Dawn Damon 0:07

Hey, beautiful women. This is Dawn Damon, the brave heart mentor and you're listening to the brave hearted woman. This is a podcast designed to help you find your brave so you can live out your beautiful vision. I have been working with women for years. And now I want to help you too. I'm here to awaken the brave heart inside of you. So you can ignite the flame of your vision, you can reach your goals and achieve your dreams. Come on this good brain.

Hey, all you Braveheart women, how you doing today, I hope that you're living a full and fierce and free life, I hope you're finding you're brave. You're making good decisions, you know, good decisions today. make good decisions tomorrow, and you have a week of good decisions that makes a month of good decisions that leads to a great life. Your life is the sum total of the decisions that you've made. And that's what I want to talk to you today about taking 100% responsibility for your life. There's so many ways we could point the finger and blame other people. I will also tell you that Yeah, life happens to us. And we don't get to choose every circumstance that comes our way. We can't control the experiences. But we do get to control the explanations, the interpretations, we get to choose that. And I hope that you're making good choices, I hope that your decisions are empowering you. And when you blame other people, it's very disempowering, you know, because then what it means is you don't have any control. When you blame other people or you look at circumstances, you look at the weather, you look at your bank account, you look at the boss, look at your spouse, or even your kids or your school teacher, or whatever it is, when somebody else is at fault, then what happens is that you are disempowered, you are a victim and you can't make any decisions to free yourself, it'd be like being a passenger in a car. And somebody's got the doors locked or chained you up to the seat and you can't decide where you want to go. You are at the mercy of whoever's in control, you're at the mercy of someone who's at the driver's seat. So it's a very disempowering experience. And therefore life, when someone else's got the blame someone else's response able responsible for you.

Today is your day to take 100% responsibility for your life. That means you get to choose how you're going to think you get to choose how you want to explain your past, it's your story, you get to choose how you're going to interpret the behaviors of those people around you. You get to decide what you're going to do with your time, your money, your schedule, what you're going to do with your relationships. And so I really hope that you're making powerful choices for yourself good decisions. And someone once said, you know, if you don't like your life, then learn how to change your mind, change your thinking. And when you change your thinking, you're going to change the decisions that you're making. Someone also said this, when you're born, you look like your parents. But when you die, you look like your decisions. So that's true, right? When you're born, you're going to just look like your mom and dad, when you're young, you're going to look like whatever they gave you the life they gave you the genetics they gave you, you're going to look very much like whatever they believed whatever opinions they had, whatever thoughts they had, until you get to an age where you start saying, hmm, I'm not sure if that makes sense for me. I'm not sure if I really believe that I'm not sure if that's exactly how I feel. So when you die, you're going to look like your decisions. You're going to look like you what you chose. What you felt what you believe what you ultimately decided and listen, if you don't make a choice, guess what, you know, that's making a choice, right? If you don't do anything, if you just live out the life that's been given you and you don't ever challenge anything, but you just accept everything that's been handed to you. You're still making a choice. I don't know if you know that but making no choice is still making a choice. I decided

To live and accept everything that was handed to me, I decided just to be a receiver and never an initiator. I didn't challenge anything, I didn't go on a discovery journey to find out who I really am. And if that's what I really believe in, even if that's really what I like, and what I enjoy. And so I want to talk to you about that today, changing your mind, choosing your mindset,

making decisions about your life, you know, there's a story told about the two brothers both raised by an alcoholic father, and several years into their adulthood, somebody asked them, one was an alcoholic, he became an alcoholic. And the other one became a very successful businessman was very wealthy. And when someone asked the alcoholic, he said, Why did you become an alcoholic? And he said, because my dad was an alcoholic. That's why it's because my dad, and when the second brother was asked, why did you become a successful businessmen? businessman? why did why are you so wealthy? And he said, because my dad was an alcoholic? That's why, because of my dad, so both of them had the same father, but they made different choices as a result of it. You don't just have to accept what's handed to you. You can stand up and say, No, you know what? I'm not going to live that way. Listen, I'll be honest with you, when I was being raised. In such a different day and age today, we know so much more. When I was being raised by my parents, I didn't know about blood, say, working out. I didn't know I didn't see that modeled. And my mom and dad, my dad actually did have a drinking problem. My mom was active, she played tennis. And I believe some golf she does, definitely does that now. But um, I didn't know as a young girl that I should go to the gym and work out, I didn't know that I should lift weights and exercise. I didn't see that model. I didn't see a daily exercise. It was late into my 30s. When my children, my two daughters began to work out at the gym where they said, Come on, mom join us. And so I started working out that's the first time I learned about taking care of my body and working out. I didn't just accept what was handed to me at some point in my life, I decided, guess what? My genetics, my body, it could look like this. But I have a decision if I want it to stay looking like this. Or if I'm going to stand up and say, You know what, I actually have the power of making choices. What about my faith, I was raised in a certain faith, I could have just accepted what was handed to me, I could just go on living life and believing what was given to me. But there did come a point in time where I said, You know what, I'm not sure I've been given the entire picture. I believe that there's more to this. And my faith actually increased, it expanded. I went beyond kind of the narrow thoughts of a very traditional way that I was brought up in very conservative way into what I would call the full gospel, the full experience of the Bible, I started seeing things in a whole different way, I made a decision. So I was born into a certain faith. And when I leave this world, I'll be leaving a different person because of the decisions that I've made. I get to decide, you might know also that I am a survivor of childhood abuse. And I could have decided to stay a victim. All of the evidence was there, all of the proof was there, low self esteem, and taken, taken captive to it being overpowered, and losing my voice and the whole experience of trauma in my brain and post traumatic stress. I could have stayed right there. I could have said this is all that there is for me in life. I don't deserve anything better. I didn't date very well. Certainly I felt like I was damaged goods, I could have believed that I could have stayed stuck in that. But by the grace of God and some sheer grit and probably the personality. Maybe that is something that I got from my mom and dad for sure my mom to say, No, I'm not living as a victim. I want to be optimistic. I want to be positive. I want to be faith centric. I want to be an overcomer I want to take control of my life and my future and my pathway. I'm not going to just sit back and let this thing Rob for me. Let this experience steal my joy and enthusiasm and belief in truth and goodness. I'm not going to let that happen. And so I made a decision. And the more I learn about the power of the decisions that I get to make, the more I want to make healthy decisions, because I'm also responsible for this, I'm responsible for the amount of money I have in my savings account. I am responsible for the amount of clothing that I have in my

closet and the shoes that I have that at some times, okay, I'm going to be honest with you, I sometimes tend to be a little bit of a hoarder, when it comes to my shoes, and my purses and my love assessories. And for some reason, I have a hard time parting with them. Although I did read a book, I cannot remember the author, but it was called the tidy the art of tidying up, something like that. And she talked about saying goodbye to your things, just embracing it saying, thank you so much beautiful sweater, you brought me such great joy. I now release you into the next life. And I'm not trying to be silly, but it just it made me say Okay, you know what? That's good. Thank you for the season that you served in my life, the new pair of shoes. You journeyed with me? You we walked a path together. Thank you, and bye, bye. And release them. I'm gonna start doing that even as I speak. But I am responsible. I am responsible. And I've given up blaming which you have to spell blame, by the way, be lame. Yes. Be lame. That is how you spell blame. I gave it up. It's no one's fault. Yes, people can act a certain way. Yes, circumstances happen. The weather does the rain comes, the bottom falls out, the job ends, the people leave, I get it. But that's what happened. That's not going to dictate my optimism. It's not going to dictate my future. It's not going to change my attitude. I get to control that. And I'm going to make a decision that says, this is going to be for my good, not for my harm. I'm going to come out a winner. I'm going to grow from this. I'm going to learn I'm going to be stretched. So I get to make that decision. How about you how you doing in your decision making? Are you blaming, are you pointing the finger, because you're going to lose autonomy when you do that. And literally, if you are relying on other people to bring you happiness, if you're relying on other people to fulfill you and bring you joy, then you're on shaky ground because at any time that person decides that they're done, trying to fill your bucket, they're done trying to make you happier, they're done trying to take care of you. Like, like people do like a 28 year marriage that I was in my husband decided he was done and walked away. If all of my joy was based on how he treated me, I would have been devastated. And indeed I was devastated for a season. But you know what, what I decided to explain about that experience was he was at a place where he no longer had anything to give. I think he was imploding. I Yes. Have my contribution. I certainly had my areas of things that I added to the breakdown of the marriage, I'm sure. But at the end of the day, it takes one to tango, he decided to leave. That's all I could do better. I couldn't save it. So I had decisions once again on my doorstep. Once again, are you going to live bitter? Are you going to live angry? Are you going to make a choice to carry unforgiveness, I get to make a choice to blame him for your condition for your lack of financial wherewithal, or you're going to say, okay, that happened. I'm going to have to work through some healing and some feelings on that. But my choice is to come out a winner. My choice is to be victorious. My choice in my decision is to maintain a positive outlook. Because pessimism is a self fulfilling prophecy. I am not going to be an naysayer, a doomsday predictor. I want to be happy. And the skill of becoming happy. Turns out almost entirely different from the skill of not being sad or not being anxious or not being angry. It wasn't just enough to rid myself of being sad or being anxious or not being angry. I had to add, I had to look at I had to change my brain to say I'm going to become grateful

and do Know what gratitude absolutely does change your biology, gratitude lowers your blood pressure, gratitude actually supports and sustains and builds your immune system. And so when we have a healthy immune system, we overcome sickness, we feel better, we have more energy. And so just making a choice not to be bitter in life changed everything. How about you? How's your immune system? How's your health? How's your stress level? What's your brain doing right now? Are you? Are you fixated on the negative things that have happened to you? Have you fixated on some pessimistic things, some failures, perhaps some reversals and some betrayals, you know, that happens to all of us, doesn't it? That's part of life. It truly is. But your success requires persistence, and the ability not to give up in the face of defeat, and the face of failure. And we can be optimistic, we can choose an interpretation. You know, I know for me, when I was going through the healing of childhood sexual abuse, I could say, what I was believing. And I didn't know I was believing this mind you it was kind of underground in my subconscious. I could say that. It happened because it was my fault. I wore the wrong outfit. I was a stupid kid, I could say it was my fault. Because I should have told somebody, it was my fault. Because I wasn't good enough or smart enough or something enough. I could have lived with that interpretation. But at some point, I reinterpreted my experience with knowledge with wisdom and maturity. And I said, that wasn't my fault. That happened to me because someone was broken, someone had mental illness. That was my, that was not my fault. That was someone's fault. Because someone was inebriated or abused alcohol, someone else is going to take responsibility. And I put the blame squarely where it belonged on the shoulders of the perpetrator. Because it's never the fault of the victim sexual abuse is, is it overpowering? It's a sin. It's a trespass of power control, and of course, abuse. So I started looking at life and saying, alright, I'm ready to release that faults and negative explanation. I'm not going to live the rest of my life that way. In the face of this defeat, I'm going to make new choices and new decisions starting today. So that's what I have for you today. I want to encourage you, what have you lived through? What have you experienced? How have you interpreted your past? Can I suggest that you take all emotion out of it? Yes, the pain, the hurt the betrayal, I'm going to ask you to take all of the emotion out of it. And just look at what happened just squarely based on the facts. This drunk person did this, this person no longer wanted to be in the marriage and left this, whatever is take all of the emotion and interpretations out of it, and say, Okay, this happened, what do I want to do with this. And today, what I want to do is just decide to release it, let it go. Say thank you, God, for keeping me amidst this struggle and this difficulty. And now I'm going to use it as a stepping stone to build a beautiful, glorious, powerful, amazing life. And if you do that, if you make that choice, if you make that decision, to go north to believe for great things, if you make that decision that you're going to take 100% responsibility for your life. You, my friend, are on your way to living a brave, bold, beautiful life. I hope you'll do it. I hope you'll do it. Hey, if this has been valuable to you, take moment to share it with someone like us. Follow us. That helps me so much when you do that. And now for you. I'm saying live your vision. Be brave and make a good decision.

Good day.

Thanks for hanging out with me today and becoming brave. If this has helped you, be sure to share it with someone and subscribe so you never have to miss another episode. For more about me my books, my coaching or online courses, visit Dawn damon.com and as always be brave and live your vision

Transcribed by https://otter.ai