Do you ever tell yourself the lie, “I’ll be happy when _______”?
It often goes like this:
I’ll be happy when I get into a relationship
I’ll feel satisfied in my career once I get my promotion
I’ll finally feel excited when I move to a new city
Visionary, all too often we rely on external trappings in order to give us validation.
We put our feelings in the hands of external forces.
When you chase a status or a circumstance, you may feel out of control, as if there is constantly a new goal post or finish line to be going after in order to feel fulfillment.
True fulfillment doesn’t come from chasing external circumstances.
And trust me, I know how easy it is to get caught up in the mindset of “if I only achieve X, then I will finally feel X”.
Stop waiting for things to make you feel something
There’s a podcast called Love Your Life with Law of Attraction.
And this one part of an episode in the podcast stood out to me and inspired this blog post. The host talked about the idea that when you say you want something, it’s because you think it’s going to make you feel a certain way.
The host discusses that we will often postpone feeling that initial feeling until you achieve that thing.
Let’s explore the five steps to how you can start living with confidence, instead of constantly chasing circumstances in order to feel a certain way.
Understand the feeling you desire
To gain some clarity around what you ultimately want, you've got to peel back the layers of your current situation.
For example, when you move into a new apartment, you may desire that thing because you want to feel like you have a new start. Or, you may want to pay off debt it’s because you desire a feeling of stability.
When you peel back the layers of your current circumstances, you’re able to understand why you feel a certain way.
Ask yourself;
Why is it that you want that thing?
Rather than focus on the thing itself, ask yourself: What is the feeling you think that thing is going to give you?
By gaining clarity on the feeling we’re chasing, rather than hyperfocus on the result, we’re able to move on to the next step in the process.
2. Ask yourself if you’re postponing that feeling
The second thing you’re going to want to do is to examine your life, reflect and ask yourself if you’ve been postponing feeling the feeling until you’ve achieved X, Y, or Z.
Let’s go back to the example of paying off debt. I want to use this example of money because SO many people may have different issues around it.
A common belief I see is that people convince themselves that once they pay off their debt, and they’re debt-free, THEN (and only then) will they have the feeling of stability.
So unconsciously you postpone feeling the feeling of stability until the debt is paid off. You do this because you’ve attached this feeling of stability to the outcome of being debt-free.
My question to you is, Why do you attach your sense of stability to your current circumstance of being in debt? What if it’s something more?
So let's say you've attached this feeling of stability to being debt-free. But here’s the thing - not everyone who pays off all of their debt automatically feels stability.
There are some people who truly want to be debt-free, and once it happens for them, they really DO start to feel more stable.
But for others, paying off all of their debt doesn’t result in a feeling of stability. They might continue to live in a scarcity mentality. Although their credit cards and loans are paid off, they still might feel like it's not quite enough, and they're always worried they’re going to go back into debt.
So as we can see from this example, achieving the desired circumstance does NOT guarantee you will experience your desired feeling.
Remember that once you hit that certain circumstance, there's always going to be something else that you want. You’re going to desire to feel another way.
And if you don’t change the way you go after that feeling, you’re going to be caught up in an endless loop of trying to change your circumstances!
3. Realize you don’t have to wait to be happy
You DON’T need to wait to feel the feeling. You can begin feeling it today - even if you haven’t achieved certain circumstances.
When we think about our Vision, it’s the full picture of what we want our life to look like at a specific point in the future.
There are so many different aspects of your Vision, and over time, you’re going to work to make all of those pieces of your Vision a reality.
But some of those things are going to happen within a week of writing your vision, others will happen months down the line, and some things may take four years to come to fruition.
Different parts of our vision are going to happen at different times along the journey. But there are a lot of things in our vision that we can start living right away, even if they feel kind of far out.
We DON’T need to wait for our Vision to be 100% achieved before we start expressing and living certain feelings and values.
I’ll use myself as an example. One of my values, and a big part of my Vision, is wanting to be really generous, just like my parents. I'm always in awe of their generosity. My definition of financial success is to be as generous as they've always been.
When thinking about this concept, I asked myself, as I explained in step #1, Why do I want to have that financial success?
The answer is because I want to feel more generous. So because I've attached the feeling of generosity to being at a certain level financially, then I might subconsciously postpone that feeling of generosity until I hit a certain level of financial wealth.
But I realized...I don't have to wait! While I might not be able to do the full expression of the generosity that I want to provide (like sending my parents on a luxury vacation!) I can still begin feeling and expressing generosity on a smaller scale.
4. You can feel that feeling now
What are some ways you can begin to express the feeling you desire, even if small?
In Judaism, we have something called Sadaqah Box, which is Hebrew for charity. It’s a little box and you can put change in it - even if it’s just 10 cents or 20 cents a day. Even though that might seem like the smallest thing, it’s a way for me to tangibly feel like I'm being generous and I'm giving part of what I have a way to someone else who needs it more.
It’s relieving to understand that you can STILL feel the feeling in smaller increments on the way to the greater realization of your Vision. Because again, it reminds us that we don't have to wait for this big thing to happen to FINALLY feel the way we want to feel. We actually can start feeling that way right now.
I think it also reminds you that even though you maybe want that promotion, you want to feel generous, you want to move into that new house, or you want XYZ, all those things are great, but they're not necessarily going to end up making you feel how you want to feel.
It allows us to decouple the circumstance and the feeling so that we don’t have to wait for the circumstance to come to its full fruition to start feeling the way we want to feel.
There was a Visionary who I was working with who was yearning for a partner in her life. She wanted to feel like her partnership was full of romance. In her past relationships, that element had consistently been missing.
When I spoke with her, I told her that she didn’t have to wait for a partner to start feeling that sense of romance. Together, she and I strategized to figure out how she could start to feel romantic in her everyday life.
She started to wear beautiful, flowery flowy dresses in her closet and use perfume. This caused her to start to feel more romantic, even though she wasn't dating anyone! She soon realized that she didn't have to postpone feeling that romance in her life just because she didn’t have a partner.
It was a beautiful way for her to reclaim her definition of success, reclaim that idea of wanting something in her life, and realizing she could start to integrate it straight away. She didn't have to wait for a circumstance that involved another person, she was able to start living that within herself in small ways.
5. Start to cultivate confidence
Finally, after going through these 4 steps, you start to cultivate that feeling of confidence. It's a snowball effect that takes place in a positive way. You start feeling a little bit more confident, you hold yourself a little bit differently, and people are engaging with you in a different way because you're projecting confidence.
You’re not associating your circumstances with feeling a certain way because you know you know that you can do that within yourself. Being debt-free, taking your parents on a luxury vacation, or having a romantic partner are just bonuses.
If you need more support to stop chasing circumstances based on how you feel, and instead start experiencing those feelings now, join a Visioning course and let’s dive in.