Four Ways to Stay in Your Own Lane
By: Lisa M. Hayes – Confluence Daily is your daily news source for women in the know.
1. Let go of needing to be right.
No one loves being right more than I do. However, that feeling of satisfaction is never worth the cost, even if it looks like there’s nothing on the line. Anytime you’re invested in being right, you’re spending energy like a drunk millionaire in Vegas because selling your opinion or your version of events means you’re trying to change the way someone else thinks – it almost never happens and it’s almost never important, or important enough to spend energy on.
The satisfaction of being right is kind of a temporary high. It’s like the empty calories of feel good because anytime you’re proving your rightness, you’re making someone else wrong. That is isolating. You know, would you rather be right or be happy??
Let’s face it, perspective is the most important part of any set of facts and perspective is highly individual. Almost everything is an opinion. So, if you can let go of needing to be right, you can reclaim a massive amount of mental and emotional energy to invest in something that will make you happy longer than a few hours.
2. Let other people have their opinions about you.
The riskiest thing you can do with your self-esteem is let someone else’s opinion of you matter. That is outsourcing your self-esteem, and even if you do it a little bit, over time, that can cost you a lot.
People and their opinions are fickle. They change and blow with the wind and much like the wind, you have no control over them.
It’s human to want to be liked. However, it’s also almost impossible to be liked by everyone. The desire to be liked forces us to morph into versions of ourselves that are smaller or different than we really are.
If you can let go of what other people think of you, it frees you up to be authentically you, in a way you cannot be when you’re influenced by anyone else’s opinion of you. Then and only then can you really play your own game.
3. Play on the edge or just outside of your comfort zone, all the time.
You don’t have to something huge to do something great. However, if you want to grow, you will need to push the limits of your comfort zone a lot, a little at a time.
If you never do things that give you goosebumps or shaky and uneasy, you won’t grow. Growth is always uncomfortable. So, if you can make friends with feeling a little or a lot uneasy and uncertain on the regular, you can turn up the volume on your personal growth and your potential at will.
Everyone is looking for the big bang shift that changes everything at once. However, those big shifts are hard to maintain. If you are willing to push your own limits a little every day, you’re more likely to get the big shift you want over time with almost no risk.
Change is the only constant in a chaotic universe. Embracing discomfort gives you the opportunity to do change on your own terms and that is a beautiful thing.
4. Make sure that big goal you have is really something you want.
It’s so easy to do what’s expected of you. It’s also easy to think you want what other people want for you. However, living someone else’s version of what’s right for you rarely has the kind of juice it takes to make it happen and keep you happy.
It’s also not uncommon to be chasing a dream you used to have, but might not be what you want now. When yesterdays dream doesn’t light you up anymore, it’s ok to let it go. In fact, it might be required.
It’s ok to walk away from something you’ve created that doesn’t bring you joy.
It’s ok to walk away when you’re halfway there, no matter how much you’ve invested if you don’t like the journey.
It’s ok to quit before you start, no matter how much sense it makes – even if doing you doesn’t look right to others.
Disappointing someone else is almost always temporary. Being a disappointment to yourself leaves a bitter taste in your mouth that lingers a long time, maybe forever.
More by Lisa:
4 Times You Have Nothing to Lose and Everything to Gain by Asking
Lisa is an LOA Relationship Coach. She helps clients leverage Law of Attraction to get the relationships they dream about and build the lives they want. Lisa is the author of the newly released hit book, Score Your Soulmate and How to Escape from Relationship Hell and The Passion Plan.
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