Hi my loves!
Welcome back to Lavendaire.
Last week I shared a video on the keys to success:
habits and mindsets and lessons that have contributed to my personal success.
So this week I wanted to do a video sharing
the top things that hold people back from success,
the top things that might be holding you back from living your best life.
This is a fun video, because I'm going to share a checklist on my blog post,
which you can find down below,
where you can actually check things off
and see whether you are guilty of some of these things,
or whether you actually don't let any of these things hold you back.
I'm also going to do a giveaway at the end of this video, by the way,
because it's back to school season.
I have a Daily Planner and notebooks that I'm excited to give out.
So stick around to the end to find out more about the giveaway.
The first thing that holds a lot of people back
from succeeding and living their best life is
1) thinking that they can't change or thinking that their life can't change.
It's all in your mindset,
and people who think that they can't change are stuck.
They're imprisoned by their mind.
And I'm sure you know some people who always say things like,
“I can't do that,” or “I'm just like this.
I can't change this part of me. That's just who I am.”
And that's completely false because we are so flexible and malleable.
We can actually change and shape who we are
because you know, we're always changing every single day without even realizing it.
So you can consciously change yourself for the better,
but the most important thing you have to do first
is recognize that you have the power to change,
that you can learn new things,
that you can change your old habits.
It's all in believing that you can do it in the first place.
In self help, we call it the “growth mindset” vs. the “fixed mindset”.
People with the growth mindset truly believe that they can change and grow over time.
And people who have a fixed mindset believe that
they were born a certain way in certain circumstances,
and they can't change that.
And just by laying those two out,
it's obvious which mindset you'd rather have.
You'd rather have the growth mindset,
because if you can change, why not?
Why not choose to believe that you can change and grow?
Because essentially, our minds are so powerful that you become what you believe.
So if your mind is that powerful,
use it to change your thoughts and change who you are,
change how you see yourself, your identities.
The second thing that holds a lot of people back
from success and living their best life is
2) blaming others for where they are in life,
blaming their circumstances, how they grew up,
and making it an excuse as to why they are where they are,
not taking responsibility for their life.
You know, the truth is we're all not born with the same circumstances.
Some people are born more privileged
and some people are born underprivileged.
That's just a fact of life.
I'm not diminishing things like systemic racism,
oppression, just systemic issues that actually
are making it harder for certain people to succeed,
certain marginalized communities.
I'm not diminishing any of that,
because that is also a fact and that is also very real.
What I'm saying is: Even though we all start out at different points
and the starting line is not equal,
you can still choose to do what you can with what you have.
Once you are living your life,
you don't have to be bound by where you came from.
You can really choose to take your life where you want it to go.
You can choose to have a positive mindset.
You can choose to learn new skills, learn new things, meet new people.
You don't have to settle for the circumstances that you were born with
and just deal and blame life for what you were given.
You can do something about it still,
and you can always move your life forward.
It's just start where you are, do what you can with what you have.
So much is in your control and in your power, more than you realize,
and the moment you realize that, the moment you step into your power.
Stop blaming external circumstances for where you are in life,
because you do have power over you and your life.
The next major thing that holds a lot of us back is 3) fear.
This one is huge.
I want to put fear in big letters on the screen,
because we all deal with it.
It holds all of us back at some point in our lives,
because fear is a natural human emotion.
It's created in us to protect us from danger,
to protect us from situations where we can possibly die.
And that's totally normal.
But in our modern-day society, so many of our fears are just mental.
So many of them are not real life and death situations.
They're just crises in our mind,
things that paralyze us from moving forward.
We are afraid of failure.
We are afraid of judgment.
We are afraid of the unknown.
Those are three main fears on a list of endless fears that we might have in life.
But I think those are the most common.
You have to recognize these fears
and try to analyze and debunk them for yourself.
Whatever fear you have, ask yourself,
“Okay, how is this rational or irrational of a fear? Is this fear valid?”
And it's okay to recognize your fear.
Fear won't always go away.
But understand that if you want to be successful
and you want to make it in life,
you have to learn to act despite your fear,
because too many of us allow our fear to hold us back
from living our best, our most authentic life.
We're scared of people judging us for being weird.
We're scared to be ourselves.
We're scared to dress up the way we actually want to dress up.
So many of these are fears that modern society needs to learn to overcome.
We all need to learn to overcome these things,
and the faster you learn to overcome them,
the sooner that you will be living a happier, more fulfilled life.
The next thing that holds a lot of us back are 4) limiting beliefs.
Have you ever heard yourself say “I can't __. I can't do this. I can't do that.”?
Those words are poison.
Stop saying it.
You CAN.
Whenever I say “I can't do this,” I catch myself.
It's not “I can't”, it's “I won't” or “I don't prefer to”, right?
It's not, “I can't wake up early”.
It's “I don't prefer to wake up early”.
But I always have to check my mind
and remind myself I can if I want to.
And that's how you overcome those limiting beliefs,
because your mind is so powerful.
Your mind believes what you tell it to believe.
So that's why positive affirmations work,
because the more you repeat these affirmations,
these sentences like “I am worthy. I am strong. I'm beautiful,” –
even though they might not feel true when you first start reciting them,
the more you repeat it, the more you ingrain it into your brain,
your mind is like, “Okay, I know this. I know this thought.
And it must be true because I know it. I'm thinking it.”
So the more that you feed a thought,
the more that you believe in it,
and the more that it becomes reality.
And that's why you don't want to feed any limiting beliefs anymore,
any beliefs that "I can't do this. I can't succeed.
That's not for me. I don't deserve this. I'm not worthy,"
all of those thoughts that are holding you back are not helping you,
because they're literally holding you back from being your best self,
from believing in yourself.
At this point, I hope you guys realize
how much of what holds us back is all in the mind.
I think everything, most things that I've been talking about
are literally just illusions in your mind.
They're not actually a reality,
because the truth is you can, you can succeed.
You can create your dream life.
You can do whatever you want to do.
It's possible.
You can.
The next one is similar, but worth mentioning:
5) having a negative mindset,
because if you are negative about everything, if you're cynical,
then your thoughts will perpetuate that negative reality,
because your thoughts have the power to create your reality
just from your perspective.
If you're negative, then you're going to continue to see negative things.
You're going to continue to see the downside of things.
But if you have a positive mindset and you choose to see the good,
you choose to see what you can be grateful for,
that is a much more powerful mindset to have that will fuel your success.
Also, it's just about the energy that you give off.
If you're a negative person and you always see the negative in everything,
people aren't going to want to be around you.
Successful, happy, positive people aren't going to want to hang out with you.
But if you have a positive mindset
and you have all of this good energy and good vibes,
then more people will be attracted to you.
And when more good, successful people are attracted to you,
that brings in more opportunity for your life.
So positive vibes attract more positive vibes.
And that just creates a really good baseline for creating your dream life,
because how can you expect to create a wonderful, happy, beautiful life
if you're just negative about everything?
The next thing that holds a lot of us back – and this one is huge –
is 6) lack of self love and lack of self confidence.
Those are actually very important, foundational things
that you need to have in order to be successful.
You have to be confident in yourself.
You have to love yourself,
otherwise it's going to be a very difficult journey on your way up,
because when you don't have self-love, you're hard on yourself.
You beat yourself up.
You put a lot of pressure on yourself
and ultimately it boils down, down to these deep beliefs,
these deep limiting beliefs like,
“I am not worthy. I'm not good enough. I don't deserve this.”
Self hate is toxic.
It is one of the most toxic things that you can do for yourself,
because you are living with your mind.
You are living with yourself every single day, 24/7 for the rest of your entire life.
So imagine: If that experience is negative,
how difficult that is, how much suffering you would be in.
And I feel like a lot of people live life like that, being hard on themselves.
When they look in the mirror, they say something mean and negative,
and it's just not productive.
It's not helping anyone.
And this is a journey.
Obviously, it's not something that will happen overnight.
You're not going to develop self love overnight.
But it really is a journey that you take step by step.
But it is so crucial to understand that,
if you want to live your best life,
you're going to have to learn to accept, enjoy, and love spending your life
with this person, the person that you're going to spend
the rest of your life with, and that is you.
So, work on your relationship with yourself.
Cultivate self-love.
Take care of yourself.
Do a deep dive on why you might be saying these negative things to yourself.
Why are you so hard on yourself?
Why do you feel like you have to be perfect?
Why do you feel like you have to prove yourself?
Why do you feel like you need other people's approval and love?
All of these things are very deep, self-reflective things to get into.
And I have videos on this, worksheets and workbooks on this,
so if you want more, click here down below.
But start that journey and build that relationship with yourself.
The last thing that holds a lot of us back is
7) the comparison game, comparing ourselves to others.
This is also super toxic.
Please don't do it.
I know it's so common.
Even I catch myself doing it sometimes.
But just recognize that that is a toxic mindset, a toxic habit.
It's almost a natural thing that all humans do.
We tend to compare.
We tend to see like, “Oh, the grass looks greener on the other side,”
when it actually really isn't.
Comparison is judging people's lives on the surface, based on what you know.
What you know is not reality.
It's not the whole story,
so why are you judging your life,
where you know your whole reality,
to someone's surface level reality,
which is actually an illusion.
Everyone's Instagram life is an illusion.
It doesn't tell the whole story.
There's always something else happening behind the scenes.
And that's what makes us human, you know.
We all go through struggles.
We all have challenges.
Everyone is fighting their own battle.
So you have to understand that just because
this person looks like they're much further ahead than you are,
doesn't make you any less because it's not a competition.
It's not a race, and you don't really know the whole story of them.
So focus on yourself, focus on your life,
and just make sure that you are growing.
You are taking the baby steps.
There's this quote that says,
“Make sure that you are better than who you were yesterday.”
And I actually, in hindsight, I don't love that quote,
because it makes it seem like growth is linear,
making sure that you have to be better than who you were yesterday
so that it's always like better, better, better, better, better.
I don't actually think it's like that.
I think it's like, life is in seasons and cycles and roller coasters.
So yes, you might not be better than who you were yesterday,
but if you zoom out and look at the bigger picture,
you want to say that, “Okay, I'm better this year than I was last year,”
or “I'm better in these five years than I was in the previous five years.”
I think it's more fair to look at your life in the macro view than the everyday,
because we're going to have bad days and hard times,
and don't be hard on yourself for it.
It happens to everyone.
So don't compare yourself.
It's toxic.
Focus on your own journey,
but also don't be super hard on yourself
for the everyday things happening.
I also want to note that it's dangerous to compare both up and down.
So “comparing up” is looking at someone that you think is better than you,
who you think is further ahead or just better, above you in any way.
That's dangerous because it makes you feel bad,
and it just makes you feel not proud of your own accomplishments or whatever.
Comparing down is also dangerous.
“Comparing down” is when you look down on someone who might be behind you.
That can give you a false ego boost.
And it can make you lazy, because you're looking at someone behind you,
so you feel like, “Okay, I don't have to work as hard anymore.”
That's also really dangerous because,
you know, it shouldn't matter where people are,
because like I said, we're all in different points in our journey
and we all have different backstories.
Don't compare your life to other people.
All right, the sun is setting, so I'm going to jump into our giveaway for today.
I'm excited to give away a Daily Planner and a Pastel Notebook set,
so all four colors of the notebooks to one special winner.
This is how to enter:
First, you have to follow our @shoplavendaire Instagram account.
Then go to our most recent post and then comment,
tagging a friend that you would share Lavendaire with.
And that's it!
So you can enter as many times as you want,
leave as many comments as you want,
and I will be choosing a winner next week on September 2nd.
And we'll be announcing the winner on Instagram,
so make sure you follow and check for updates.
To wrap up this video, I want to ask a question that you can answer in the comments:
Out of the things I listed today,
which one is the biggest one holding you back
from success and creating your dream life?
Comment down below with your answer.
I'd love to see your thoughts.
And I will see you next time.
Love you guys.
Bye!