I'm My Own Woman

No one could tell me nothing! I knew I was smart. I knew my own thoughts were my thoughts! I looked at myself as a walking Socrates. I was educated, well rounded and spiritual. I knew all about love, life and God. But in light of all of this knowledge, my life was a mess. I learned that our mindset is formed from 3 things: (1) what we hear; (2) what we see; and (3) what we choose to believe. Our basic thoughts about love, philosophies about life and spirituality are overwhelmingly not original; not profound; and very generic in the grand scheme of things.

Our mindset is formed early in our mother's womb, taking in all of the emotions, feelings, sounds into our developing pre-born psyche. Then we enter the world, and there starts the long journey of others teaching us how to think, what to think, how to behave, what to believe, what to say and when to say it. And this initial programming of our mindset, sets the stage for our life, our choices, decisions and actions.

In addition to having the direct form of programming, via someone directly telling us how to think, we also undergo a 'passive' form of programming that is mediated through music & music videos, TV shows, movies, magazines and commercials.

Our mind doesn't care about the source of the information it takes in, it just takes it in, and processes it into our brain...and then, we act according to the predominate concepts in our mind.

This is something that I learned about our mindsets later in life. One day, I woke up and couldn't understand why I was acting the way I was acting, making the decisions and choices I was making...when I asked myself why I did the things I did, I just replied because I want to. This is me. This is who I am.

But this personality I boldly proclaimed was making me miserable and placing me in the realm of life that I didn't want to be in. I felt a constant internal struggle and I dulled the struggle with alcohol. I was at battle with myself...so I began to think, how could I be at battle with myself? If my thoughts were mine, why would I be in a constant struggle with them, why would I try to stamp out the fight with alcohol and keep my myself busy with partying, spending money on things and over-consumed with anything that brought me pleasure....this wasn't normal.

If you find yourself doing things that ultimately hurt you or destroys your peace, you have to stop your self-destructive-dysfunctional behavior.

The way for women to break the cycle of dysfunction is to struggle through the discomfort of making the right decisions versus enjoying the immediate "rush" of doing the wrong thing. Life is already hard, why add unnecessary drama?