You Can Still Change Your Mind. Thanks, Tom

Tom Petty may have been the first to tell me this. He also told me I didn’t have “to live like a refuge” or “back down”.

Back then, I don’t think I thought it was optional. Changing my mind was, for too many reasons, impossible

Okay, I take that back. It could be messy and complicated and made everyone mad. I was a pleaser so it FELT impossible and still does sometimes. For other reasons, when I was in a state of mind, I thought I had to wait for things to change around me. I guess I never felt like I was enough in charge to change my mind.

How is changing my mind on a matter, different from changing my state of mind? They both are about preference and thought. They both invite a settling feeling. They both require a decision. Maybe they aren’t so different at all. When I know its in my power and also my right, I feel safer, stronger and calmer. When I thought I couldn’t or shouldn’t, I felt a lot of anxiety and powerlessness.

When I was a young mom, I made up rules. This was a power move. I would look at my kids falling apart, getting upset with each other, or about to get hurt doing something and say ‘it looks like we need to make some rules about this”. Consequently, I would walk in on them whisper arguing, someone saying “Stop! moms going to make a rule about this!”

Knowing I have the power, the ability and the permission to just change my mind, is one of my most liberating life lessons. Young moms today give their little ones lots of choices. Choosing is powerful. I love this. The only way to get good at something is to do it a lot. The more I practice changing my mind and mindset, the better I get at it. The more in charge of my mind that I feel I am, truly the more power I feel in my life.