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Having had the incredible privilege of sharing my story in talks in secondary schools recently, I’ve been reflecting a lot on my journey.

I was sharing with students how I went from absolute rock bottom to the freedom and genuine love for life I have now. Which, naturally, brought up the ups and downs again, reminded me of the process, and sent me down memory lane of my recovery path.

Recovery was the ultimate game-changer for me. It was my transformation from self-loathing to self-love, and it’s the reason I’m writing this right now, it’s the reason I do what I do, it’s the reason I am living the life I love living now.

Thinking about it and the sheer liberation, contentment, and joy it has brought me, I want to share with you the three keys that got me from walking out of one of my first therapy sessions, vowing to never go back, to actually completing the process of becoming fully free.

Decision

“It is your decisions, and not your conditions, that determine your destiny.” ~ Tony Robbins

I’m not going to sugarcoat it—you’ve got to want it. You’ve got to choose it. Even if it’s only the smallest part of you that’s vocalising that vision, you need at least that part of you to be fully choosing this.

I’d do anything to help others, but if they don’t want to change, my hands are tied—nothing’s going to change. It was the same in my journey. I had to decide I wanted to get better. And sometimes I had to decide it a number of times in a day. And that’s okay.

If it’s a choice you make and then forget and then make again, that’s fine; just keep making it. I made the decision that hating life was not super sustainable, hating myself even less so and I decided recovery was the way out of that.

And those decisions changed everything.

Commitment

“Motivation is what gets you started. Commitment is what keeps you going.” ~ Jim Rohn

Making the decision is one thing but realising what the journey entails is where you see your commitment. We’re so used to quick fixes and instant gratification now that shortcuts can seem more appealing than sustainability. When I went to recover, I was told the process would be a minimum of two years. Not quite music to my incredibly impatient ears.

But I wanted it, I was there to make it happen. I started to think of who I could help by making it through to the other side, and I kept showing up determined as f*ck to get there.

And I’m so grateful for every step of that journey.

What an incredible opportunity. To commit to myself consistently, to show life I was committed to it, to commit to the future clients I wanted to share my experience with even then.

And the journey doesn’t end at full recovery—I’m committed to continued growth in my life. Expansion is part of life and I love it now. The idea of life’s possibilities and limitless potentialities awaiting my devoted attention is incredibly exciting.

Seeing them come to fruition means saying yes to growth, to delaying gratification, to mistakes, to learning and relearning, to practicing, to not being perfect, to the ebbs, and to the flows.

If I didn’t commit, I wouldn’t have gotten the result. Simple. You can’t half-ass this stuff. You need your whole ass on board. So if you want change, do yourself a favour and commit to it.

As Tony Robbins says, “A real decision is measured by the fact that you’ve taken a new action. If there’s no action, you haven’t truly decided.”

Mindset

I work with people on their mindset for a reason. Mindset is the key to interrupting patterns, creating different feelings, to embodying lasting transformation. If we don’t change how we think, we can have all the strategies in the world and make zero progress.

What we are saying to ourselves on repeat in our minds is shaping our lives and so if we want to create and enjoy a damn good life, our thinking needs to reflect that.

Much of my distress was created in my mind, and so was my freedom.

While I used to curse my mind, the fact is that it was never the problem—it was how I was using it. Our thoughts have the power to create or to destroy. How we use them changes everything—if, of course, we choose and commit to it.

When we’ve decided on a new way of living, we’ve got to elevate our thinking to the level of mindset that we want to enjoy on a consistent basis. That means heightening awareness to the narratives in our mind that are holding us back, it means choosing different thoughts repeatedly until they become our new subconscious storyline, it means telling ourselves what we want and need to hear.

What would be possible if you used these three keys in your life?

What decision would you make?

What would you be committing to?

How would you start using your mind differently?

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The power is in your hands. Your current situation is not your final destination. We get to choose how the story ends, we get to write our way out of our challenges and into our freedom.

I’ll leave you with one of my favourite quotes that kept me motivated throughout my journey to think, feel, and act as my most free self;

“Be the change that you wish to see in the world.” ~ Mahatma Gandhi

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