You weren’t the one who put you last on the list!

But it IS our responsibility to notice how fucking wrong it is and to challenge ourselves to believe to see the light shining through the cracks in the patriarchy.

This is my story and it’s the story of all women who have a habit of putting themselves last! I lived many years (decades) trapped inside beliefs, that I didn’t know I had permission to question. I, like everyone else I knew, just kept following the rules never once wondering if the game was rigged! And now that I have, now that I’ve done the work and decided to bust through the bullshit I want to help you to shine a light on your beliefs and re-write your story!

The truth

Your experience of life (aka whether or not you are happy) is your responsibility. And the 1st step to taking full responsibility for your life is to take a good hard look at what you believe…and more to the point figure out how your beliefs became your truth! (spoiler alert…your beliefs were created by you to help you manage and maneuver through a system designed to keep you small and quiet). 

Learning to put your happiness first, making yourself a priority, is a big change for many women, especially those who believe (unquestionably) that they have to put everyone else’s needs before their own. As women our value and worth have been so inextricably intertwined with our ability to make others happy, such that, negating our own happiness has become a habit. 

Letting go of this mindset in order to make room for a new ‘Me First” one, requires that we say good bye to what once was, embrace the uncertainty of what lies ahead and choose to believe we deserve it…simply because we are humans and we exist. Imagine a world where your happiness came first and there were no caveats or criteria to be met in advance, no list of shoulds to be checked off before you were allowed to!!!

This shift to the I AM AWESOME BECAUSE I AM mindset is a BIG change in thinking for many people. Even just leaning towards the idea can set our inner critic into high gear. When we actually decide to take the leap, our inner critic will trigger a series of thoughts and behaviours (patterns) to resist change. And out of habit we let it happen, because we’ve been conditioned to keep order. Conditioned to believe that one little change to how things are done, will unravel all our work and therefore jeopardize our worth. 

Does this feel familiar…

”If I can’t keep every fucking thing in the lives of the people around me running smoothly, who would want me around?”

The work, like the real, create long term sustainable change, work comes before any of the work you actually see. The real work begins when you decide to believe that you have permission to change your perspective, to put yourself first! 

Challenging your existing belief system and by extension who you are and why you’re here, is a biggie! Letting go of the old beliefs to make way for the new ones (when you’re not convinced yet that they’ll make your life any better) requires that you trust yourself enough to do the work, be willing to seek out and gather the evidence that your new belief is in fact (and has always been) true.

You are a product of the broken patriarchal system you grew up in (which is not your fault). You are also a grown ass person who can look at something in YOUR life that’s broken and take responsibility for fixing it. Yes the system needs a GD overhaul and when you do your part, become part of the solution you create the ripple effect you want to see in your life, in the world and for the next generation.

Here’s a little something to ponder…

The shoulds in your life control you, because you let them! 

You read that right. You decide every day to put them before you, out of habit. Habits built on beliefs that are antiquated and, until you decide to do something about them, unchallenged.

Some ahas and breakthrough moments will happen immediately when you pull the curtain back and see the little imp pulling all the strings, and others will take time to unpack and dissolve. The point is, once you believe that putting yourself first is more than a good idea, that it’s the only way to truly be happy AND of service to those you care about, you will begin to see evidence of this truth everywhere. 

Check your habits. Do you have a habit of…

1. Letting your inner critic drive your thoughts and behaviours?
2. Negating and marginalizing those who go against the patriarchal, all you’ve ever known, grain?
3. Devaluing your own joy?
4. Mistaking the brilliance of being OF service with the idea that your purpose is to serve others?
5. Trusting the opinions of others over what feels right to you?

These habits became habits, because the thoughts behind them and the behaviours that solidified them, were continuously rewarded and encouraged by every person of influence in your life…parents, elders, teachers, doctors, friends… and every media source: TV, movies, commercials, magazines, books, ads, the internet…OMFG the internet! Every F’N thing in your life perpetuated the belief that to be of value you had to put the needs of others before your own (for many of us we deepened that belief with the thought that we didn’t even have needs that didn’t somehow include others). We blindly believed that self-LESS-ness was a badge of honour we were supposed to fight for! 

Like with many things that crack open to let the light in, the cracks in the old tired, worn out patriarchal beliefs are letting in the light. And when you choose to see what that light is illuminating, choose to believe something different, you will regain your power, your birthright to be valued and of value simply for being, to be happy without conditions, to define yourself by your values, to live in integrity and to put your F’N happiness first!

Who’s with me…

It’s time to believe to see that we’ve had the power all along and that the system that conditioned us to be otherwise is a stinking sack of shit! 

You’ve Got This + I’ve Got You!