3 "must be done" steps to finding yourself!

3 "must be done" steps to finding yourself!
We have all gotten lost along the way, but we haven't all found our way back. Life throws us curve balls and knocks us off course and it is our job to navigate it and keep going. For a very long time, I fought so hard to be made of steel, to be able to survive anything, to be numb to the world so that it could not hurt me. When I was living that journey I closed off some of the greatest parts about life and I definitely lost who I was and who I wanted to be. 

These are steps to help you get back on the right path so that you can enjoy life and know exactly who you are.

1. Make sense of your past so you can move forward- What does this mean? This step is for you to really dive into your past and wrap your head around the things that happened. There may be things that you are holding on to that affect you in a negative way and those things may not have anything to do with you as a person. I held on to some abuse that happened to me and I always felt like I was defective. I felt like there was something about me that caused the abuse or that I drew it into me. That was wrong and I know that now but it took me a long time to realize that there was no way to change the situation, that it was not me and when I made sense of it all then it was a relief. I made sense of the situation and realized that it was the another person that had issues, not me. If it wasn't me, they would have abused another. So when I stopped carrying the heavy load on myself and made sense of the situation that was out of my control, then I was able to heal, grow and truly find myself inside all of that internal turmoil. 

2. Silence your inner critic because you can't grow with negativity tearing you down-We sometimes tend to be our worst enemy.  I am the type of person that feels very deeply. If I do something wrong, there is no worst critic than me. While that may be good to have a conscious and to be self aware, we do not want to let it control us and prevent us from being the best version of ourselves. If we dream of running our own company or of climbing the corporate ladder to the top, then let ourselves dream! Do not let our inner critic ruin this journey for us. Silence it. 

3. Think about what you want to have in the future-Live out your dreams! If you do not let yourself envision the future then where are you going? You will be stuck in the present with no direction. How are you supposed to really know what kind of person you are, what kind of person you want to be, and what kind of life you want to live if you don't have a vision of the future. Take the "grow up, go to college, get married, have kids" vision as an example. How are you going to know where you want to go to college? How are you going to know where you want to live? How are you going to know where you want to raise a family or even if you do want a family? I know that we can't control all aspects of our future and that we sometimes end up in a totally different place than we want to be, but sometimes we don't. My step daughter always said she was going to grow up and live in North Carolina and well, she made that happen. Moving across the US to a place that she envisioned her future being built showed a lot of self awareness and you have to find yourself and know yourself to do that. 

Take some time to yourself and really deep dive into making sense of your past and letting go of all of the negative. Get rid of your inner critic and change your mindset. Use all of the wonderful positive things that you know about yourself to build the greatest version of you. Make the biggest and loudest voices in your head the positive ones! 

Angela Newhouse
"Never Give Up"
Don't just live...Thrive!