#savethispost

I'm going to say something that might break your current system:

Everything you're doing to get there is keeping you from arriving.

1. I stopped trying. And that's when it started working.

There's a version of "doing the work" that is secretly just panic in a pretty outfit.

Checking the mirror forty times a day isn't faith — it's auditing. Stacking subliminal on top of subliminal isn't trust — it's desperation with headphones in. Finding the next thing to fix isn't growth — it's your mind convincing you that you're not done yet. That you're not there yet.

And as long as you believe you're not there yet — you won't be.

The shift happened when I told myself one simple thing: there is nothing to fix. Not because I'd arrived. But because arriving was already inevitable. It was already decided. So the checking, the obsessing, the rituals — they became pointless. Not because I gave up. Because I was done. There's a difference.

2. I stopped dressing like someone who was waiting to become her.

I sat with myself and asked a question I hadn't asked before:

What does the version of me who already has this actually do on a Tuesday?

She doesn't count calories — she just eats well because that's who she is. She doesn't wear clothes that hide her — she wears what she loves because she's not waiting for permission from the mirror first.

So I stopped waiting.

I ordered the yogurt bowl. I wore the dress. I showed up as her before I felt like her — because I understood that the feeling follows the identity, not the other way around.

Was it uncomfortable? Genuinely, yes. There were moments I felt like I was wearing a costume. But underneath the discomfort was something quieter and more certain — the feeling of actually moving. Of becoming. Not performing becoming. Actually becoming.

That feeling is unlike anything else.

3. I didn't push harder. I just didn't quit.

Persistence, the way most people practice it, looks like force. More affirmations. Louder. Longer. More convinced.

But real persistence is almost boring. It's just — not letting the doubt win. Not engaging with it. Not arguing with it, not feeding it, not trying to logic your way out of it.

A contradicting thought would come. I'd see it. And I'd let it pass like a car outside a window — present for a second, then gone. I wasn't beautiful because I convinced myself. I was beautiful because I decided I already was, and I simply didn't renegotiate that decision every time my reflection had an opinion.

That's it. That's the whole thing.

You're not behind because you're not trying hard enough.

You're behind because you're trying at all.

Decide. Occupy. Persist without force.

Let me not sugarcoat this.

I was stuck. Not "going through a phase" stuck. Actually, genuinely, embarrassingly stuck. Broke in ways that went beyond money. Lost in ways that went beyond direction. The kind of stuck where you're not even sad anymore — you're just numb. Going through motions. Shrinking every single day and calling it humility.

I was begging. Not out loud. But in every thought, every vision board, every "please universe" whispered into the dark — I was begging. And begging is just fear with good intentions.

Then one night something in me just snapped.

Not a motivational snap. A disgusted one.

I lay down at midnight. No ritual. No crystals. No playlist. Just me, the dark, and a decision I was done un-making.

I said to myself — out loud, like I meant it — I am in the void state.

I repeated it until the room disappeared. Until my thoughts quieted into nothing. Until there was no mirror, no doubt, no history — just pure, clean, infinite possibility with my name on it.

And then I said: I have everything from my list.

Not "I want." Not "I hope." Not "please."

I have.

Here's what was on that list. Here's what's now my life:

A luxury apartment where the views remind me every morning that I made it out.

A bank account that would make my broke past unrecognizable to itself.

A career where I'm not just successful — I'm respected. The kind of respected that has a little fear in it.

A partner who shows up. Fully. Consistently. No games, no half-presence, no emotional unavailability dressed up as "depth."

A car that's black, sleek, and completely unapologetic — just like me.

Friendships that pour in instead of drain out.

And a peace — cold, steady, unshakeable — that no circumstance has been able to touch since.

The void state wasn't magic. It was clarity.

It's what happens when you strip away every excuse, every old story, every version of yourself that was comfortable being less — and you meet what's left. Which is everything. Which was always everything.

The universe wasn't withholding from me.

I was withholding from myself.

You don't need more time. You don't need better circumstances. You don't need to feel ready, feel worthy, feel healed enough.

You need one midnight. One decision. One moment where you stop negotiating with your own potential.

Stop asking. Start having. The queen doesn't petition for her throne. She sits down.