Do you ever look at social media and think to yourself, “Well, damn, they have it all together; it must be nice”. Well, that was my life twelve years ago. I apparently thought I “had it all together”. Well, that’s the lie! The truth was I was lost and reliving my childhood without even realizing it. My best friend had told me about The TLC Course two years prior, but “I wasn’t ready”. Of course, life was lifing, and I had the thought, “If not now, when?” followed by the thought, “At what point are you going to start investing in yourself?” So I decided to take this personal development course formally called The Living Course (TLC), now The REAL Foundation Course, and it changed everything. I got to dive deeper into all the limiting beliefs I had been carrying around since I was a child. I had gone to therapy in my early twenties and was in therapy again at the time, and this course was just different!
Oftentimes, as children, we don’t get the opportunity to feel our feelings at 100% because we are “too sensitive”, “too much,” or we hear “stop crying before I give you something to cry about.” I learned, early on in my life, to be a caretaker and a peacemaker, and it just wasn’t working for me. It was impacting my romantic relationships, work/life balance, and overall mental health and well-being. In peeling back the layers, I was able to acknowledge that I was manipulative when I didn’t know how to get my needs met; I used my weight as a way to be seen and unseen all at once, and I was able to come to grips with the fact that I was engaging in disordered eating and that I co-created all the dysfunction in my relationships.
I wasn’t a victim; I was the one keeping the cycle going. This course taught me how to do it differently. The other truth is that it still doesn’t always look perfect. I am human. Learning my circle of belief was pivotal for me. It’s how I began to realize that this belief that what I wanted didn’t matter ended up creating situations where I felt alone and wasn’t going to have my needs met. Learning that I was creating it is how I was able to change it. Even instructing this course gives me gems because I learned how to hear feedback as just that instead of criticism, as well as to remain open to growth, because let’s face it! No One Is Perfect.
