La Buddhiste Francaise

Self-help books always tell you that you need the right toolkit in life if you want to feel more fulfilled, confident and successful. They tell you how getting a new planner or enrolling in an educational course can help move the needle in your life. They tell you that you have to invest in your career, well-being, and goals to feel successful.

A quick Google search on the topic will take you to a multitude of websites all promising to help you get to success. You first try their free booklet that you can only get by giving up your privacy and email addresses. They then bombard you with emails about their ‘life changing’ program/course that’s at its lowest price ever until they catch you on one of those really bad days when you are feeling down and out in your life and you fork out the dough to do it. And then never finish it.

I’ve done this so. many. times. I’ve tried to change my life by selling non-toxic household cleaning products as well as pink cosmetics, going to retreats and conferences for both that promised to help me accomplish all I wanted out of life. I’ve tried to succeed in life by buying books which in turn led me to driving to other states for conferences with said book authors, promising me the life of my dreams. I’ve been sold so many types of planners that I’ve lost count (truth be told, I did keep two of them that I still use on a daily basis). I have folder upon folder in my Dropbox of ‘free’ courses, planning tools, life-changing hacks. I had tools aplenty to help me succeed and feel fulfilled in life.

And not a single one worked for me.

It wasn’t until recently that I realized why all those tools never ‘stuck’ nor helped me on my path to success. Sure they’d work for a little, but then they would fade off in the distance as my feelings of ill-ease, discomfort, and dare I say it, feelings of failure in life rear its ugly head. It’s because I wasn’t using my most important tool available to me. The tool that when used properly truly will catapult me to having a life more fulfilling. When I started working with that tool, that’s when things started to change for me.

That tool, the single most important tool in my arsenal for feeling fulfilled and confident is actually me. My mindset. All the other tools masqueraded themselves as tools to help me get in the right frame of mind to succeed, however all they really did was play to my emotions. They would emotionally charge me, get me all excited, dreaming about my most amazing life, and it would work for a bit. But it’s kinda like planting a garden in soil that you’ve not prepared properly. Sure, you’ll get a couple vegetables out of it. But it won’t be sustainable. It won’t last. And it sure won’t give you the quality you desire.

But, till that soil a little. Work some manure into it. Get your hands dirty. Get snail gunk under your nails. Is that pleasant and enjoyable? Oh hell no. But that stupid saying is true- anything worth having is worth working for. You put in the work, you reap the rewards.

And working on yourself, working on improving your mindset is exactly like gardening. No one is going to see what’s below the ground. Nor realize how long a process it can be to ‘reap what you sow’. Some parts of improving your mind will have a longer germination period than others. And that’s ok. But putting in the work pays off.

For me, I worked in my ‘garden’ and I planted a bunch of ‘mystery’ seeds. I really had no idea what I wanted, how I wanted to get there, or even what I needed to get there. I just knew I wanted a change. Life was going by too fast. I wasn’t happy. I sure as hell wasn’t fulfilled. I just felt lost. Missing. Without purpose.

Sure I could’ve picked up one of my million self-help books (I exaggerate the number but not by much). But that would leave me right back where I had always been. Emotionally excited, then overwhelmed, then crashing down into failure again. But I decided not to. I decided not to ‘make over my life’ yet again. I instead decided to focus on me, my mind. Who the heck am I? What are my thoughts on life? What makes me tick? What really truly inspires me? At my core, at my essence, who am I?

I didn’t use any self-help books or worksheets or podcasts or guides. I simply used a notebook. A simple notebook (ok, not so simple, it’s a Moleskin because I am boujie as hell and whole-heartedly admit it and am not changing that about me). And I just started writing.

I started writing about absolutely nothing at first. In one of my first journal entries I actually said that I’m just going to keep writing whatever is in my head until I get all the crap out and I start writing something profound again. And all those first journal entries were exactly that- crap.

But I needed to get that crap out. I needed to clean out my garden space so that I could get some solid, fertile soil in there to grow something profound. So, I wrote and wrote and wrote. Some days it was a couple pages. Other days all I could get out was a copy of a quote I saw on Instagram. But it didn’t matter. I just kept writing.

What I discovered was that by letting go of my mind, letting it go wherever it wanted, whenever it wanted, without requirements, without judgement, was that it started to heal itself. I started to get clarity in my mind again. Just for the briefest of moments at first, but I started to see clearly again. Each day more and more.

And with that clarity, I discovered more about who I truly wanted to be. What truly made me happy. What fulfilled me. Turns out it wasn’t completing a course on how to succeed. It wasn’t another self-help book giving me the ten steps I needed in order to feel fulfilled in life. It wasn’t another emotionally charged letdown.

It was just me. Returning back to who I am at my core before life started throwing things at me, telling me how I needed to look, how I should feel, what I should look like. I don’t need any of those tools. I just need one… me. And I’ll happily get my hands dirty to work on her.