by doing endless chores around the house or just not making the time to take care of myself. So I figured it would be a good way for me to hold myself accountable, and to hopefully inspire you to find the things that will nourish your soul, too. Maybe you can rediscover some the things that recharge you by seeing some of the things I’m doing. Because believe me, I know what it’s like for self-care to be a completely foreign idea.

Small things can be great self-care. To name a few for me: creative writing, astrophotography, having a luxurious bath, building a pillow fort and playing video games, watching 80s movies and making little pizzas with English muffins (don’t judge it until you try it!), making ice cream cone s’mores, playing Monopoly on your phone and over Skype with your family, catching up with a friend or cooking a cheat meal.

It’s also simple things like eating well, hydrating and getting physical exercise every day. It’s taking time to wind down at the end of the day and get your head in order. Or meditating in the morning.

These might seem like minor things, and perhaps insignificant. But by prioritizing these things, you are putting yourself in the best mental health space. And because of that, you become a better partner, sibling, child, friend and coworker.

But…you also send the message to other people in your life that you view yourself and your time as a priority. If you neglect yourself, you are showing others, intentionally or unintentionally, that you feel your wellness doesn’t matter. And you matter.

How can you start treating yourself better? What steps can you take today to make time for the things that recharge you?   

Hardships and failures are our best teachers. We grow stronger by facing and overcoming them. The natural human response to pain is to run away from it. But some things we can’t hide from, and we inevitably have to deal with them, and it can feel unbearable. At some point we will all endure heartache and pain that will threaten to destroy us, but we will overcome these moments of darkness and desperation. And that experience of getting through it will make us stronger.

Some of us have suffered tragedy after tragedy. I have listened to stories of what people have faced and overcome and have wondered how one person can go through so much, over a short period of time and be okay. It is inspiring to me and proof that we are indeed stronger in the places we have been broken.

In Japan, when a piece of pottery breaks, it is repaired by the Japanese art form of kintsugi. A craftsman repairs the broken piece using a combination of lacquer and a powdered form of a precious metal, such as gold or platinum. Rather than trying to hide where the piece was broken, it is repaired this way to note part of the object’s history. The philosophy behind this is that where the object was broken is merely an event, it doesn’t define the object.

Resistance to pain, to being ‘broken’ is a normal human response. When we allow our fear of bad things happening to take over our minds, we allow our fear to blow up and become more irrational and bigger than it really is. Unchecked fear is a liar and doesn’t allow us to accurately assess situations.

Think about it when it comes to any kind of relationship. If we are so afraid to be broken, then we won’t be vulnerable. If we aren’t vulnerable, how do we ever really connect to someone else and experience true friendship or love? The bottom line is that you can’t know connection and love if you don’t make yourself vulnerable to being disappointed or hurt.

Don’t shy away from taking risks in your life because you are afraid of failure or getting hurt. If things don’t turn out the way you had hoped, realize that what is happening is an opportunity for growth. It may feel like a huge deal right now, but in the big picture, they are smaller events.

Once you have gone through a rough time and survived it, you gain mastery of how to deal with situations like that in the future. It helps prepare you and makes you stronger for having overcome it.

Where have you become stronger in the places you’ve been broken?

For the toxic person, gaslighting is their number one tool for gaining control over their victim. Gaslighting is a form of emotional abuse where the abuser uses psychological manipulation to alter another person’s sense of reality. Basically, when you confront them about anything they don’t like, they will attempt to convince you that the facts of a situation or even your own feelings about it are not true. Their goal is to make you doubt your own reality and experience by invaliding you and deflecting any kind of accountability or responsibility for themselves or their role in a situation.

In a Psychology Today article, Robin Stearn, Ph.D., gives us a great list of signs that we are being gaslit:

• You are constantly second-guessing yourself.
• You ask yourself, “Am I too sensitive?” a dozen times a day.
• You often feel confused and even crazy at work.
• You’re always apologizing to your mother, father, boyfriend, boss.
• You can’t understand why, with so many apparently good things in your life, you aren’t happier.
• You frequently make excuses for your partner’s behavior to friends and family.
• You find yourself withholding information from friends and family so you don’t have to explain or make excuses.
• You know something is terribly wrong, but you can never quite express what it is, even to yourself.
• You start lying to avoid the put downs and reality twists.
• You have trouble making simple decisions.
• You have the sense that you used to be a very different person — more confident, more fun-loving, more relaxed.
• You feel hopeless and joyless.
• You feel as though you can’t do anything right.
• You wonder if you are a “good enough” girlfriend/wife/employee/ friend/daughter.
• You find yourself withholding information from friends and family so you don’t have to explain or make excuses.

Gaslighting is literally crazymaking in a relationship. It’s a psychological assault that is meant to break you down. Earlier this year, I wrote extensively about crazymaking and gaslighting tactics, and how you can navigate the dangerous waters of it when dealing with an emotional abuser.  You can read it in full here.  

When I was on my own journey of healing from being gaslight and dealing with crazymaking, I found Lisa A. Romano, a life coach who specializes in healing from codependency and narcissistic abuse. For me, watching her videos helped me restore my sanity – and provided some serious validation that I wasn’t crazy. Below is a video where she talks all about what gaslighting and crazymaking is:

Often times we focus our energy on things that have already happened. Or we are busy focusing on things that are in our future that we are worried or excited about. The funny thing is, when we focus on the past and future, we are robbing ourselves of the present. And, we tend to put things off into the future constantly. We designate some of our biggest dreams or even just small things that bring us joy for the magical land of “someday” where it never actually happens.

But what about right now? What are you doing to make the most out of right now?

It can be a hard question to answer, because we don’t often think about what we can do in the present. Many of us wait until conditions are “perfect” or “ideal” to do awesome things. Or we wait for special occasions. But I will tell you, being alive is a special occasion.

What are some things you can do now to connect with others and experience joy? Here are a few ideas:

• Work on a writing a book you’ve always wanted to write.
• Call a friend and catch up on things.
• Surprise your partner with a date night “just because”.
• Go stargazing and do some astrophotography.
• Too hot outside to camp but you really want to do it? Set up a tent in your living room with fairy lights. Make some s’mores, too!
• Cook a recipe you’ve been dying to try.
• Go to a new restaurant and try a new cuisine.
• Call or visit your parents.
• Take a Masterclass in a subject you’ve always been interested in.
• Chat up that cute guy or girl you’ve seen around town.
• Read a book you’ve wanted to read but have put off.
• Catch a sunrise or sunset.
• Make a pillow fort and play video games.
• Tell someone you love how much they mean to you.
• Try out that recipe or DIY project you pinned on Pinterest ages ago.
• Create your own trick shots in your home or yard Dude Perfect style.

The possibilities of what you can do right here and right now to add joy to your life is endless. These are just my suggestions…What would be on your list?