Understanding some eye-opening but hard truths is like crossing a bridge that leads to a better life. Photo: Pexels
We live this life based on trial and error. We are unable to live life any other way! That’s the first statement I need to get out of the way. You can only know what you have learned. However, what and how much you learn is on you. People live their lives individually, and that’s good as it is.
Yet, there are some things that will make your life fundamentally better, once you understand them. Whether you call yourself spiritual or not is irrelevant. These rules apply to everyone. And you can be open and embrace them or not. Still, this is what I have learned in the last few years that will boost every self-growth journey!
1. What you think about will become your Reality
This is something Dr. Joe Dispenza has taught me in his book “Becoming Supernatural” (a book I’m reading for the second time, by the way). It is your mind that takes life in through the five senses. That information will then be processed in a biologically intelligent way. The mind asks itself;
- Is this something I have experienced before?
- Could this situation be a threat to me in any way?
- How have I handled such a situation in the past?
- What behaviour do I know will keep me safe (because it worked the last time)?
Based on this information, not only do we start to feel emotions (anger, hurt, joy, betrayal, jealously, envy, fear, disgust, serenity, happiness), but we then generate behaviours. We act according to what we have learned before.
The thing is, our mind doesn’t know what makes us happy. It only wants to keep us safe, by looking for something it knows it can handle.
That’s why we maybe pull up our walls when we really want to be open and vulnerable with someone because we have learned that we might get hurt that way. Even if this person is someone new, someone who might not act like the last person at all.
How our emotional addictions ruin our lives
Joe Dispenza states that we get addicted to these emotions, because we simply feel them so often that they are familiar and comfortable to us, even if they keep us deeply unhappy or depressed. And so, our minds think the same thoughts every day, so those emotions can be triggered and felt again.
The only way to make your life better, to escape a cycle of negative emotions and depression / anxiety, is to start thinking other thoughts. And how do we do that? We put ourselves in situations we have never been in, so our minds are forced to think thoughts it hasn’t necessarily thought before, so new emotions can be triggered!
The good thing is that we have the ability to train our minds. We can consciously shift our focus from the bad, from the dull, from the familiar, to new, exciting, joyful thoughts. That way, we can create new realities for ourselves. But it takes conscious effort and dedication.
2. You can either be your own best Friend or your own worst Enemy
Making a smooth transition to my next point; what you think about can bring you further in life, or hold you back. If you constantly think yourself as a loser – because you secretly like the feeling of pitying yourself – you will eventually become one.
It is an identity you have created for yourself. And so, naturally, you show up as that version you believe yourself to be. You disregard the fact that you have the power to create a new version of yourself every time you leave the house.
Our fears are irrational. Its’ – like I stated above – just a familiarity, something we have experienced in the past. Something that might have been unpleasant. We want to avoid being confronted by this unpleasant experience again, which is why we avoid it. At all costs. This is what a a self-imposed fear is.
You can decide to not be a fearful person. To not be insecure about certain aspects of yourself. Or to not judge yourself for what you did or didn’t do in the past. You can decide to be your own best friend today. See all the good parts in yourself before you see the faults. Support yourself, trust yourself, believe in yourself.
And that will be the new version you have created, the new identity you have built for yourself. And once you’re able to turn from your own worst enemy, someone that keeps you small and fearful, into your own biggest friend, and be on your own side no matter what, that’s when your new, better life will begin.
3. All you have is the present moment
This, I learned especially from Eckhart Tolle, from his book “The Power of Now”. If we really think about it; the only thing that exists is the present moment. The past is just a memory, while the future is just an imagination. They don’t exist.
Yet, we make ourselves miserable by either
- living a life of regret because we can’t accept and let go of the past (we let it define us, even though we can’t change it)
- living a life of anxiety because we anticipate a future we fear or worry about
All happiness lies in the now. This makes sense once we understand that, for example, when we let ourselves be stressed out by something, that is almost always an irrational fear. Over 90% of what we fear, never happens. Yet, if we were able to live completely in the now, we could let go of all the anticipation of fear.
Because that fear lies in the future, which is our own imagination. Whatever we’re afraid of happening, is something we have created in our heads. We have imagined difficult, stressful, fearful, dangerous situations in our heads. An act, that is completely unnecessary. Because we can never know what happens anyway.
Where to find the happiness that we can grasp
So, if we were able to truly live life in the present moment, and take each situation as it is actually presented to us, without any anticipated danger, we realize that we rarely have something to truly worry about. Again, this pain, this negative life, this life full of stress, was created by you.
You created it – subconsciously but on purpose – because you are addicted to all the negative emotions you feel on a daily basis. And only you can stop this toxic cycle. By living in the now, accepting what comes and handling each situation only when it has reached you, not beforehand.
4. All hardship was picked by you, for you
This lesson I learned from Dr. Michael Newton in his book “Journey of Souls”. He states that before we come to earth, we elect what body we have, what circumstance we are born in, the family we have and the people we will know throughout our lives, the jobs we will have, etc.
We choose our own soul plans based on what we want to learn in this lifetime and what we think will serve our highest good – our journey of growth as a soul.
Yet, what is more difficult to swallow, is that we picked every single difficult situation, every hardship and every moment of suffering for ourselves too. Every accident, every death, every rejection, every failure, every disappointment is also part of that bigger plan.
We know that we need difficult times to go through and hard situations to face, in order to be able to grow. No strong person had an easy life. And no easy life taught you anything. A life of endless ease and simplicity will keep you stuck. You can not grow.
You chose this for yourself before you came to this earth, because you knew that you could handle it. And you saw the blessing behind the suffering. You are an ancient, wise soul. You knew what’s best for yourself, you knew what kind of experiences you need to learn and grow and you wrote this in your soul plan.
Because you know that every hardship is truly a blessing in disguise.
5. You are your only competition, society is irrelevant
Our understandings of value have shifted so extremely, that people started to think that we need to be beautiful, we need to be fit, we need to be wealthy, and we need to have a beautiful house, otherwise we will be irrelevant in this society.
People started to have impossible-to-reach standards about the people they want to be with, demanding 100k engagement rings, an athletic body, a certain car, etc. to even consider being with them.
As a society we have sadly started to disregard a valuable character, intelligence, humor, kindness, generosity, integrity, manners, courage, and swapped our demands for material things.
As girls, we think that our looks are the only thing we have to offer to someone. Therefore, we get plastic surgery, we use filters on our photos, we don’t leave the house without makeup, and we create an illusion of who we are. Individuality is not appreciated anymore, which is such a shame.
We need to be able to free ourselves from the expectations we think others have of us. Instead, we need to start valuing again who we are inside, what we have to offer to the world that goes beyond the amount of money we make or how thin we are.
Your only competition is yourself. You only need to be good enough for yourself. What you think of yourself, you carry out into the world, and people will be able to notice it.
Nothing is as magnetic as authenticity. The only person you should try to please is yourself. And make yourself damn proud – proud of who you are, not of what you look like or how much stuff you were able to accumulate.
6. You are the creator of your own Fate
I know that this seems contradictory to what I just stated above. That our hardships were created for us, by us, before we came to this earth. I now have to make an important distinction between destiny and fate.
Destiny makes sure that your soul plan comes true, that you get the experiences you need and ordered for yourself. Everything that is meant for you will present itself as an opportunity to you, and it cannot miss you. Likewise, if something does not coincide with your soul plan, if you are not supposed to have something, you will not get it.
Accidents, failures, rejections etc. will happen if they must, no matter how much you wish they didn’t. However, what you do with these experiences, what you turn these difficult situations into, that is your own choice.
And that is what fate is. A choice you make now. Choices that will influence how you will continue to live this precious life of yours.
Take what you got, and turn it into something great
As I have stated above, your mindset is a huge factor when it comes to the quality of your life. You can accept something and make the best out of it, surrender to your destiny. Or you can resist it, making yourself more miserable, having harmful thoughts, that then again trigger harmful and hurtful emotions.
You can choose to turn your life around, live a life in-tune with your intuition, or believe that your entire life is shit and there is just nothing you can do about it. Create a life you love waking up to, with the cards you were dealt.
Take what destiny presents you with, and turn it into the best possible experience for yourself. There is no greater act of self-love you can make to yourself. Start deciding today. And life a life that is better and more in-tune with spirituality than it has ever been before.
Let me know which change you made first, and what impact it had on you. Also, let me know which book you want to read next! I have more listed in my library. Happy reading. And happy living!!
Love, Valentina <3
Written by Valentina – spiritual writer & founder of Valentina’s Diary
