Who Gets a Say in Your Life? Reclaiming Your Mind and Authenticity

• By candidasullivan
• August 5, 2026
• No Comments

Who gets a say in your life?

Has anyone ever said to you, “If I were you, I would do this or not do that”? Advice is easy to give when someone else has to live with the consequences. In some ways, we can all be experts in someone else’s life. We can make suggestions without personally feeling the consequences of those actions. It’s easier to see someone else’s mistakes than it is to see our own. 

Have you ever heard a complaint from someone else, picked up the negativity, and carried it all day? 

Have you ever believed a statement from a friend or loved one and not considered the truth in it? Or whether it truly applied to your life or not? 

As we go through our days, we hear and sometimes pick up the language and beliefs from others. If we are on social media, we give hundreds of people access to our minds daily. If we spend an hour scrolling, we may hear hundreds of opinions before we’ve spent five quiet minutes with God. It’s no wonder our minds feel noisy. While scrolling, we constantly take in information. What do we do with what we hear?

Is it running around in the back of our minds all day? Do we make a choice we wouldn’t normally make because someone else influenced us to do so? 

These are some questions I am exploring in my journal. How can I be authentic when I constantly let other people into my mind, telling me what to think, feel, and how to act? 

Silence and journaling have clarified so many things for me. Stepping away from the constant chatter of social media has enabled me to explore my thoughts and become more aware of my feelings. And to live in the present moment. 

The pain of pretending and hiding is high. It’s heavy. It chips away at my self-worth. Every time I make a decision based on who I think others want me to be instead of who God created me to be, something inside me grieves.

Stuffing my emotions inside and pretending they aren’t important so I can portray a different version of myself is abandoning myself. Instead of living in doubt and fear, I want to live in love and trust. I want to love and trust myself enough to make the right decisions for me, to follow the Lord, and to be authentic to who I am and who God created me to be. 

I am flawed, but I own those flaws and forgive myself for having them. 

I am different, but I am uniquely created by God for a purpose larger than anything I can imagine. 

I am weak, but my Lord is my strength. What I cannot do, He can.

I don’t have all the answers. This is not a blog where I give you the answers because I don’t know them yet. But it is one where I encourage you to explore them for yourself. 

Proverbs 3:5-6 KJV

⁵ Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding.

⁶ In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.