Never Settle

Today’s Topics

• When Your Mind Is Made Up 💡

• The Cards You’re Dealt ♠️

  3 Mins Read Time

When Your Mind Is Made Up 💡

By Jo

When your mind is made up about something, changing it can feel damn near impossible — especially when trauma or deeply rooted beliefs are involved.

Take this for example: every year, I tell myself it always rains on my birthday. Something dull or disappointing happens without fail. And to top it off, being a big Tupac fan, I’ve always had his line about birthdays being cursed days echoing in my head. Sounds trivial, right? But it’s little stories like this that hold us back more than we care to admit.

We carry these mental scripts for years. They feel harmless until you realize how much they control your outlook, your joy, and your willingness to expect better. Trauma or not, once your mind is locked on a narrative, it’ll keep replaying — unless you intentionally rewrite it.

Here’s the truth: your mind won’t be willing to let go if your heart is unable to. If you can’t open your heart to something better, the brain won’t bother to clear the old clutter. It protects the pattern you’ve convinced yourself to accept.

So what’s the fix?

Start small: question the story. Challenge whether it really has to be this way. Give yourself permission to want better, even if it feels silly at first. Over time, you might just discover that your birthday — or whatever it is you’ve been dreading — can be a blessing instead of a burden.

It’s not easy, but neither is living stuck in old tales that steal your peace, IJS 🤷.

The Cards You’re Dealt ♠️

By Marcus

Life deals us a set of cards. Most of us hold a mix of:

• Some good cards
• Some so-so cards
• Some bad cards

Depending on the random roll of the life lottery, we’re paired with circumstances that are often completely out of our control. These circumstances carry real weight, and over time, we learn to take the good with the bad.

But let’s not fool ourselves into thinking everyone starts the game with the same advantages. We all have our gifts, but it’s a combination of environment, family, education, exposure, and individual potential that shapes how far we go.

You’ve heard the saying: “When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.”

Well, sometimes the lemon is a bitter pill you take quickly just to get it out of the way.

The real question becomes: How do you discard what holds you back so you can focus on what pushes you forward?

A Rough Start

For too many of us, our most formative years are lost to poor choices, ignorance, or plain bad luck. And as time goes on, it’s easy to forget or never even know what winning feels like.

We naturally compare ourselves to others, but the problem is that some of the people we compare ourselves to are playing with a very different set of tools. Their success may come from unacknowledged privileges and generational planning, while yours is entirely self-directed. You’re the first in your line to try this path, which means you’re paving the road rather than walking a curated one.

That’s all good as long as you keep one thing in mind: You’re not them, and they’re not you.

That’s not a bad thing. An advantage is an advantage, but fixating on someone else’s hand can keep you from maximizing your own.

If you choose to, you can start discarding the cards that no longer serve you and deal yourself a new hand. One built to benefit you.

A Strong Finish

Wouldn’t it be nice if we could shake off everything negative we inherited that’s not our fault? If life came with an easy mode?

But we know better.

What we can do is let go of the thoughts, habits, and behaviors that keep us stuck.

Start with small questions.

• “I wish I knew more about ___.”
• “This issue has lingered in my life for years. What’s one thing I can do to fix it?”

Your next years can be your best years, but only if you make space by throwing out what no longer belongs.

“It’s not over until I win.”

-Les Brown

Summer.…. Summer.… Summer… Time…