What "What You Believe, You Can Achieve" Doesn't Tell You
In 2014, my life fell apart. I was a successful executive with a family, trying to keep everything balanced and under control. I was doing what I thought I should do - pushing myself to work harder and trying to get others to do more.
I was taught that “what you believe, you can achieve”. Such a heady claim! But no one ever told me that “believing you can achieve” through force isn’t sustainable.
I was unhappy and would barely admit it to myself. Instead, I covered up my unhappiness, thinking if I could just stick it out, life would get better. I believed I could get things to change. I believed I could get others to change. I listened to all of the thoughts in my head and opinions of others about what I “should” do in the circumstances rather than what I wanted to do.
Then I hit the lowest point. Work was going well, but my three teenage kids were struggling, and one was heavily using drugs and alcohol. My marriage was distant and difficult and then came to a shocking end. What I had believed was my future for so long now was no longer an option, and it was traumatic.
While grieving, I went through divorce proceedings, put our house on the market, and offered support and stability to my children (including helping one into rehab). I did this all while maintaining a visible public career and came to the hard realization that what I had believed I could achieve wasn’t happening.
This is when I made an oath to learn more about myself and what got me to this point. What did I need to do so I could live differently during my next phase of life? I made it my mission to get to know my thoughts and understand my feelings. I vowed to myself that I would never sleepwalk through life again. I went to therapy, I meditated, I journaled, I studied.
I asked myself hard questions like:
What do I want?
How do I feel about certain circumstances?
What am I learning about myself as I look through past phases in my life?
What am I learning about myself now?
What feelings or thoughts do I have making me resist facts of a situation?
How can I strengthen who I am as a person and become intentional about my future?
For years, I had been so busy helping others and looking for outside acceptance that I had forgotten how to look inside and take care of myself. I had to get to know myself again.
Do I now believe I can achieve? Absolutely. I don’t believe I can do it with the power of an insistent bully, but rather with my power, moving myself forward with understanding and acceptance of how I fit into the world as I am. Now, I can do and be all the things I longed for most of my life.
These circumstances helped me become truly fulfilled today as I walk alongside others and coach them on how to listen to their intuition, live authentically, and realize their own power within. When you cultivate and believe these things, you really can achieve what matters most in life.