No. 4 ~ Am I growing?

Dear Diary (and you),

Am I the only one who’s just realising this?

I have known for decades now that mindset is super important. Our beliefs around ourselves, our futures, our money, our love, all impact our lives heavily.

They make or break us. They determine who we are and the direction our lives might head in.

Every single successful person (be it in money, adventures, love, whatever – it doesn’t matter) talks about mindset and how it’s the thing that got them where they are. And having consumed so much personal and professional development material, it gets to a point where I’m just thinking to myself, ‘I know already! I know I need that, so move on and get to the action stuff so that I can do it and be successful myself.‘

There was always some part of me that thought I was somehow different and already ‘there‘ in terms of mindset. That somehow I didn’t have to do any hard reflection to grow and achieve anything, I just needed to know the steps, even though I was smart enough to work out the steps for myself, and for the things I’d been interested in and researched – I knew the steps.

And I know I come from a family where my parents would sometimes worry about putting food on the table, so I was automatically instilled with a lack mindset around money and resources – but I was aware of that, had been for a long time. I thought awareness was enough and that awareness alone could negate the negative effects of the lack mindset on my finances and business aspirations.

I didn’t realise that awareness is not the same as properly processing and shifting my beliefs.

I always thought I was destined to be a millionaire (not famous, mind you – I like recognition, but do not at all crave the spotlight), but that was just in my daydreams. During the harshly lit reality of my days, I had to trade time for money (and not much of it) and everything around me was strongly reinforcing the fact that I would have to do so until retirement, taking my meagre four weeks of annual leave from work each year, losing day after day and week after week to someone else’s demands.

Like so many people, I grew up with dreams of amazing things. I’ve wanted to have a little stone home in Italy for so long now, with a vegetable garden and orchard with ducks and chickens, and to be the founder of my own business that gives me freedom and benefits the earth and other people, and to find a partner and feel secure enough to start a family and know that I have both the time and resources to fully serve them, and to be able to travel with them and maybe even live on a sailboat for a time with them, and even just to be the healthiest and most beautiful version of myself.

But growing up surrounded by ‘realists‘ – teachers, parents, friends from a similar socio-economic bracket, siblings – who try to manage your expectations by telling you that those things are for the rich, and you’ll have to work really hard for it and maybe still never get there, and that you’ll have to have a real job like everyone else because adults need to be realistic and you don’t have the freedom to just do what you want – you have bills to pay, after all – well, it really kills the vibe and it’s hard to believe in anything else.

Whatever you hear repeatedly becomes the truth. It’s just how our brains are programmed.

Being bullied for a fair chunk of my school life didn’t help matters, either. Attention or visibility almost always meant embarrassment, humiliation, or pain (mostly emotional, but not always), so I learned to avoid it and minimise myself.

Anything that was remotely different from everyone else was something that could draw comment and you could be made fun of for, so I did my absolute best to fit in, and that meant not being delusionally optimistic about my future. Not pursuing something that wasn’t a safe, smart 9 to 5 career. Not trying something new where a mass of people might see me fail and say unkind things to me.

And I didn’t really see proof that I could make it, anyway. No one else was doing it, so how could I know that it might work?

And so, for me to try, fail, draw negative comments from others, and then hear only ‘I told you so’ from family or friends (whose opinions I valued) would be too much. I had years of ‘evidence’ and ‘lessons’ teaching me not to try anything new, not to stray from the group behaviour, and to minimise myself as much as humanly possible.

To be nothing and draw no comment was easier and less painful than trying to do something I had no proof I could achieve anyway and that might bring more rejection my way.

You know, I noticed halfway through writing this that a) articulating my thoughts is getting easier (I’m not obsessing over each and every sentence, at least today – while it does need refining, my thoughts are coming quite clearly and I can get them out easily), and b) I’m writing about the mindset I grew up with in the past tense, something I didn’t intentionally do, but that I’m actually thrilled to note.

Over the past week and a half, I’ve been participating in Amoye Shanti’s delulu experiment. It’s a 21 day program but I’m already seeing value. It’s about allowing yourself to get crazy and fall back in love with life.

She encourages you to forget reality and transform into the wonderful, successful person you dream of being. It’s all within your reach, it’s just about believing that and not waiting for proof – instead you make decisions from the place of being that person who already has it, and allowing the good to come into your life.

I am working so hard on fully committing to becoming the real me, the me of my dreams, and going after every single thing I want.

Read over the pages of this site and you’ll see who I want to be. The front page, the About page, even The List signup page.

If you could amalgamate the lifestyle of Hallie Parker, the strategy and aesthetics of Meredith Blake, the drive and good-doing of Elle Woods, and add in the It’s Complicated house and garden – that’s pretty much what I’m going for.

What about you? Who do you want to be, or if you’re already there, who are you?

Tell me below, or sign up to my diaries and reply to me with your answer.

Yours in truth and transparency,