When you start creating new habits that no longer fit into your old lifestyle, you might feel as if you are pretending and faking it.
 
You might be worried about other people’s opinions. You might come up with reasons for why you shouldn’t follow through.
 
This is just your old patterns throwing a tantrum, desperately trying to pull you back to what’s familiar. Even if the familiar is disempowering and hurtful. Even if that’s not how you want to keep living. Even when it’s not supporting where you want to go.
 
Slow down and remind yourself:
 
This is who I am now.

I choose what’s good for me.

I allow myself to change.

 At one point in my life, I truly believed in overnight success. I believed some people were born lucky and special, and everything came easy to them.
 
And I believed I wasn’t one of those people.
 
I hated my life and felt like a victim. In the back of my mind, I secretly hoped someone would come to save me from my circumstances and from self-loathing.
 
No one did.
 
Although actively destroying myself with bad habits and poisonous self-talk, something kept pulling me forward. I took many “wrong” turns, but my most valuable experiences and growth came from taking wrong turns and getting lost.
 
Throughout my journey I realized that the harder I worked, the more risks I took, and the more I allowed myself to try and fail, the more opportunities opened up and more success followed.
 
My identity and self-image started to shift as I began trusting in my own capabilities. I intentionally worked on letting go of many disempowering stories and beliefs I held onto.
 
I no longer believe in overnight success and in specialness of others.
 
I realized that regardless of my starting point, I am capable of achieving what I set my mind to achieve. I refuse to see myself as less capable because I am an immigrant or because I came from nothing. I refuse to let my past dictate who I can become and what I can achieve.
 
Believing in overnight success is an excuse that keeps people from trying. Believing it is easier for others is an excuse that prevents people from doing hard things. Holding onto these beliefs is a passive approach rooted in helplessness and a lack of trust in your own power.
 
The only way to truly know what you’re capable of is to allow yourself to do things yo haven’t done before, to fail, and to keep trying again.

​Reaching for something outside of ourselves to make us feel better reinforces the idea that “I shouldn’t be feeling this way,” and “something or someone other than me can make it go away” - both of which are recipes for suffering.
 
There is nothing wrong with wanting to feel better.
 
But, if we always seek ways to immediately feel better, we don’t give ourselves the opportunity to learn how to be with uncomfortable experiences.
 
We don’t give ourselves the gift of curiosity about the feeling that’s arising.
 
We don’t allow ourselves the full human experience. Instead, we keep running away from it.
 
Feeling better then becomes a quick fix, a short-term solution, a way to not feel.
 
Becoming better at feeling is the antidote for escaping our experiences.
 
Becoming better at feeling means to allow our feelings and be with the discomfort
without trying to change or escape it. This is where healing and change starts.