Today, you’re getting some tough love. 🖤

Because if you really want to change your life, you’ve got to boss up.

No matter what’s thrown at you, no matter what cards you were dealt, no matter what your circumstances are—you always, ALWAYS have a choice in how you react.

What you do from here.

What you choose to BELIEVE and how you LET those beliefs influence your subsequent actions.

In every event, season, and occurrence of your life, there is always one common denominator…

You.

Sure, there are tons of external forces outside of our control. However, to achieve success and happiness in life, our focus and energy are better directed towards OURSELVES, rather than on these things we cannot control.

If you were born into a shitty upbringing with parents who treated you horribly, you have a CHOICE to tap into self-awareness, get into therapy, and do the inner work so that you don’t repeat the same generational cycles for your children and grandchildren.

If you were born into a home where money was always thought to be scarce and a source of stress, you have a CHOICE to keep living in that scarcity mindset vs. changing your beliefs around money, and choosing to believe it is abundant so that you can rewrite your story from here on out on whether you STAY poor or not.

So many of us were born into the worst of situations, or dealt the shittiest hand. That’s life.

Yet, one thing remains true.

No one is FORCING you to react a certain way to these situations—but yourself.

You’re a sovereign being with free will. At the end of the day, it’s YOUR choice to succumb to the interpretation that your life sucks and there’s nothing you can do about it, OR to rise up as the victor.

If you’re sick and tired of being sick and tired, read on.

You Are as You Have Chosen

Blaming outside forces is always the easier thing to do.

It’s so much easier to point fingers and blame other people, places, and things for the situation you’re in than to actually CONFRONT what role YOU could possibly be playing—to explore options and opportunities for what YOU could possibly do to get yourself out.

And I get it. I was the victim too.

I operated from this mindset for so many years. 

It felt good, comfortable even, because it meant I didn’t have to take any responsibility for changing my fate.

Before getting sober at 21, it was always *everyone’s else’s fault* why I had the alcoholic problem—”that’s college culture, that’s binge drinking culture, that’s sleazy guys at frat parties spiking my drink and making me black out!”—night after night.

And then throughout a few toxic relationships in my twenties, it was always my partner’s fault WHY the relationship was toxic to begin with. “They’re treating me poorly, they’re not respecting me, they’re not treating me like the queen that I am.” Yet despite all these complaints, WHO chose to stay IN said relationships and keep giving said shitty partners second, third, and fourth chances?

Me. I was the common denominator.

There’s a quote I love from The Millionaire Fastlane by MJ DeMarco:

He then goes on with examples from his own life, saying:

For context, DeMarco is a self-made baby-billionaire, entrepreneur, investor, and architect of the propriety CENTS Framework investment strategy.

He didn’t become rich instantaneously though. To figure out what worked, he first had to figure out what didn’t.

And a big factor he identifies as holding people back from pursuing their dreams—financial and otherwise—is their failure to accept that they are, indeed, the ones sitting in the driver’s seat.

This can be a tough pill to swallow, especially if you’re in a less than desirable—or even tragic—circumstance.

My life is difficult today as a working single mom and sole provider, but I’m well aware that there are many more out there with even fewer privileges than I do. For me, you, and everyone in this world, there is always going to be someone with less and more privilege than you. No one situation or circumstance is always going to be exactly the same. That’s normal, and that’s a given. So let’s just put that disclaimer out right now.

However, there is one thing we all have in common, even despite the variety of our circumstances and what privilege is available to us—and that is the power of CHOICE.

Of free will.

One’s upbringing and environment certainly do play a factor in how they turn out, but at the end of the day, the individual living in their life is the one making the choices. The one who is actually calling the shots.