by Tamara Kulish from https://tamarakulish.com/

Where do you start when you don’t know where to start?

by Power of Positivity

Uncommon advice:
If you don’t know what to pursue in life right now.
Pursue yourself.
Pursue becoming the healthiest, happiest, most healed, most present, most confident version of yourself. Then the right path will reveal itself.
by Power of Positivity

I know it may sound illogical that the path will present itself after we do our inner work, but when we consider that when we are unhealed, raw, and feeling very negative, our minds filter out all the things we cannot deal with at the moment because they just feel too overwhelming.

After we do our inner work to heal and to grow, we slowly become able to see options that may have been there all along.

How many negative people have you seen in your own life who will flame down practically any new idea, even proclaim it as “Stupid” or “Impossible”? That is because FOR THEM it seems that way! If you should actually accomplish what they have emphatically said could never happen, they will dismiss it and say you got lucky! If pressed about why they couldn’t also do it, they invariably will say, “Oh, that won’t work for me!”

Even if outwardly we aren’t acting like the negative person above, our internal dialogue may have become so practiced at swatting away ideas that seem too “farfetched” or “impossible” we don’t even realize we have that internal filter.

Even when therapists might suggest something, people can get frustrated with the person trying to help them, for they honestly don’t see how the suggestion could possibly apply to them or work for them.

I certainly was that way when I was still raw and unhealed. I didn’t like feeling stuck where I was and every suggestion I was given seemed too impossible for me to even think about doing!

One day I was astonished to realize that I didn’t like myself to the point that I spoke unkindly and brutally to myself, so every suggestion went through my internal filter something like this: “I’m just not able to do that, I’m so dumb that trust me to find a way to mess it up!” or “As if! That only works for other people. I’m cursed, so something will happen to mess it up for me, so why bother?”

Guess what happened? If I did start, I’d self-sabotage somehow because I believed failure was my only option, so why wait for it to happen, just mess something up to get it over with, then I could say that I had tried!

My own harsh negative self-talk set me up for continuous failure.

When I set out to change the way I spoke to myself and to practice suspending judgement and to start to speak gently to myself, I was astonished to see how that was changing so many things in my life. I was no longer self-sabotaging. Instead I developed the courage to see things through to completion, and I surprised myself even more to see that I could accomplish what I thought was out of my reach.

Working on myself this way became a powerful part of my healing and growth. It was a log and difficult process, my brain had become very set in its ways of thinking, and it was quite scary to become open to learning new ways.

When we survive traumas, our brains often go into survival mode, and don’t always readily come out. Sometimes we need to jump-start this process by learning to choose the thoughts we want to have, and then doggedly practicing them, even when it feels stilted and awkward.

We can get so used to all the negative thoughts we say to ourselves, hundreds of times a day, that anything positive just feels abhorrent and even threatening. Yes, threatening, because we have built up thick protective walls around our minds so that we won’t be hurt again, but we then continue with the emotional beat-downs where our bullies or abusers left off.

Learning to do this one thing is the key to unlocking the door in our minds to become ready to heal.

Here’s a few of my archived posts to help you:

Rewiring our Brains!

This journey is a process. It can be very difficult, especially in the beginning when we can feel flooded and overwhelmed.

Keep going! I believe in you!

 ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

Blessings!
Thank you for liking, sharing this post and for following me!
Tamara

I hope you’ll poke around my Archived Posts Main page divided up into 3 sub-pages: Mental Health and Rewiring the Brain || Healing and Developing Ourselves || Positive thoughts and Affirmations to find a wonderful trove of supportive and encouraging posts!
https://tamarakulish.com/

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62 thoughts on “Where do you start when you don’t know where to start?”

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    1. I’m so very happy that this hit you right when you needed it! Remember, you’re an awesome work in progress!! 🫠

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  24. Self sabotage is unfortunately too common with people. We are all very special and very important. No one has the right to tell us that we don’t matter so we need to stop doing it to ourselves too. I’m happy that you have grown and see your importance in this world Tamara. Awesome post.

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    1. Thanks so much Pennize, I love how you put it! Yes we are all worthy; worthy of love, of respect of kindness and happiness. Unfortunately we internalize how we’re treated, so unlearning all that is crucial to developing happiness and satisfaction in life. You seem to have done it, kudos!

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  25. Yes, I so strongly agree with you!! Sometimes we need time to heal and our purpose is to heal rather than pursue goals. And it’s okay to take time to heal ourselves before we move forward. When the time is right, we’ll find the next journey we need to take.

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    1. Oh, you worded it so well Pooja! I agree 💯! Yes, sometimes this is exactly what we need, just to stop trying to push forward and instead step back into some deeper healing. Our soul will recognize our new path!

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  26. You are so right, Tamara! I am a strong believer of our path revealing itself to us when we are ready. Then we’ll see the signs which were always there, indeed. Just takes patience and persistence and lots of self-compassion. And trusting that if it’s not your door, it won’t open, but if it is then you’ll see it. Thank you!

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    1. Thanks so much for dropping in and sharing Christiane! Yes, teaching ourselves to like ourselves and to speak gently to ourselves leads to other wonderful things happening, and if we keep following that new joy, we discover deep treasures inside of us that were waiting to be watered and nurtured! I’m happy to see we’re in simpatico!

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  27. That negative self-talk is such a butt. It’s so weird to me how my personality/attitude can change so greatly when I’m still the same person. I’m annoyed at how often I need to quell the inner voice that wants me to just give up, maybe take a nap too. Eat some chocolate while I’m at it. 😉

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    1. Lol, eating chocolate is always a good thing! When those negative thoughts come in, do you step back and check to see where they’re coming from? If it is your old fears squeezing in, thank them for trying to protect you, and reassure them that you’re capable now, you’ve learned new skills and you’ll be okay, that you’ve got this!

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        1. I know it sounds like a weird thing to do, but I hope you’ll give it a try. When I heard about it from a Louise Hay video, I thought it was hokey, but I gave it a try and was very surprised at how it helped me!

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            1. Lol, that’s awesome! I guess I misread what you said. I’m happy to be wrong because it means you are doing what is needed!

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  28. One of the most powerful things I had found going through that self sabotage was the fact that…if I was being told or being shown something…I would say negative things…because I was afraid of what they were explaining to me, I couldn’t do. So I did not want to be embarrassed by what I felt was my failure. I had grown up with that hammered into me that…I wasn’t good enough, I could not do this or that, I was useless…and each time that circumstance came up where I was tested in that belief, I would say negative things so that I would not be confronted with my belief of myself, and embarrassed by it.

    We all do it in so many ways, confrontation of our belief of ourselves is a very powerful thing. And our reaction to it is in line with those beliefs.

    A great post Tamara, and well said. It does ask us to find that way home to that love we are…through that pain and fear of our beliefs. And there is a first step to go beyond them 😀❤️🙏

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    1. I’m totally relating to what you’re saying here. I did the same things too. It’s a survival mechanism we develop from abusive and or highly critical childhoods. We don’t just grown out of it when we become adults, we just bring those traits with us, then we wonder why we’re struggling so much!

      Self loathing is something we internalized from the abuse, our child’s mind says we MUST have deserved it, or those who were supposed to care for us wouldn’t have treated us so badly. Just learning to LIKE ourselves is a huge task, but we both know it is doable, it just takes time and effort to change how we think about ourselves. Learning to love ourselves is so much easier when we teach ourselves to like ourselves!

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    1. Isn’t it wonderful to get out of survival mode? I had no idea how exhausting it really was until I started to move out of it. Healing is hard, but the rewards are really incredible! 🙂

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    1. Yes, doing the groundwork! I struggled with finding that thread and following it when I did. That’s when I discovered that it is the key to everything else.

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  31. There is a vulnerability in going for it, and being kind to oneself. I’m glad you were able to escape the old patterns of negative self talk. It’s so true how at first it feels wrong and uncomfortable, but slowly being kind to yourself becomes the new norm.

    And I agree, when you change that inner self talk – it opens up new doors that before seemed impossible.

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    1. I was quite startled to discover how changing my inner dialogue changed so much in my life. I thought it was all very New-Age when I first heard it, but decided to give it a try anyway, figured “What have I got to lose?” and what I gained blew my mind so completely that I keep repeating this to help others!

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    1. British, it’s my pleasure to keep sharing these steps. It was such an eye opener for me and felt like I had stumbled into something quite obscure and not easily found, so I keep breaking it down for others, so they won’t have to struggle to figure it out like I had to!

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      1. Yes, getting out of our own way is essential, Tamara. With a little luck, more possibilities will open. Of course, not everyone will like the “new version,” and some might try to push you back into the earlier one. But that, too, can be mastered. Thank you.

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        1. Very true Dr. Stein!

          I’ve observed that usually the people who try to push us back into who they prefer us to be have benefitted from our unhealthy version. Funny thing is, when we start to like ourselves, we no longer wish to suffer under the people that destroyed us in the first place. I guess getting comfortable with who we are gives us the strength to not go backwards.

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