What's the Key to a Purposeful Life? Betting on Yourself.

I never understood what betting on yourself meant -- for the longest time I judged people who would say anything like this (I can be OD critical). I thought investing in yourself was an easy way to get out of responsibilities, for the people who didn't want to serve others or for the people who were lazy.

SHEESH... I was very, very wrong.

Betting on yourself couldn't be more opposite, though. When you elect to invest your time, effort and energy into the core of who you are, you end up making more meaningful choices.

Why? Because you aren't seeking external factors to validate yourself.

The service project you'e organizing is no longer about building you up, it becomes truly about serving and loving others. The money you gave to your family no longer feels like resentment, it feels like freedom of choice.

Betting on yourself is about confidence in who you are and a deep seeded belief your choices and core values -- most importantly, it's about your own worthiness regardless of support.

What else does betting on yourself look like and what does it mean?

Betting on Yourself = Choosing Yourself

Many times women choose other people or other things over themselves. I've done this for many, many years. I've relied on other people to make me happy, other people to make me more money or other people to believe in me.

The problem is, like most all problems we encounter in life, is that people have choice -- and they can choose whether or not to bet on your inherit gifts, abilities and all the other things that make you uniquely amazing.

By choosing yourself, you're automatically taking your power back from other people, the power you've lost by making sure everyone around you is taken care of first. You're saying that you believe in who you are and who you will become -- and that your self-preservation, success and happiness is more important than ensuring others are comfortable.

When you do this, people won't know what to do at first -- so anticipate people becoming angry with you or disagreeing with your decisions (disagreements natural, they just aren't used to them).

But if I could give 23-year old self any wisdom, I would tell her to:

• Choose yourself whenever you create a fire project that someone else may try and take credit for.

• Choose yourself whenever the "guy of your dreams" doesn't follow up in action and in truth.

• Choose yourself whenever the job pressures you to accept calls at 3:00 am for something that is not your problem.

• Choose yourself whenever there is pressure to hyper-sexualize yourself for gain or attention.

• Choose yourself whenever the people around you are talking badly about matters that are important to your heart.

Choosing yourself means you're powerful.

Betting on Yourself = Believing in Yourself

I've always struggled with fear of not being good enough for people. More than likely, that came from my anxiety and perfectionism, but each have plagued my conscious and confidence for years.

In the last year during therapy, I learned that self-validation is one of the most important ways to have a successful relationship with yourself and others. It's the only way you have a real, authentic belief in your natural gifts and abilities.

I think women struggle with this because we've been forced to exist in a continuous dichotomous state - a realm that requires us to live out every competing dynamic at the same exact same time. We're required to be strong, but very submissive. Intelligent, but not too intelligent. Firm, but only firm enough so that other people can have their way. It's truly exhausting and quite frankly, unfair.

When you believe in yourself, you don't have to live in the constant push-and-pull dynamic... you literally create a reality that challenges you in ways that calls you higher, but doesn't work against the core of who you are. The reality you teaches you, encourages you, strengthens you and helps you become who you want to be. Most importantly, this reality is driven by your own internal self-validation.

Believing in yourself is a life force that can't be reckoned with.