Episode 143: Ask Sharon: Is Life Happening To You… or Through You?

Today on The Loving Truth, I'm giving you a behind the scenes look at my signature program, the decision, which is the only place where I offer direct coaching. You'll hear real questions from members navigating the uncertainty of their relationship. Along with my coaching and insights to help them move toward clarity.

If you've ever felt stuck, unsure whether to stay or go, these conversations may give you the answers you've been searching for. Let's dive in. The topic we are going to be talking about is how life is happening through you, not to you. Someone posed this question to me this week and they said they wanted to know more about it.

And I appreciated that question because I thought, uh, I can't really do this justice in a few sentences in the Facebook group, so I'm gonna use the Facebook Live this month to have some space to really talk about that. Alright, so let's start with some basics about this. I'm gonna compare and contrast two different perspectives on the world.

So there is, let's just call it the victim mentality. The victim mentality would say, I just have such bad luck. The universe hates me, or nothing ever goes well for me. And if you know someone who carries a lot of negativity or criticism or judgments or just general sort of hatefulness, either towards themselves or just their experience, what you probably know about them is that life is pretty hard.

For them, and they think that they're negative because their life is hard. And the difference is, the flip in thinking is no, life is hard because you're negative, because life is happening to you, not just coming at you. Okay? So, uh, I love the, the quote. There is no happy ending to an unhappy journey. So it's never like unhappy, everything sucks, unhappy, horrible, hateful, oh, happy ending.

Unicorns and rainbows. It doesn't really work out that way. So if you're constantly in struggle and complaining and criticizing and negative, all you're gonna do is attract more of those experiences to yourself. So bad luck sort of begets more and more things that you would call bad luck. And then we use those experiences as evidence that helps cement the belief that, see, I'm just unlucky.

So that's kind of how it works. But feeling disempowered in your life is a result of you believing that life is happening outside of you and that you have no control over it. And that's always gonna feel like crap. Now, let's use an example that's really specific to this particular group. Let's say your spouse says, my wife is leaving me, woe is me, and there's a period at the end of that sentence, that victim mentality will feel very disempowering because that person who says that is going to believe that they have no control over it, that they had no part in it, and that this is just happening to them.

So there's nowhere to go with that. There's, there's nothing to work with and, uh, no one wants to be the victim in their own lives, but sometimes we will choose thoughts that put us in the role of the victim in our own lives. So now compare and contrast that with a more empowered mentality, where you realize that you have a hand in creating your reality.

Because by now you know that your thoughts affect how you feel. How you feel affects the choices and decisions that you make, and then the choices and decisions that you make impact your results, and no one can think or feel for you. That's a hundred percent within something that you can control. So it's good news and bad news because good news, because you have control over it.

Bad news because that means you have some responsibility in it. You see, sometimes the victim mentality feels a little bit indulgent because I can blame. I can blame other people. I can blame experiences and I don't have to look within myself at all. Because also, when you're, when you feel like you create your reality and you have a hand in that and you have a responsibility in that, then that means you gotta be willing to look at your stuff.

You gotta be willing to look at, okay, what was my role in the creation of the experience that I have? So now let's take the same example that we used in the other example. One person says, my wife is leaving me. Period. End of discussion. The other person says, my wife has decided to end the marriage.

Because over the course of our years together, we both did a lot of things that hurt one another deeply. Right now we have something to work with because that person realizes this isn't happening to them. They had a role in the creation of where the marriage landed and the decisions that were made, so that's a much more empowered mentality.

Now, you probably also know this, but it's a good reminder. We can't always control what's going on outside of us. Even though I absolutely believe that we create our reality, we can't control that. Like if you take a really blatant example of like COVID, like none of us would choose that, but we can control our reaction to the experience.

And if you believe that your behavior matters, if you take COVID as an example, then you're gonna behave very differently than if you feel like, this is horrible. I'm not doing anything. You know, any of that kind of stuff. So our reactions we're in control of, and our reactions will dictate how we feel.

How we feel will dictate our behaviors, right? So once you really get that, now you realize you are way more in control of your experience than maybe you gave yourself credit for. So I'll give you an example in terms of perspective. There's a story about a family of four who were flying. They had a private plane and they were flying into the airport.

You know, I. I don't know who the pilot was, but anyway, the plane crashed and flipped and they all walked away unharmed, which is pretty amazing, right? Well, one person had the perspective of, oh my God, how could we be so unlucky? I never thought we were unlucky. People we're, we're horribly unlucky. That's horrible.

And the other, per another person on the plane said, no, that's, that's an example of how. Much wellbeing surrounds us, like they saw it through the lens of we're the luckiest people on the damn planet who is in a plane crash that flips upside down and they walk away. That's evidence of our power in our lives.

That's evidence of the wellbeing that exists all around us. We're the luckiest people on the planet. So your perspective really matters, right? If you're fearful like the, the one person who was like, we're the un luckiest people ever. You think they're getting on a plane anytime soon, if ever, again, probably not.

But the people who think they're the luckiest people on the planet, they're not changing their choices, actions, and decisions, right? So your perspective matters. There's a quote that I wanted to give to you, and then I wanna explore a couple more concepts related to this. What you think you become, what you feel you attract, what you imagine you create.

So let's break it down real quick. And this could be a whole teaching in and of itself, but what you think is what you'll step into. Like if you think you'll be a millionaire someday, guess what? You'll be a millionaire someday. You just have to really believe it. If you think you'll have the love of your life, in your life, you'll have it.

What you think you become. If you think you're a powerful creator in your own life, you'll become a powerful creator in your own life. Okay? What you feel you attract. So that's all about what we put out, sort of comes back to us, and it comes through, not words, but feelings. And so that's why words don't matter as much, but how you feel is really, really important.

If you feel like you're unlucky, you're gonna attract more and more bad experiences, and then you're gonna use that as evidence to see that the belief that you are unlucky. And then the last piece is what you imagine you create. Your brain is the most powerful thing in your whole body because you can create anything you want in your brain using your imagination.

Children know this. They don't always distinguish between reality and imagination, but that's a powerful place to be. 'cause your brain doesn't know the difference either. The universe doesn't know the difference. It's all about what you are imagining. If you can imagine that you can create a million dollar business, you can create a million dollar business and you will, there's nothing that you can't imagine, that you can't then also create.

You can have an orgasm in your mind with nobody even touching you. That's like what I'm talking about. Like you can have a physical reaction just by what's going on up here. Your mind is incredibly powerful. Your imagination is incredibly powerful. All right. Now, a slight different take on life happens through you, not to you.

So Tony Robbins has said, life doesn't happen to you, it happens for you. Now, that is a slightly different take. And I know it's along the lines of everything happens for a reason. That feels too far away for me. I don't know that that's true, that everything happens for a reason, but I can get behind the thought that life happens for me.

I can get behind that because when you believe that life is just happening to you, then you're really gonna get unsettled and weighed down when bad things happen to you as they happen to everyone. But when you believe that life is happening for you and that everything that's happening, whether it's good or bad, there's something there for you.

There's something there for you to learn from. There's something, a deeper level of self-awareness that's available to you. It's something that will help you step into the person that you came here to become. So the idea that everything ultimately serves me and that there's some. Purpose to it. There's probably something good that I can glean from almost any situation.

I can totally get behind that. Now, if you saw the, um, Jim Carrey did a commencement address several years ago, and it went around on Facebook and everything for a while, but there's a a part in there. It's just a two sentences that he says that I think is really helpful. He said, when I say life doesn't happen to you, it happens for you.

I really don't know if that's true. I'm just making a conscious choice to perceive challenges as something beneficial so that I can deal with them in the most productive way. And I thought that's helpful. I can get behind that. And then I found a quote from Byron Katie. She said, life is simple.

Everything happens for you, not to you. Everything happens at exactly the right moment. Neither too soon, nor too late. I. You don't have to like it, but it's easier if you do leave it to Katie to always speak the truth to us. So that's the take on life is happening for you. It's a slightly different approach.

Now, one more thing, another approach. Some things are just happening and have nothing to do with you. It is not personal. It has nothing to do with you, but they might get interpreted through you. Okay? So if you are not driving, um, I want you to close your eyes and I want you to think about what sounds you hear.

And it can just be like cars outside. It can be dogs barking, it can be birds, whatever. Those things, those sounds you hear, they're still happening. They're just not about you. But you're actually the interpreter of it. Here's what I mean. You know that old, uh, question of if a tree falls in the woods, does it make a sound?

So the answer to that question is no. If nobody's there to hear it, it doesn't make a sound, it makes a vibration. Our ears are the interpreters of that vibration to create sound so that we can hear it. So. Even in that instance life that has nothing to do with us dogs barking, babies crying, like those things have nothing to do with us, still is happening through us, which I think is super fantastic, right?

I love it when science and these principles really come together. So some things are happening around you, within you and through you, and sometimes they're also happening for you. In general, what I wanna leave you with is the idea that when you feel powerless in your own life, there's no freedom there and it will never feel good, even though it comes with responsibility.

When you do feel empowered in your own life, you won't be able to move your life forward in the direction that you wanna take it. If you don't feel like you're in the driver's seat, if you feel like you're being driven around to all these different neighborhoods that you never asked to go. It will never feel good and you'll never get to where you wanna go.

So although it might feel like a bit of a reprieve to be able to blame something outside of yourself, that blame doesn't give you anywhere to go. So taking a more empowered approach to your life will always help you feel more powerful, right? It'll help you feel like you have a role in the creation of your own experience, and it'll help you intentionally.

Create everything that you really desire for yourself.

If you're feeling stuck and unsure whether to stay or go in your marriage, you don't have to figure it out alone. The best next step is to apply for a truth and clarity session. A private conversation with a member of my team to explore what's really going on in your relationship and whether my coaching is the right fit for you.

Visit Clarity for my marriage.com to apply today.