I hear so many people say Oh, if I could go back to my twenties, I would follow my dreams and I would take more risks.
But when you do have a dream, how are you supposed to do what it takes to believe in yourself enough to make that a reality?
Sometimes it's up to us to carve our own path or build a belief system in our head that nobody taught us how to.
I have responsibility in the way that I think I am going to make this happen.
I don't know how, maybe I feel the opposite of how I want to feel, but I am going to change my life.
Hi guys, welcome back.
I am so happy to be here with you again, making an arrangement, oh my gosh.
Well, okay, you know what?
We might have to get creative and, kind of like, use the petals as part of this, because they seem to be falling out.
I've been reflecting on how I changed my life at 21.
And I say that because last year, the past two or so years, I felt as though I was at my lowest point.
I felt so lost, so confused and very shameful that I was lost and confused and didn't know what to do next.
Early adulthood is such a weird time because we're meant to make such pivotal decisions that will set us up for the rest of our lives, but we're making those decisions when we don't even really know who we are yet.
What if we're in the process of figuring that out but at the same time, we're supposed to be doing the most productive, efficient thing to make us successful?
Sometimes we're shown what we want by going through things that we don't want.
It can feel so isolating to be confused with your own specific problems and journey, but it's something that we are all going through, no matter what age or stage of life you're in.
Even if we know what makes us feel fulfilled, sometimes we are not given the tools to actually believe that that's possible.
I hear so many people say Oh, if I could go back to my twenties, I would follow my dreams and I would take more risks.
But when you do have a dream, how are you supposed to do what it takes to believe in yourself enough to make that a reality?
I was told Oh, dream big, follow your dreams.
But I was not given the mental set of beliefs to do so.
I don't think we're all given the resources privileges, guidance that we need to make our dreams a reality.
Sometimes it's up to us to carve our own path or build a belief system in our head that nobody taught us how to.
And the reason that I'm passionate about this is because, when I was at my lowest point and I felt as though I had nothing left to lose, I decided to take some risks when it came to believing in myself.
As scary as that was, I am starting to see my dreams come true, because I believed in them before anybody else did.
Believing that we can make our dreams a reality or that things that we haven't seen done before are possible, And believing in it enough to take action towards that.
That takes a lot of courage.
And I was not blessed with that courage.
That was something that happened over time.
And it's still something that I'm battling with now.
But I've seen how much it pays off to run on that blind faith of, I am going to make this happen.
I don't know how.
Maybe I feel the opposite of how I want to feel, but I am going to change my life.
I'm seeing it change in front of my eyes after making the decision, over and over again, to believe in something that wasn't even in front of me yet.
Even when there's so much societal pressure on you.
I can only speak for myself, but I'm a first generation child and that's kind of like an extra layer of expectation.
I've always wanted to lead a life where I can utilize the resources that they didn't have.
Sometimes that adds even more pressure as to okay, am I doing enough?
What can I be doing?
I remembered when I was younger and I was so passionate about my hobbies, my interests, things that I did want to make into a career that I was serious about.
But once I got thrusted into adulthood, I was told no, if you want to be successful, you're going to have to give that dream up.
I knew i could continue to feel inspired and happy and creative even as i stepped into adulthood, but i knew that no one was going to tell me how to do that, because it's we don't see that very much.
From what i've grown up around, i've seen people continuing to make sacrifices that they feel they have to make in order to live a life where they can provide for themselves, their families.
It can be really scary trying to believe in yourself or invest in your passions while you're taking care of so many other responsibilities.
When I turned 21, I was excited.
I thought that it was an age that was going to warrant me freedom excitement youth, but that was really not how it went.
I was going through quite the crisis and it started off right then and there.
My birthday is in January.
I am an Aquarius.
I'm not an astrology expert, But I met this man at a cafe.
He gave me this astrological reading.
Pluto is dictating the next decade of my life or so.
I didn't really know what that meant.
And he told me Pluto symbolizes death.
And I was like, great death for the next 10 years.
And he was like, yeah, you're going to experience a lot of loss.
But don't worry, because Pluto, associated with Aquarius, represents so much radical transformation and rebirth.
So that had me thinking a lot about death and rebirth, which is a very heavy topic to start the 21st year of life off on.
And, as it was winter, I was reflecting a lot on these natural patterns that happen in our environment with the seasons that pass, sort of the death of the plants, and in the spring, how things are transformed.
That soil has been fertilized by the death of these plants and now more life can be born, and it's just.
It's a cycle that is apparent in almost everything around us.
I was grieving the loss of my creative life.
For the first few years of adulthood I was working a job that was very uniquely demanding.
It was very detrimental to my mental health and I was not surrounded by very good leaders, so it became very overwhelming.
And in those few years of adulthood and life and all these new experiences and responsibilities, I felt as though my creative inspiration was completely depleted.
It almost felt as though I had this garden when I was young, when I was a kid, when I was 12 13 14 15 16, all these ages I was creating.
I was always playing with my camera, I was always making videos, I was always with my friends doing photo shoots, I was writing poetry.
All these ideas and thoughts and plans for my life, for my art, for my future were abundant.
I loved this garden.
I loved being in it.
It made me happy.
While I was starting out my adult life, I was being told that I would have to sacrifice those things in order to be worthy of success or in order to live a life of stability.
I decided to sacrifice the things that made me happy in order to put my efforts elsewhere.
Although levels of security came and I felt like I was being productive and building my career, I was so unhappy.
I decided that I would take the risk of putting my focus into the things that felt like just a dream.
It felt very scary to do that because, like I said, I felt like this creative life of mine and all these ideas were dead.
This garden was barren.
I knew that I wanted to focus on bringing that garden back to life, but I didn't necessarily know how to do that.
Yeah, so while i was grappling all of that, i experienced a friend of mine passing and what i was just talking about.
Um, when it comes to feeling like my creative garden was barren, i actually bonded a lot with this person about that, and we shared similar goals when it came to working on our art.
This friend was just somebody that I really looked up to and could confide in when it came to not knowing what I was doing but believing in my art regardless.
We lost this friend due to health reasons that were perpetuated by certain lifestyle choices that i think all of us in our 20s are inclined to making.
When we are depressed anxious confused, sometimes we don't feel like we have a lot to fall back on, and this person was isolated, with their hardships and responsibilities that they were facing, just trying to get by working multiple jobs under so much stress.
Losing this person was just such a wake-up call for me and others affected by this loss that we are not invincible.
At this age, we think that we are, but we're not, and the choices that we make do matter.
Our mental health is a big deal, especially at this age when we're learning how to take care of ourselves mentally, how to do it by ourselves.
This isn't a video about dealing with grief, so I'm not going to get into what all of that really looked like.
All of this felt very confusing and overwhelming.
So I decided that in the spring I would go visit some family members that I have overseas and that I would go on my first big solo out-of-the-country trip in an attempt to clear my mind, travel and gain some inspiration.
I could come back and feel a little bit more refreshed, a little bit more healed from the winter's tragedies.
I was already kind of riddled with fear fear anxiety, new perspectives on health in general, and on my flight i got coveted the first half of it and going to the hospital in another country.
I am with family that i haven't seen for like six or seven years.
I feel bad that i'm exposing them to covet.
I've had covered quite a few times, but this time it was especially bad.
It actually brought up further how health complications that I was then forced to deal with once I got back.
And it felt like a good month or two was just dedicated to being ill.
I just felt so stuck, man.
I felt so trapped with yes, everything that was mentally going on even before this, but now it felt like all of those intense mental worries had manifested physically and I was just miserable.
Um yeah, i told you guys this would be depressing.
I knew that because i had become so acquainted with what it felt like to hit what i would describe as my lowest point.
I was just like there's no coming out of this.
I have no money, i have no plan, no health.
I had no idea what i was doing, what i was going to do, what was going to happen to me, and i knew that a change was necessary.
I didn't know what that change was supposed to be.
But I decided to look into the science of positive thinking and changing the way that our minds work, because I knew the way that my brain was functioning and the beliefs that I had about myself.
My circumstances and what was possible for the future was what was keeping me in such a miserable situation.
So I decided to really get into reprogramming my mind.
That makes it sound like a little computer system, but it kind of is.
I had to take accountability and realize that I have responsibility in the way that I think and the way that I live my life.
Okay, I'm all day, every day, looking at what I don't want, what is making me miserable, what I'm so afraid of.
But what happens when I start looking at what I do want?
What makes me excited?
What brings me joy, fulfillment?
Developing an understanding of how our minds and thinking works and what positive thinking even is, and how to make that sustainable.
I realized that I shouldn't be so hard on myself because it is very difficult to change our minds.
It's all cute in theory, but actually committing to changing your mind, generating those positive feelings, it's just a big switch from being so focused on the negative all the time.
I knew that I could imagine what the opposite of all of these things I was going through felt like.
If I was so fearful about my state of health and I didn't want to be in this place physically with my body, I could imagine what the opposite felt like.
That I could feel full of energy vitality, that I could be living life in a healthy state.
It was possible.
I knew it was possible because the opposite was possible.
So why wouldn't that be possible too?
What do I want?
Okay, I don't want this.
What do I want?
I felt like I didn't even really know what I wanted because I was so focused on what I didn't want.
How do I want my body to feel?
How do I want my mind to feel?
I felt intimidated to dream big.
I felt intimidated to answer my own questions in my own head.
The more that I kind of let myself daydream and get excited about these scenarios, imagine these things, write them down, get specific, the more my creative garden started to grow back.
And it was gradual.
It was like a tiny seed that I planted of an idea or a hope for the future started to grow into something that I could nurture and get excited about.
So once I realized that this was possible and that I could change the way that my mind worked, therefore what was happening in my life I knew that I could maintain this good feeling somehow.
If I wasn't doing these things that I'm about to list to you, it wouldn't have been possible for me to reprogram my brain.
No, that journey is difficult.
We need to assist ourselves.
And I was only able to do that by implementing things like meditation.
Stay with me here.
Meditation does not have to be some crazy.
We're sitting for 30 minutes.
The idea is just allowing yourself to be for a few minutes.
We're letting ourselves, a lot of the time, be victims to our experiences and reactions that yes, we're gonna have.
We're humans.
We should feel our feelings.
We should feel angry, upset.
I'm not saying that we should dance around and be positive all the time.
It's kind of a waste of time, if you think about it, to let ourselves be so invested in the things that we're saying we don't want, when really we have the power to look towards what we do want to create and look towards what it is that we do desire and want.
And I think the more that we take intentional time to let ourselves feel good and to let ourselves maybe visualize those things or just sit with ourselves and have a moment of re-centering that has been a huge step in my journey is Taking that time to step away, to take deep breaths.
We underestimate the tools that we have inside of us.
Remember earlier I was saying nobody gave me the tools to believe in myself.
It's because I already have them.
It does alter the way that I move through my day.
It helps me call my power back from all situations and reactions and things that trigger me back to me.
What do I want to do with my power?
Do I want to place it there or do I want to place it towards the things and the change that I want to see in my life?
We have the power to center ourselves and refocus when we feel as though we are consumed by all the things that we don't want.
Which brings me to the sponsor of today's video, Aura.
I wanted to talk about Aura, because I cannot express how drastically my life has shifted since I started implementing meditation and breathwork and these things that changed my mental and physical health for the better.
Aura is this amazing app that makes implementing those practices and wellness in general So easy.
Sometimes I get very overwhelmed with decisions to make and I just want to skip my meditation practice, or I just don't really feel like taking care of myself in these ways, and it's things like Aura that make it very, very simple to keep myself accountable, keep myself on track, just do five minutes of meditation.
Aura is an all-in-one app for your well-being and sleep.
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Aura's content is created by hundreds of coaches and therapists from around the world, and what I love about it is that it is highly personalized.
From the second that you start with aura the questions that you answer the app uses all of that data to curate content specifically for you.
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I also had to surround myself with people that were supportive of this journey, that wanted me to get better, that wanted to see me happy, that wanted to see me succeed.
But the difference between realizing all these things and knowing that it was possible to change my life was actually committing to the risk of change.
We've talked about it before.
I don't think risks will ever feel comfortable or easy to take, but somebody, a few months before this whole journey had started, told me big risk equals big reward.
Sometimes we don't want to take that leap.
Even if it is a five minute meditation break, we don't want to take that risk.
Why would i risk wasting my time if i could spend it on my phone or do something that gives me immediate dopamine?
It is a risk to believe that going on a 10 minute walk is gonna help you.
Because do we really feel like doing that?
No.
I don't feel like sitting down, putting my headphones on, doing a meditation.
But I do it because I know that there is going to be a benefit at the end of it.
And it's about taking that risk when you don't really believe that yet.
I didn't believe that change was possible.
I had to take the risk to believe that I could make a drastic change here, that I could find happiness fulfillment, that I could turn depression into peace and happiness and fulfillment.
Even though I didn't believe that was possible, I had to take the risk to try.
Each time I committed to that risk, more and more and more, the rewards would reveal themselves to me.
Every time I had a negative thought it felt like such a risk to decide to say I'm not going to place my energy here.
I'm going to take it elsewhere.
And I'm going to believe that what I want is possible.
I'm going to believe that happiness is possible.
I'm going to believe that fulfillment and things that are out of my wildest dreams are possible.
Running on that blind faith sometimes and taking that risk.
You look a little crazy, are really happy, but you look a little crazy.
That's why it's so important to surround yourself as much as you can with people that also get excited about those visions and possibilities with you and also want to be happy at peace.
You know, and sadly not everybody's there yet and a lot of unhealthy attitudes are around us all of the time and it is extremely difficult to not let yourself succumb to that.
So many of us are always focused on what we don't want and what we're so miserable about, what we're insecure about.
How can we put other people down?
How can we compare ourselves?
How can we justify our misery?
What else can we complain about?
And it's like, yeah, I've been doing that my whole life.
None of this means denying our feelings, our anger, our reactions, our negative thoughts in life.
We can still accept the fact that that exists and go through those feelings, feel those emotions, but not letting it consume us.
Why are we always perpetuating the past?
If something that we didn't like happened, why are we bringing it into the now?
Let's take the risk to imagine that something else is possible and bring that into our reality instead.
And I know it sounds easier said than done and that's why I'm making this whole dramatic video about how I changed my life, but these things changed my life.
Guys like, I am a different person like, and it's because i committed to that risk over and over again, even whenever there was no return, when it felt so stupid to be delusional and happy in the most mundane environments, in abusive environments, in unenjoyable circumstances, continuing to believe that no, the opposite of this is possible.
No, I can continue to bring what I want into my life.
The more that I decide that that's possible, the more that I decide to be about that and move towards that.
If the lighting looks a little different, it's because my camera died.
I took some time away to work on the arrangement, a little bit while it was charging, but we are back.
We wait to see a change in our lives.
The real change doesn't start until we begin to generate it within us, when we start to use the circumstances that we want to get out of to show us what it is that we want.
What I really found helped me center my mind and redirect my thoughts was making sure that I was meditating, even if it was for five minutes a day, implementing different breathwork practices.
Sometimes I would literally just look up breathwork for stress.
Hey, but with an app like Aura, You don't have to do that.
Journaling, morning pages.
And I'm going to be honest, guys, I don't do them every morning.
I try.
I'm still continuing to try.
Just writing your stream of consciousness, no rules, just letting any thoughts you have out onto paper.
It is like free therapy sometimes, journaling out your thoughts.
I had to do a lot of deep breathing because there are moments that feel physically and mentally excruciating sometimes.
Like we said, the brain is like this wild animal that just wants to run this way, wants to run towards what it's used to and what it's familiar with and has known its whole life.
When there is a crazy situation going on where all you want to do is feel negative or let yourself succumb to old beliefs and trying to pull yourself out of it and trying to change your headspace or protect your energy, it takes a lot of deep breaths, like i found that that was kind of the only thing that helped me mentally and physically regulate while i was going through difficult situations or i was around a difficult person or stuff was just coming up for me and i felt insecure or was pushing myself to do something uncomfortable or unfamiliar.
Just breathing through it, as simple as it sounds, helped me so much.
Another thing that really helped me was affirming things to myself, even when it sounded crazy.
I think that a lot of people shy away from affirmations because it's kind of embarrassing to be like in front of the mirror saying i am successful, i- you know, like it's just like whatever it feels, like maybe it's not doing anything, but the more that you do it and the more power and emphasis and confidence even if you don't feel it that you put behind statements that you affirm to yourself.
Just watch what happens.
Your mind.
What happens whenever we are telling our mind and telling ourselves that happiness is possible, that peace fulfillment, whatever it is that we wanna do, wanna make, wanna create?
When we tell ourselves that that is possible every single day.
What happens then?
I will wait for you to find out, because it has not only improved my mental health, but my physical health as well.
I have never felt this way before, and it is because i am trusting that that risk of taking care of myself, of taking care of myself for five minutes during a little meditation, redirecting my thoughts towards what I want.
It works.
It works and it is real and it snowballs, the more that you trust it and the more evidence you're given to trust it.
And I know that it's a lot of work and I know that life is constantly changing.
Our needs, our demands, our responsibilities are always weighing on us and changing as we grow.
But if I could go back and tell that version of me who was crying every day, who was confused, who felt worthless and lost, if I could go back and tell myself that it is possible, i would.
But i trusted that it was and therefore that is what happened.
I will continue to take the risk of believing in myself because, even though it is scary, even if you can't see it in front of you, if you can imagine it and you can feel it, taking the risk to move in that direction, to believe in those things, to put little actions towards what makes you feel healthy, good and happy, is worth it.
I know that it works because I've been shown that it works.
Anytime I find myself in a depressive, stuck unsure state again, I will continue to take the risk in believing that I can feel otherwise.
I can create a life that once felt like a joke to believe in.
So many things that have happened.
Now, after taking the risk to believing in, believing that it's possible, have happened and they never would have if i didn't take that risk, if i didn't believe in myself or that a change was possible.
Anyways guys, i have finished up this arrangement, i think, and i would like to show you the final product.
You guys always show me that i am not alone and i am here to do the same for you.
We are on this journey together and i will talk to you very, very soon bye.
