Are You Living or Just Surviving? Breaking the Patterns That Hold You Hostage

Strong doesn't always mean whole. Some of you have learned how to survive so well, people forgot to ask you if you were okay. You learned how to show up, perform, deliver, carry. But what you didn't learn is how to stop living in survival mode. Tonight, we're not fixing behavior. We are breaking the pattern behind the problem. My name is Edna White, and this is your You Project experience. And we're going to start today, I'm talking stop. We're going to stop performing life and start designing it. And that's what I do, is I help you design your life the way you want it, personally. All right, and so this is all about this book here, the You Project, that I published February 10, 2026, my number 32. So we're going to be not just reading from that book, but we're going to identify recalibration. Because most of us aren't stuck. We're not just, we're not stuck. We just have patterns that we have not figured out. We've just been doing them so long, we haven't caught patterns. Now, if you don't want to break the pattern, you'll be keeping the same results, right? We don't want to do that. We want to do something different. This is a different year, and we don't want the same cycle. So we're going to, I'm going to help you do that today. And we're going to, I guess, read an excerpt from this book here. So I talk about in this book, a lot of things that I've gone through, the experiences of coming back to myself. And when you read them, they're kind of like practical, right? They're real practical. But what happens is they're not real practical, because we forget that we had them in the beginning. And all I'm doing with this book, really, is just opening your eyes to what gifts and tools you already have. Again, this is what I experienced. A lot of things I went through to get back to myself. Now, when I say get back to myself, I mean, really, drop all the systemic things that I've learned along the way. Drop all the things that people spoke over me. Drop all the things that happened to me. Drop all the things that I experienced to get back to who I was. And I always refer to this, and if you follow me a lot, I always talk about my five-year-old self. I'm going to show you a picture of me, by the way. Where am I? Actually, I was born in Alabama. This is me. That's me. And I often talk about this self in the toddler time, up to the age five. I knew who I was. I knew what I wanted to become. I just knew everything. I knew that I had the strength and I had the fortitude in me. It is when I started going to school. It is when I started hearing what my family had designed for me. It's when my abuse started happening. It is when, you know, things started to interfere. I heard all the white noise. It is when I went to high school. It's when I went to college. It's when I joined a church. It was when all these things started happening that I lost myself along the way. I lost what I said that I was going to be when I was 12. I lost that. I became what somebody else wanted me to be. I started studying what someone else wanted me to study. Then I got all the responsibilities of the consequences of trying to learn along the way. So I had responsibilities. I was a young mom, you know? So I had to take care of a child. So of course, as it were, I had to be responsible and I had to take care of things, right? Do what I need to do and sacrifice myself for my children, right? So in all of that and just taking that journey, I've gotten to a place in my elder years, as it were, that I have now gained so much enlightenment from coming back to myself. And it took me getting into a car accident, nearly dying, not being able to walk, not being able to talk, and having to start from the beginning to begin again. And that meant taking off and shedding everything that anybody has ever said, ever done to me, you know, learning about forgiveness, learning how to believe in myself again and trust myself. That's where I started. And that was in 2006, New Year's Eve, which was 2007, right? And my life changed 100%. I want to say 180 degrees turned against everything that I ever learned. I unlearned it, right? And I'm still unlearning some things. So I'm going to take you through and then we're going to have, you know, I'm going to take you through a couple of excerpts from my book. And then I'm going to, you know, have questions and answers that, you know, if you have any questions that you want to ask, and then give you an opportunity to kind of take a, purchase a book or, you know, pick it up. I can tell you where to pick it up or I don't have an offer yet, but I think I'll come up with something at the end. I thought I was doing right. All right. So I'm going to read the first excerpt. Let's get it here. So many people, we're going to talk about this. So I'm going to go see, I'm going to go reaction. So we're going to read excerpt page 55. By the way, this book is not that long. It's like 121 pages though. But I'm not going to read it all. Don't take it out there. But anyway, so we're at 55, how to reflect more effectively. And one thing is make time. If the reflection requires effort. So at 10 times, we all have time, regardless of how busy our schedules are. Reflect in the shower, reflect on the drive to work. Turn off the radio or your iPod and think. Reflect on the moment before you go to sleep. Reflect with your family as you eat a meal. Turn off the television. There's time. We just have to carve it out. Ask questions. Reflection is about thinking and questions help our brains think. Consider using the list of questions as a starter set of reflections. They help you think about what happened and what you can learn. I'm going to give you some of the questions. And one of them is what worked and why? Then why didn't it work and why? What does the situation remind you of? How can I use the experience? How does this experience relate to the other situations I've been in? What can I learn from that situation? Knowing what I know now, what would I do differently next time? I think that we don't sit and reflect enough. Because then it creates reactions, right? When we go through different situations, we go through them. And without a second thought, we go to the next thing. We go on to the next thing. Like relationships. We don't sit and think it through. We don't say, we don't ask ourselves these questions. We never ask ourselves what felt the same. Then we would know that, hey, we got the same guy with a different body. Or we go to a job and we're at a job that we can't stand. And we don't reflect. We don't stop. Because we think that we have to get to the next thing. Because if we don't, it's detrimental. It's detrimental. We're going to be alone. We got to jump back into the dating pool because we're going to be alone. But what about reflecting? Because if we don't reflect, we start to react, right? We start to take on things. Like, let's talk about a job. What worked at a job? What worked? Why didn't the job work? You know, what does the situation remind you of? Does it remind you of the old job you had? Your old boss that you had? Because a lot of times when we're living in survival mode, we pick the same exact people, whether it be in the job, it be in church, it be in, you know, relationship. We pick the same personalities because they're similar. We gravitate to them. We go towards them. Many years ago, my first job when I was in my senior years, I don't know because I always work for myself. I thought about when I was interviewed after I left, and I said, I saw all the markers there, all the markers of an unhealed person. But yet I said, I can make a difference. So what do you think that was? That was my ego. So when I left the job, I took some time to, first of all, deflate from that, not debrief, tell nobody about that, but deflate from that. And I looked at it and I said, that person was just like every other needy person that I've ever survived through. That was a survival mode that I could fix them. I had been fixing people for years, fixing husbands, boyfriends, family, my children, people that I've met, networkers, in business, even volunteering. I was fixing people. And that supervisor was exactly the person that I had married, same, was fixing them. So we live in survival mode. And we have to be aware that we're living in it. And the only way to do that is sit behind down and actually reflect why this didn't work. Because we were so busy moving to the next, that we forget that we need to not generalize everything and not react. Because what we're doing when we don't reflect is reacting. Many people are living in reaction mode. They aren't living at all. They're just reacting. They're not reflecting. They are just reacting to the past pain. So if you're fired, you have to leave, you don't sit in time and say, what was that experience about? What can I do better? We don't sit in them. We don't sit in that past pain. Because let me just tell you, even though you may hate your job, you may hate it, hate it. But there's a sense of loss if you were fired, or you had to leave, or you even got sick and had to leave, whatever. There's a sense of loss that we all go through. And guess what sense of loss is? It's pain, right? Past experience. Then on top of that, we don't get to reflect on the learned behavior to keep accepting that. That's one thing I learned from that whole experience. I was actually surviving a learned behavior. My ego stuck up and said, hey, I'm going to be able to change them because I am so positive. I can do this. And it was a learned behavior. It wasn't that I was positive. It's that I was the people pleaser, that I thought I could save everybody, right? That role of family hero, I was doing that in the workplace. I was doing that. So I wasn't able to sit down and reflect and think about that learned behavior. You know, that part where we don't question it, but we always repeat it. That's important. So let me show you how it looks in real life. And I think I gave you an example from my own life. You overthink everything. Let me just say that when I said that I think I can change them, right? That was overthinking. That was thinking ahead of, okay, I may be presented with all these flags. I'm going to think ahead of that. I'm going to try to fix that because your system is trying to stay safe. You know, you see all this going on, but you think that you could fix that. Well, I did. Let me say, I thought that I could fix that. And then on the other side is that sometimes you procrastinate, right? Because pressure is the only time you trust yourself. So procrastination would be, and I think I spoke about this at in a masterclass, is that procrastination means when you get, you work good under pressure, but then you lose three days. You have a headache. You have all that. Once you get it, you make that quotas. Like say you had a project due and it's due that day, you know, and you wait until maybe a couple hours before you put in the pressure. I work great under pressure. That's overthinking. Again, we're going back. That's overthinking. And then you get to that place, you get it done. But you're up all night getting it done, right? Get up all night. You get right to the wire. Like you get it done. Maybe missing a couple pieces, get it done. But then after it's over, you deflate. You feel bad. You know, you're not feeling good. You're not in a great mood. It's just bad. It's maybe three days of coming back from that. Then the other one is you're staying super busy. I have never seen, I don't like being busy. I'm gonna tell you that. I've learned busy is not a thing. You're not doing anything but moving papers from one side of the table to the other. You're not completing nothing. Everything looks like you're doing something, but nothing's happening. So you don't have to face what's not working. So you keep busy, right? Or you go on to the next relationship. Or you go instead of debriefing and saying, what didn't work here? Let me take ownership of my awareness. What I've done and how I'm doing at this job. You don't do that. You go on. Let me go to the next. I'm gonna get a job. I'm gonna go get another job, another job. And you go and you start looking. And then the same thing happens again. I'm gonna tell you I had a client, must have had six jobs within a year. And I finally asked him, why did you have six jobs in this year? And I asked him, what was the result? Did you leave? Did you get fired? What happened? And each time it was, I was under pressure with the supervisor. And instead of letting them fire me, I quit. And we had to explore that. There was no stopping and saying, what am I doing wrong? Let me take responsibility and be aware of my survival mode. See, all of that is not your personality. That's a pattern, okay? It's not personality, a pattern, okay? So if you feel like you're operating in survival mode, I want you to drop in the chat overthinking, procrastination, control, or even avoidance. Put one of those words in the chat, overthinking, procrastination, control, or avoidance. Which one do you operate in? Because that's survival. It's not a personality. Remember that. But which one are you operating in? Is it overthinking, procrastination, control, or avoidance? And if you drop it in the chat and I get it later, I will tell you how to start to fix that, okay? I don't see any responses at all now, but I'm going to keep going. If you drop it in, then I'll stop and go back. So let's go to the excerpt number two, which has to do with control and stress, okay? And that would be page 72. Finally, you need to let go of the past, accept change, and adjust to life so that you can remain optimistic and create the future you want. A quote, if we don't change, we don't grow. If we don't grow, we aren't living. Gail Sheeby. Imagine sitting in a movie hall and watching a movie, and all of a sudden, the lights go out. You may not see anything for a few seconds, but gradually you start seeing the objects around you. This is because your eyes begin to accept the change and adjust to the darkness. Similarly, you need to adapt and find new solutions to the problems or situations you encounter. Managing change and uncertainty can be much easier when you adapt your thinking and adjust to life by accepting methods, facts, and strategies to manage change and uncertainty. A few years ago, I gave a workshop based on my book, The Keys to the Kingdom. A participant sent me this anonymous comment in response to the first step in the workshop, and the quote was, I would love to learn how to allow myself to be myself, but what does that mean, and how do you do this? And I'm going to answer this, and it's funny that I quote my other books in books, but I do. The reason why, okay, the reason why that we have all this stress and everything is because we don't let go, and it has to do with control. And when you try to control something, you're under a lot of stress. And one of the examples I'm thinking of right now is, you're riding a bull, you know, one of those bulls in the, I think it's Texas Roadhouse, if you're in New York, and you're on that, and if you've ever been on that, trying to stay on, but you're holding on, you're holding on, you're holding on, and then you finally get fucked off, right? Once you fall off, aren't your muscles kind of like, a lot, and your hands are burning? That's stress. So the more you try to control something, the more stress you have. The more stress you have, the sicker you get. Mentally, physically, mentally and physically, a lot of times. The reason why many people are miserable, stressed, and overwhelmed is because of unhealthy attachments to things they can, that they cannot control. And that includes the past. So we may want to control how, maybe even like how we do things, and we can't. We're stressed about that. If we're at work, I shoulda, coulda, woulda. Oh, that's total control. You did it, it happened, okay. Now what? What do I do that? That's when you go back to ask yourself those questions. What happened? How could I make it better? Those things, you can go back to that. But we're so bent on unhealthy attachments to things that we can't control. Like, maybe our children. We can't control how they want to live their lives. We can't. Although we want to, we love them, and our heart aches for them. That's control. When we want them to do what they wanna do, and then you're stressed out, you can't sleep. That's control. That's not stress. That's not even love. Love allows. Love trusts that you gave them the equipment that they can come back. No matter how far they go. They can come back to themselves. That's trusting. Trusting and certain they'll come back to themselves. Right? So we always gain these unhealthy attachments. Unhealthy attachments. I have another client who is, says to me, their daughter is their best friend. And she doesn't know why she's not dating. Well, you cater to her. Her and her boyfriends. Her and her, you know, her child. And you cater to them. And then you ask them, what do you think when you start dating someone? You ask her, what does she think? She's not your best friend. She's always gonna be your daughter. She's always gonna be on guard. She's not your best friend. She's not. And after that, what happens with those type of unhealthy attachments, the roles reverse. The mother becomes the daughter and the daughter becomes the mother. So unhealthy, it makes a role reversal, no matter where you go. You know, if you want to keep controlling things. And in working with her, I uncovered that it was really, she wanted to control how her daughter is doing because she felt like she was deficient in, maybe she was developmental delayed. She felt like she needed to help control her, help her, but not allowing her to grow. It was not controlling, it was controlling her. And so not allowing her to grow, it cripples her and both of them. You know, the mother, it cripples both of them. So you can't control anyone but yourself. You can't control any situation unless you have total control of it. So if you're managing your goals in your business or even your career or even your relationships, if you're working with that person, you literally are talking to them. You can only control what you're saying. You can't control them ever, ever. And all it does is that control creates stress and creates, you know, you being miserable and you being upset and disappointed and you're stressed because you're trying to control outcomes. You're trying to control people. You're trying to control timing. You know, you're trying to control everything, but here's the truth. Control is a survival response. Alignment is a power move. Okay. I see you, Sam, which are, I see it overthinking for sure. Gotcha. All right. And I'll get that comment in there. Got you. So alignment is a power move. If you align yourself, if you want to control something, you will definitely align. If you align yourself, meaning take your hands off of it. Don't think about it. If the thought comes, let it go. Okay. I'm not going to control that. Talk to yourself out of that. Because all your mind does is make you comfortable. All right. Because it brings back what you're familiar with. So it'll say to you, oh, you can't do that because you never did it before. Right. It's just protecting you so you don't be hurt because you're in survival mode. When you're in alignment, your mind will say to you, you can't do that. And alignment will tell you, oh, yeah, let me try that. That looks like I can not certainty. Remember, when you were young, riding a bike, you got on the bike, right? And you didn't know how to ride it. But once you started getting in the groove of it, you're like, I can do this. And then even if you fell, you got back up, you got back on. That's when you're in alignment. Survival mode just says, I give up. I'm done. Let that stick. Let that stick there. Alignment is a power move. When you're in survival, you grip. Hold on. You're in alignment. Remove. Okay. That's not for me. Got it. Can't control my children. Can only talk to them. Offer them options. Responsibility is on them. Can't do more than that. Right. You know. You can only control what goes in your ears, right? And out your mouth. So that's it. You can. That's it. You can stop people from telling you gossip, and you can stop gossiping. Same thing. Right. So let's talk about the pattern that interrupts all of this. Leaving ---- down. Okay. This is the ---- baggage. You know, in every experience of all the clients I just mentioned. I teach them to shift out of that. Okay. It's an experience. Then you recognize the pattern. There's a mindset that you have. There's a behavior. And then there's a result. Most people try to fix behavior. That's why nothing's changing. You're fixing the behavior in a moment. Right. You're falling in line with the behavior for a moment. Oh, I won't laugh so much. You do that, and you're miserable because you're laughing. You like to laugh. Or I won't speak so much. You have to speak up. You keep yourself quiet, then you become real quiet. And I can attest to that. I said, oh, I won't give my ideas so much because, you know, people don't like them. Or people become jealous, or they have something to say, or, you know, debate me or whatever it is. And then you end up getting out of alignment. If you're to say something, you're to say it. You know, and you say it in a way that it's received. Some people may not like it, you know, but that's okay, you know. And especially be coming from a place within yourself. So people try to fix behavior. That's why nothing changes. The same thing with, you know, you know, maybe you stop smoking, you stop drinking, right? It's the same thing. But what's behind it? Not until I used to smoke on and off, or when I used to go out and smoke and have a drink and I smoke. And I didn't stop doing it until I figured out why I was doing it, you know. You know, what made those two things go together? And I figured myself out. So I don't go back to the pattern. You keep recreating the same life. You keep meeting the same guy. You keep having the same conversation. You keep getting the same bosses. You keep getting the same jobs. You keep moving around the same people. So, for example, no money, no effort, no movement. You know, like, if you look at me, I have dysplexic ways sometimes. And I think things are wrong. Even though I know what I'm saying here comes out differently here. Or I see some things and they look different, you know. But I did it. And I didn't erase it. And I kept going. And I just kept practicing and practicing and practicing. And you know what? It's part of me. And I just accept it now. And I love myself even more for not staying in that spot of gotta be perfect. It's gotta be perfect. Because perfection's not real. I don't think the most perfect thing, which would be nature, is perfect. I don't think so. I think we just got that concept from someone. And we just adapted it along the way. Okay. So, thank you, Sandwich Art, for overthinking. Overthinking, yeah. Overthinking is a definitely thing. So, since you said that, overthinking, where did that come from? Where did everything... Overthinking is second guessing, right? Second guessing is not trusting yourself. Not trusting yourself came from you may have said something to somebody or your caregiver, and they second guessed you. That's not true. I know as a survivor of childhood sexual abuse, when I told my parent what was going on, I was second guessed. No, you're lying. So, when I was called a liar, I kept my mouth shut, and I didn't speak about it again. And I suffered along the way. Suffered in it. So, that's overthinking, okay? That's where it comes from. May not be as traumatic as mine, but it comes from some type of... Someone didn't validate you when you needed to be validated about something, okay? So, except three, your identity. Identity reset. 86, identity reset. Thoughts, behavior, consequences, and relationships can cause us to be free or weigh us down. Absolute freedom is living authentically. Nothing is more heavy or burdensome than living a life that is not yours or a vision you did not create. We try to convince ourselves that we do things because that is what a relationship, a natural relationship, is. Directly oppose who you are. But make them... ...that men are taught to believe that love and relationships are work. Yes, work is required to accomplish goals, achieve success, and overcome obstacles. But the core driving force in your relationship can always be work or struggle. The relationship, love, part of an intimate relationship or friendship, should be free of manacles and weight. That should be the most carefree, rewarding, and illuminating factor in your life. Relationships are constant, miscommunication requires redirection, and strife begins to take a toll on you emotionally. Sometimes the signs are physical, fatigue, weight gain, and snappishness. The signs can be emotional, lack of fulfillment, emotionally, sexually, or physically. A void that cannot be explained or identified. Each of us knows when our planets are out of alignment. But the truth is most of us know within months of a new relationship whether or not the relationship will require a level of effort we cannot or don't want to give. That sums up the identity. Now, knowing ourselves enough to say that this is not for me. Until you understand who you became to survive, you will never become who you're meant to be. You see, in survival mode, you become who you are to survive. To get through to the next, I guess, next problem, next issue, next thing that happens, right? You go to the next step. Some of you became strong, the responsible, the one who figured it out. But that identity is now limiting your next level. And like I read in your relationship, in your work, in your life in general. I want you to answer this. What version of you are you ready to stop being? You can put that in the comment in the chat section. What version are you willing to just become? The last excerpt I'm going to read is probably the five pillars. I talk about the five pillars in the case of the kingdom. But I also have a workshop that I do on the five pillars. And the five pillars of life that you must have to be balanced. Often people categorize our bodies, our lives, and ourselves as temples. So I'm going to build on that analogy and show you how we need these pillars. Pillars hold us up and are the foundation of where we begin. So not having those pillars make us weak in so many ways. So here are the four, the five pillars. Intuition, financial fitness, emotional intelligence, health and wellness, spirit, spiritual connectivity, connectedness. In the finding of all of those, I discovered a lot of this in my own weaknesses. But more so because I wanted to be well. When you want to be well, you're going to take the steps necessary. No one is going to pull you. You know when it's going to motivate. No one's going to motivate you. No one's going to do it like you can. And believe me, motivation begins inside. Inspiration inspires creativity. So to be motivated to change this, I had to look and be inspired by others. So who else? I wrote here, Oprah opened those tools that I already had in my life. I began to watch Super Soul Sunday. And I used to see her with all these different people. And it used to irritate me because I didn't know what they were talking about. I couldn't grasp what they were talking about. And I was listening to everyone's exterior views of who she was and what she was doing. Side note, it's a terrible thing to do for yourself, to do for yourself, to enjoy life. Only take someone else's view from somebody else once you've learned about it yourself. So my frustration is that I really want to understand what this is and who's talking. Like Brene Brown, Agatha Cholley, Wayne Dwyer, Louise Hay, Mary Wilson, and so on. I'm thinking about the time that I wrote this and when I wrote it. The way I wrote it is the way I thought it. Like Oprah, Oprah, you know. We have to get this for ourselves. We have to have strong pillars, foundations. Many of the churches and many of the leaders, religion, they talk about a solid foundation, being somebody else or Jesus or, you know, God or somebody. But we live a human life and those foundational pieces are part of us. Intuition is part of us. No one can give that to us. Intuition is a tool that we have. Being financially fit is part of us because we have to be in this world and that's the energy that moves this world for us to have the things that we need. Emotional intelligence. In order to operate and to love our neighbor, we have to have emotional intelligence. Health and wellness. We cannot be in this world without health and wellness. We cannot say that we love ourselves and eat ourselves to death. You know, yes, you know, we talk about drugs and alcohol, those most famous symptoms, but what about eating the foods that we shouldn't be eating? What about saying the words we shouldn't say? And I'm not talking about curse words. I'm talking about words that harm you as well as other people. Being nasty, you know, saying nasty words. Mean and vulgar words, you know. What about, you know, those things like that? And then your spiritual connectivity, connectedness. How are you connected to your spirit within? Not externally through religion, but how are you connected spiritually with yourself? Connected, connectivity, and with your spirit, god or whatever, whomever you call that being, how are you connected? Are you connected? We have to get to those places. We have to be able to reset, refocus, and rise to the real us. See, this is where most people stop. I even try to stop. This is where most people stop. They hear something powerful, they feel something, and they go right back to the same, I don't want that for you, and I know you don't want it for yourself, you know. It may not be my book. It may be, you know, you can buy this book on Amazon. You can buy it at Barnes and Noble, books a million, and get this book. I love marking books up to the point that, you know, because if I find myself in it, I'm gonna, you know, read it. I want you to go further. Just as if you believe that Jesus came here as a messenger and said that the things that he had did, you're gonna do more. That's what we want. That's what I want for you is I don't want you to stay in the same stagnant, procrastinating, overthinking, you know, under living anymore, you know. You heard insight that I spoke about. I want you to stop talking, and I want you to stop scrolling, and I want you just to do the work. If you're serious about breaking the patterns, I break those patterns down here on my channel all the time, you know. If you're a TikToker, I'm over there doing the same exact thing, and I can do that in person with you, virtually, online. I want to do that for you with a next move strategy session. The link is below this video. You can get started. You can start shifting, and it's not just talking. It's not just journaling about it, because I find that even journaling about something and just writing it out, yes, it's getting out of you, but there's no solution. At the end of that, where's the solution? With working with me on the next move, you're absolutely going to be shifting, you're going to be changing, you know. In that session, I will show you the exact pattern that's holding you back, the mindset it created, and the behavior it's producing, and what you can do to shift immediately. You don't need more information. You need interruption, and that's what I do. Now, I know that if you're here, you're listening to me today, I'm so glad that you're here. Thank you for coming on. Thank you for signing up and registering on Eventbrite. I truly appreciate the time that we've had together. I don't see any questions in the chat, but thank you for stopping by. All of you should stop by. You heard the story. Now, let's stop talking about it, and let's start doing something. I hope that I said something today that really helped you. Again, if you have questions, please put them in the chat box or leave them under this video so that I can answer your questions. I come back and I answer them all. I really do appreciate your time. For all those that came on today, I want to give you a special offer, and if you watch this video all the way through, I'm going to give you a special offer. I want you to put in the chat, special, and I will send it to you. It will be that you can use it and no cost to you. Again, if you have watched this video, I want you to put the word special in the chat, and I will send you your free complimentary gift just for being here on the You Project series. Thank you so much, and I hope to see you all very soon, talk to you, and tell you something great about what I'm doing. But anyway, this is Edna White, and I am going to say goodbye for now. Happy Sunday.