The Growth Mindset Book Podcast: Mindset Mastery Chapter by Chapter

Life Is Happening For You, Not To You

• Michael Fox

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In this episode, Michael Fox explores one of the most powerful mindset shifts you can make: moving from victimhood to empowerment. Instead of asking “Why is this happening to me?”—you’ll learn to see every challenge, setback, and opportunity as something happening for your growth, evolution, and success.

Through personal stories, practical strategies, and deep insights, you’ll discover how to embrace life as your greatest teacher. This shift will help you reframe obstacles as stepping stones, cultivate gratitude in the face of difficulty, and unlock the freedom to design the life you truly desire.

If you’ve been feeling stuck, overwhelmed, or questioning your path, this episode will help you see the bigger picture and remind you that life is always working in your favor.

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Speaker 1:

We're going to talk about a topic that I've been recently focusing on a lot with clients, and I feel like it has had a significant impact with them, and I thought to myself why not share this with you so that you can have a significant impact in your life as well? So what I want to talk about today is the idea that life is happening for you. What do I mean by that? I mean that every event that happens in your life, both good and bad, it's happening for you, not to you. What do I mean that it's happening for you, not to you? What do I mean? That it's happening for you? That there is a gift in the event that occurs in your life. Let me start off by sharing a story that has happened in my life so that I can get this point across. So that I can get this point across In the past, there were so many people in my life that were these A-type personalities.

Speaker 1:

They were the ones that were in my face, telling me what I should do, how I should do it, what I should be doing, and I wasn't necessarily asking for them to tell me what to do, but, for whatever reason, this personality type kept showing up and what I would do is I would either leave the relationship with that person, I would try to hide and not see them and I would avoid them like the plague. But what kept happening was, every time I would go to another job or another group of friends, there would always be that replacement person with the A-type personality that was coming into my life and causing me upset and pain, and I didn't want to be around that person. I didn't understand it. I felt like why is this happening to me? And that's a question that is the wrong question to ask, but I didn't know that at the time. What I've discovered is that was an event that was happening for me. It was a gift, it was an opportunity to say why is this person showing up in front of me? Why are they telling me what to do and what is it that I need to learn from it? And after reflecting and looking inside, what I discovered was I needed to be able to say things that I needed to say and set boundaries, but I was too afraid to do that. I didn't know what they would think about me. I didn't know what they would say about me. So instead of setting a boundary, instead of speaking up, I would let them walk all over me or just be very quiet when they were talking. But that wasn't for my greatest good. God was putting that in front of me, that situation, so that I could have the ability to look inside, reflect and say what is this trying to teach me?

Speaker 1:

And the incredible thing about that story is, once I realized that was what was going on and once I started to speak up for myself and once I started to set boundaries, what do you think happened to those A-type personalities that were constantly showing up in my life? They stopped showing up, they stopped appearing. Because I did the work internally, I reflected and realized that's not happening to me. That's God giving me a gift and saying here is something for you so that you can improve yourself and you can better yourself and you become a better person. And rather than me pointing the finger at that A-type personality and getting myself all upset, I reflect and look inside and say to myself what can I do here? How is this showing up for me and how can I make a difference for myself and in my life, and what can I learn and how can I grow so that I can get to the other side of this. But again, if I didn't look at it from that perspective, that A-type personality would just keep showing up and keep showing up, and I would be saying to myself why is this happening? I don't understand. Why am I attracting these type of people into my life? God knows everything and God says, michael, here's an area that could be improved upon to make you an even better, more caring, more loving, more closer to the true person that you are inside, and so I'm going to put these things in front of you as a gift, so that you can start practicing and start learning and start getting better and start making the necessary changes so that you can become more of who you truly are. Now, when I say this, when I say life's happening for you, and I give you this example, what do you think? Does that resonate with you? Can you see how that can be one of the reasons why things keep showing up in your life? You can avoid them all you want, but they're going to keep showing up until you're willing to reflect internally and make changes internally that are needed. Now I want to hit on one thing right up front, which is this so many people when I present, this life is happening for you, not to you. They'll say something like this to me Okay, mike, that's great, but if my son is killed, how is that life happening for me? And here's what I'm going to say to you. And here's what I'm going to say to you. And here's what I've said to them.

Speaker 1:

When you start martial arts, you start off as a white belt. The reason you start off as a white belt is because you have to learn the fundamentals, the basics. You've got to practice the foundational skills so that you can upgrade to the next belt. I can't take someone that has never done any martial arts before and expect that if I say to them I want you to fight a black belt, that they're going to be able to fight that black belt or at least have the skills of that black belt. They're just not at that level. Have the skills of that black belt, they're just not at that level. So when someone says, mike, what if something happens to my son and gets killed? How's that life happening for me? What I'm saying is we don't want to start at the black belt level. Starting at the black belt level is a situation where your son gets killed and we don't start there. We want to start with the basic stuff, the smaller stuff, right, like having an A-type personality constantly coming in front of you. That's where we want to start this process and as we practice and as we grow and as we get stronger and as we get better, we'll be able to handle more situations. But don't put yourself in a black belt situation when you're a white belt. It's important that while we're listening to this, we're starting with that premise in mind.

Speaker 1:

The Kabbalah is a spiritual book. It's about spirituality, and one of the things that he said was when your soul is going to come into the body is going to come into the body. What it does is it picks all the people, all the places you're going to live, all the events that are going to happen in your life, and the reason that the soul picks all those things is we have these areas in our life that we need to work on. Maybe, as an example, I feel like I'm not good enough or I'm not smart enough, something like that, and I come here to this world with that belief or that feeling. It's built into me, and so our soul picks out all these different events and people to place in front of us so that we'll have the ability to work through these different situations, so that we get stronger and we become again more like God. The soul has been through many lifetimes and in each life it's working to move more towards love, and when we come into the body we bring some of these I wouldn't say deficiencies, but some of these beliefs are built into us, and so these events that are going to unfold in our life are there to help us there, to guide us there, to teach us, so that we can become again more loving, more caring. We can become that person who we truly are, instead of the mask that we sometimes put on and wear and pretend around other people because we're afraid if they see who we truly are, they may not like us. And the goal is that we strip away these masks and we remove them and we just be the person that we truly are. It's way easier to be ourselves than to pretend to be someone else.

Speaker 1:

Let's use a couple hypothetical situations here. Have you had a relationship in the past and you keep meeting someone who's treating you a specific way and then you break up with them? Or they break up with you, or they cheat on you or you cheat on them and you go into the next relationship and the same exact thing happens again. Why do you think that's occurring? Is it that you just attract these terrible people into your life based on what we're discussing? Why do you think that's happening? Because there's something in there in that relationship for you, for your growth.

Speaker 1:

So I'm going to give you a really personal example, which is a relationship that I had in my life which ended in divorce, and I remember when I was in that relationship, thinking to myself consistently I was helping her, she was the one with the issues, she was the one with the problems, and that was my thought process during that relationship, and I wasn't willing to look in the mirror and see what did I have to do with this, the mirror and see what did I have to do with this. She was actually a huge gift to me. Besides giving me my son, who's incredible. She was a gift because I was able to eventually not right away, but eventually turn inside and look and see how I was being very inauthentic in my life. At the time, I was wearing the masks like I was perfect and I had no problems and I was here to fix everyone and help everyone, but that wasn't the true me.

Speaker 1:

So if you're in a relationship with someone and you're not being your true self, they're going to feel that they're going to act in a certain way which goes against you continuing to act the way that you're acting that inauthentic way of being which was who I was being. So here I am pretending and being this person who I think will make her happy. Yet I wasn't being true to myself, I wasn't being honest with myself, I didn't have integrity with myself and therefore there's no way that relationship could continue to work, because what happened was after the relationship ended, after blaming her and complaining and making all these excuses how it had nothing to do with me, I really took a look in the mirror because that wasn't doing anything for me. Pointing the finger wasn't working, didn't make me feel better and what I realized was me being authentically myself, meaning if I screw something up, I admit to it, if I'm not happy, I can be unhappy and be okay, and I can sit in unhappiness and be present in it and not have to try to change it because I need to appear to be a certain type of person once I started becoming authentic and true to myself, which again took me some time because I had been in practice of doing it the other way.

Speaker 1:

I wrote a book. It's called Removing the Mask Becoming who God Made you to Be. It's on Amazon. There's a little plug, right. But the really purpose of me bringing that up is because we come to this world we're actually perfect. When we're born, we're perfection. And then we start to be told certain things by our teachers, our friends, our family that we're not good enough. We're not, we could be better and we start to put on masks and pretend to be something that we're not so that we'll make other people happy. The problem is, while we're trying to make everyone else happy out there, who's the one person we're not making happy? It's ourselves.

Speaker 1:

So once I made the decision to stop pointing the finger, stop blaming, stop complaining and really start to look inside and see how I was responsible for the situation that I was in by life, because after I did that, I was able to attract a relationship that was unbelievably healthy and things were really good, and the reason that occurred is because I was healthy and so I would attract what I already am, what I already am, I promise you if you're struggling with something right now, meaning the similar things are happening in your relationship. You're consistently losing money or not bringing in enough money. Your job or your career keep having struggles. You're never able to advance. There's things going on. You're health and wellness. You're overweight. You're struggling. The reason these things are happening is because God's giving you a gift. God is saying here's an opportunity for you to work through what's really going on underneath it all. What we're dealing with on a day-to-day basis is perfectly designed curriculum for our soul. It's like going to school every single day. Everything that's presenting itself to us is happening for us. It's a gift, and I want you to ask yourself this question If you were able to turn and look at life through this perspective, through these lenses, what begins to happen in your life on a consistent basis, do you think you would potentially feel more peaceful as you're working through and seeing internally the things that you can work through?

Speaker 1:

Or are you going to try to control others and try to make them change so that you're happy? What do you think the chances are that you'll be able to make other people change? It's hard enough to make ourselves change, so the chances of making someone else change is very slim. So why not work on the best person that we can possibly work on, which is the person that stares back at us in the mirror every single day? That's why we're here in this world. We're here so that we can work through all this stuff that we come here and that has been with us for many lifetimes and we may have advanced and we may be doing great, and maybe we haven't, maybe we're earlier on in the journey. It doesn't matter where we are. The gift is it's a gift and it's a practice, and you take where you're at and don't compare it to anyone else, because it doesn't matter what they're going through or where they're at in their journey. There's no comparison. You're in your journey, you're here for your growth, you're here to work through your stuff, and the sooner we can look at life through these lenses and the sooner we can practice realizing that this is happening for me. Then, the next time someone comes and says something negative to you and you get triggered by it, perhaps that's happening for you. Perhaps that's a gift that allows you to practice not being triggered by something someone says.

Speaker 1:

If you believed in yourself and you had confidence in yourself, the fact that someone said something negative to you would have zero impact. If I were to call you, I came up to you tomorrow and I said you're a pink elephant, you would look at me like I'm nuts and you would laugh. It would have zero impact on you. But if I said you're a stupid idiot who can't handle your money, you're really ridiculous. There's a very good chance that if you feel any of those things about yourself, that you will get unbelievably upset and angry and you'll lash out and attack back.

Speaker 1:

The problem with attacking back, the problem with latching out is it going to change what really went on inside of you? And the answer is no, really went on inside of you, and the answer is no. The attacking is trying to protect ourselves, but we're not protecting ourselves because the more we lash out at other people, we're missing the opportunity in ourselves to deal with the thing that's actually hurting inside of us. And if we don't deal with that piece, we can spend our entire life pointing the finger out there and hoping that these people will change. But it won't make a difference because the only person that this whole life is for you. It's for you to learn and to grow and to get better and to look internally and say to yourself how can I deal with this upset? Why am I feeling this upset? What's going on? How can I get stronger? How can I feel better about myself? How can I be authentic to myself so that, moving forward, when someone comes and says something about me or to me, I don't get impacted by it? No one's doing anything to you. It's happening for you. I promise you, if you can look at life from that perspective, your life will completely change.

Speaker 1:

Ego likes to control Ego, which is our mind, our conscious mind. Where are we having all these thoughts? I'm going to create the greatest plan to get a great relationship. I'm going to create the greatest plan to have a successful business. I'm going to create the greatest plan to have more spirituality in my life. It's okay to come up with a plan, but let me ask you this question you can work so hard and come up with a plan all you want, but do you think God might have a better plan for you? In other words, your life has been unfolding perfectly up until this point.

Speaker 1:

Every time you were in a struggle, anytime, something happened. Somehow you were brought to the next place in your life. And when you were brought there. Sometimes we say to ourselves oh my gosh, thank God, that thing, that negative thing, happened. Because had that negative thing, we saw it as negative. It actually was a gift. Had we had that not happened in my life, I wouldn't be where I am right now. Example that relationship that I was, in which anyone could look at as, oh, that's such a negative thing. I could have looked at it that way. It was a gift. It helped me reflect internally and helped me heal some stuff that was going on inside of me so that I could get stronger and that I could be authentic and real to myself. What better gift could I ask for? So the number of years that I went through what I went through, I had the opportunity all along to deal with this, to reflect and look inside and say why is this happening for me? What's the gift in this? And again, this is high level stuff. This isn't easy to do. It's a practice.

Speaker 1:

We start with small things. We don't run a marathon. The first time we decide to run, we decide to run to the first mailbox and then we run back to the house. We start slowly, but if you keep doing it slowly and keep taking steps to the next mailbox. Suddenly you're going to be coming more and more authentic to yourself, more confident, more loving, more caring, and that will reflect out to the world and it will attract back to you more of the same. However, when you're inauthentic, what do you think will happen when you're dealing with other people? Will you have more authenticity or more inauthenticity?

Speaker 1:

I remember someone that I used to work with drove me up the wall because I was looking at that person and thinking to myself man, that person is so inauthentic Like they're, so phony and so fake. You know what I saw in that other person? Myself, I was the one being inauthentic. Other person myself I was the one being inauthentic. I was the one that was being phony, but it was so much easier to point the finger at him because it allowed me to stay away from having to deal with myself. And if you just take away this one thing from today's podcast, you can point your finger all you want. It's never going to help you unless you turn the finger and point it back to yourself and are willing to look inside.

Speaker 1:

Life is happening for you If you find yourself saying something negative about another person. That person so judgmental, that person doesn't really care. That person so judgmental, that person doesn't really care. That person's so selfish. Guess who you're talking about. You're talking about yourself. That person is a mirror reflection of yourself, and you may not like me saying this and you may even try to push away and say, no, that's a bunch of crap, but the truth of the matter is that is 100% true. You're seeing yourself in the other person and you're not liking what. So instead of saying to yourself in the mirror you're so selfish, you're so annoying You're pointing your finger and looking at the other person and blaming them.

Speaker 1:

So the next time you're going to judge someone, maybe life's happening for you. Maybe what it's saying is, maybe there are selfish. But in what areas of my life am I being selfish? And look inside and notice you know what? I am selfish Sometimes, when I get money, I hold on to it and I don't share it with other people. Or maybe I'm selfish with my relationship. I'm always thinking about myself and never really thinking about the other person. There's a million ways in which that thing that we see in others could be rearing its head inside of us, but the key is being willing to look inside and say, okay, life is happening for me. And then looking inside and seeing, maybe I am a little selfish in that area. In fact, what I'm going to do is I'm going to start really working on that area and I'm going to say a blessing for that other person. I'm going to say, god, please help that person who might be selfish in this area, become more accepting, more loving, more caring, more peaceful. And thank you, god, for allowing me to see that this was happening for me and thank you for giving me the opportunity to work on it myself. And please help me as well with this thing that I'm struggling with inside.

Speaker 1:

I want to end today's podcast with this you are absolutely perfect. You are a perfect soul. You come here absolutely perfect. When you see a baby and you look at them, do you see anything else other than perfection? They're perfect and that was you. And you got programmed and you started to put on these masks and pretend to be someone else to make other people happy.

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The whole goal in life is to look inside and to go back to being your authentic self, to being the love, to loving someone. That's being hateful and being okay if they respond back in a not so loving way. We don't have to get back at anyone. We just have to take care of being the light and sharing the light in this world. So I hope today that this inspires you to be the light in your life, to look in the mirror and say to yourself why did that happen for me? What is it that I can learn that happen for me? What is it that I can learn? How can I grow from this and how can I become a better person?

Speaker 1:

The next time you're going to judge someone, instead of judging, or if you do judge them, think to yourself how do I have that same quality in myself and how can I send a blessing to that person and how can I work on that judgment that I made on them within myself?

Speaker 1:

When we start to live life in this way, there's so much more peace, so much more happiness, so much more love. We're living like God. In that sense, we're living from a place that's closer to perfection. Will we ever be perfect at this? No, do we just try each week to get a little bit better? Yes, that's what I have for you today. Please let me know if you got any impact from this specific podcast and if it touched you in a specific way, please share it with other people, because there's a lot of other people out there that need to hear this message and you can be someone that spreads the light and helps them see the light within themselves. I love you. I love you, I appreciate you and I'm so grateful that God gave me the gift of sharing this with you.

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Michael Fox

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