For years I have like I didn’t fit in, like there was something that set me apart.

I was a single mom in my mid-twenties, so all the other parents seemed to be so much more settled and put together in their lives.

I went back to college and didn’t graduate college until I was 30 and I was older than most of my classmates. But really, whatever situation I found myself in, I always seemed to come to the same conclusion, even on the subtlest level, that I didn’t fit in.

I can trace the belief back to elementary school. My parents were working hippies living a very alternative lifestyle which was so not the norm in small town Texas. I believed I stuck out like a sore thumb, so it makes sense I believed I didn’t belong. I spent years of my life trying to fit in, but it never really worked because I wasn’t working on the right things.

Just knowing why you feel how you feel isn’t enough to make that feeling go away. Because the conscious mind is just rationalizing and acting on what it’s told, the subconscious is actually holding on to the beliefs that guide your actions. So no matter how much sense I made of feeling like an outsider and trying to change my situation, my actions only seemed to strengthen the power that belief had over me.

And here is the thing, whatever you believe, your mind will find the evidence to support that belief. Even if there are loads of evidence to support that you are loved and accepted, as long as you have an underlying belief that you don’t belong, you will only see the proof to support that. Because that’s what the mind does, and it’s really good at it.

So recently, as luck would have it, my version of this underlying belief was triggered. I had been invited to step into a higher-level role in a healing organization I am a member of and the opportunity to join in this giant leap forward triggered this old deep-seated belief that I didn’t belong in that role, with those people, doing those things.

Belonging is an inside job. When I remember that I belong to myself, I reclaim my wholeness and I am centered in the present. And from here, I cannot help but to feel like I belong, because I do. Because I belong to me, I belong where ever I am.

When you feel like an outsider, you become an outsider and your defenses inadvertently make you a bit prickly, because those defenses are a subtly attacking...and we can feel the attack so we are naturally repelled.