For my whole life, I wanted people to think I was happy.
I worried what others thought about me, and I very badly wanted to be perfect in pretty much every way (perfectionist, people pleaser = unhappy Katie).
As you can imagine, I occasionally *ahem* fell short of my insanely high, impossible to achieve expectations of being perfect and having everyone love me.
This created one very miserable girl on the inside – and I hid that for a really long time.
As I got older, I really wanted to be happy and have the confidence I saw in others. I was painfully insecure and it was ruining my joy and my life. But for a long time, I accepted this was how I was – I just wasn’t one of those happy & confident people.
After years of reading any and every article or book I could find on happiness and confidence I discovered one principle that made a MASSIVE impact on my life – and that’s what I want to share with you today.
You don’t have to believe everything you think.
Say what?
It took a while for this concept to even sink in.
It never occurred to me to question the non-stop thoughts in my head — most times I didn’t even notice they were there.
Once I did notice them – it was a rude awakening, that’s for sure. I consider myself to be a pretty nice person and the things that I was saying to myself non-stop, all day, on repeat we’re not nice things.
As I learned that I didn’t have to believe these thoughts I became pretty obsessed. Now, there’s something you should know about me — I’m a pretty big nerd! So once I found out this fun fact I couldn’t help but dive into all things thought & brain related.
I learned about thought patterns and creating new ones, why negativity can so easily dominate and lots of other amazing things about our brains and how we can use our mind to create more happiness and confidence. (I’ll share more soon!)
I learned that although my thoughts were not so hot right now, that I actually had the power to change them. Just like how you can change the shape of your body at the gym, you can change the thoughts in your head with a little effort.
I ditched the nonstop negativity (that I didn’t even know I had when I started!) and gradually trained my brain for more constructive thoughts.
The better I got at this, the happier and more confident I became because I didn’t have this horrible bully (me) in my head telling me terrible things all day long. I had no idea that I was the one undermining my happiness and confidence this whole time.
The funny thing? Once I stopped *trying* to seem happy to others and started just doing the work on myself – people would tell me I’m happier than they’ve ever seen me, my social anxiety went away and life just felt so much BETTER – that’s the power of mastering your negative thoughts and turning your inner bully to your BFF.
Without the constant negativity – I had room for so much more happiness and joy and I hope I can help you create the same.
Love,
Katie
