If you’re always the easy one to be around… this is for you

YOU KNOW THE FEELING

Sometimes you override yourself without anyone ever asking you to do that.  You’re simply doing what you think you’re supposed to do to life life properly. You’re doing what you believe will make your parents happy. What will make you shine at the class reunion. What the movies have conditioned you to think is the right thing to do. 

And once you’re stuck in that override, without even knowing, you end up becoming less and less connected to yourself floating through life without an anchor hoping for the best with a few coins in your pocket. 

Because the override happened before you could even get super clear on what brings you joy and what feels like that thing you’re naturally supposed to be doing in this lifetime. 

In those phases life can seem like something just out of reach. You’re living and doing wonderful things but it’s not filling your forever empty cup. It’s like continuously swinging at the baseball but never connecting. 

And damn. That can feel heavy. Frustrating at best. Like going to the movie theatre to see a film you’ve been dying to watch but somehow ending up in the wrong room. How do you gracefully exit???

I KNOW IT TOO

I know the feeling all too well. 

I knew for a long time, since I was little, that I wanted to help people. And when I was in university I dreamed of becoming a stylishly-dressed art curator at a museum. 

And when opportunities came along as I was graduating, and oh, there were many, I jumped in the deep end and said yes, without much thought behind it, to the first interesting offer I got…a museum technician in…Alaska. 

[off i went from louisiana to alaska, sheesh!]

From that point on for over a decade, my career was a series of offered opportunities easy enough to say yes to. 

See, because of the ease at which this largely military-focused artifact management career opened up to me, I convinced myself that I was indeed following my calling of helping people as well as my dream of working in a museum. 

But really? I wasn’t. 

And even now, almost 10 years after that chapter of my life, hell, I'm still healing from that long term dissociation from myself and what it is I really wanted to do. 

[healing and self-reconnection in real time]

I’ve also reconnected to who I am thanks to a year long soul journey I did back in 2022. I’m clear on my purpose (which I knew all along but largely ignored) and the most aligned route for me to take in realizing it. I’m being my real self. That doesn’t mean life is super easy. I deal with some serious shit. For example, I love my children down, but motherhood is an archetype that’s not really my bag. So that struggle is real on the daily.

Though self-connection doesn’t necessarily make life easy it does make it more simple and clear.  I know what the f*ck I’m doing here and I’m doing it. There’s no wavering. No hesitation. No putting things on the back burner out of fear of being seen. Clarity motivates me and helps me easily let go of busy work.

WHY THE OVERRIDE?

But one thing this makes me wonder about is: where did this need to override myself come from in the first place? And why do so many people experience this? 

It came from people-pleasing in order to feel loved and a sense of belonging. When you override yourself for the sake of your parents’ or older siblings comfort and approval, it becomes the way you stay safe, feel love and feel like you’re doing the right thing.

And then when the opportunities and decisions-to-be-made present themselves over the course of the years, you keep choosing to do the override because it’s what you know. And even if it doesn’t feel right, it feels known so it’s much more comfortable than choosing yourself.

HOW TO CHOOSE YOURSELF?

Choosing yourself will shake up your life. Like let’s not romanticize here. Toxic patterns you’re used to reveal themselves and sometimes getting out of those patterns and those relationships that enable them is easy and sometimes it’s tricky as hell.

It also takes time. Though people will convince you it’s possible to timeline jump and wake up to an alternate reality tomorrow morning or that they have a hypnosis method that’ll alleviate all your troubles in 3 sessions—this work takes time. Neuroscience proves to us it takes 18-264 days to develop a new habit. Forget that 21 day nonsense, as a busy adult you’re honestly looking at about 6 months. 

I’ve been working on maintaining and deepening my self-connection for about 6 years now. There’s levels to this. I do visualizations, nature connecting, embodiment practices, meditation, energy work, hanging with people who respect and desire power-sharing relationships, and more. At this point I’m the embodiment of this type of work. 

And before you box it in, it’s not self-development. We’re not doing “make myself better.” We’re doing “be me and take up space as myself.” That’s the work.

If you’re wondering where the hell to start with letting go of overriding yourself, try starting with my free guide Erasing Self Erasure. It’ll give you 10 reframes about what “being the kind one” really means and how to do so without overriding yourself in the process.

save it for later… you know you want to