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“A queen is wise. She has earned her serenity, not having it bestowed on her but having passed her tests. She has suffered and grown more beautiful because of it. She has proved she can hold her kingdom together. She has become its vision. She cares deeply about something bigger than herself. She rules with authentic power.”
How to Regain Control of Your Kingdom as Queen
As I was reviewing my posts from this past year, I found that my post on How to Carry Yourself Like a Queen was the most viewed post from 2020. I didn’t really have any idea which of my posts would be most successful, but I was extremely pleased to see this one at the top of the list because, well frankly, I’m obsessed with anything royalty-related. But not so much current royalty - I’m talking about old royalty - the romanticism of the medieval era with castles and sweeping gowns and decadent luxury.
When I travel, my absolute favorite thing to do is to visit old castles and royal residences, especially in Europe. I love learning about the history of it and fantasizing about what life would be like back then. I even love learning about the royalty of Egypt with famous royalty like Tutankhamen and Cleopatra.
So needless to say, I could talk about this type of thing all day, so I’m happy to continue this topic today as we talk about regaining the control of your kingdom as queen.
We all go through periods of life where we feel out of control. We feel like the world is falling apart all around us, and it’s hard to see any light at the end of the tunnel. It could be a whole host of different challenges - financial troubles, job loss, feeling stuck, losing a loved one, having relationship hardships, health scares, business challenges, and more.
But today I want to share with you steps that you can take to regain control of your life, and how you can take back your kingdom as queen.
Step 1: Allow Yourself to Feel it All
The first step to take when you feel like your life is a mess is to allow yourself to feel the grief and the chaos. We need to accept it in order to move past it. Sounds counterintuitive, right? Well it’s not.
I’ve been laid off from my job twice in my life now, and the first time devastated me. I had joined the Swedish telecom company Ericsson right out of college, and I genuinely thought that I’d be there forever. I had always done my job well, and had consistently good performance reviews, so the thought of getting laid off had never crossed my mind.
I remember the day that I found out vividly. I was driving back to the office from taking a lunch break and the second I got the call from my boss, I got a huge pit in my stomach. She had asked me to see her in one of the many conference rooms in our North American headquarters, and I knew something bad was about to happen.
Sure enough, I walk into this room with my boss and a human resources representative. The transaction was so cold. I had given so much of my time and effort into this company, and in an instant, it was all gone. I had to turn in my phone and my laptop immediately. I couldn’t even go to my desk and collect my things. A friend had to do that on my behalf and drop off my things later. Then I was escorted by security to exit the building where they took my badge. This was the protocol for all layoffs and I had just been a part of one of the largest layoffs in several years.
It was like an out of body experience where I could hear my manager telling me to hand everything over but everything felt like it was in slow-motion. It didn’t feel real.
Until I got home. And then all of these feelings came rushing in. I felt embarrassed. I felt embarrassed that someone as high-achieving like me could be tossed away so casually. I felt angry. I felt enraged at my manager, the leadership, the people that got to stay, the entire company. I felt ashamed. I felt sad. I felt lost. I felt scared.
So many emotions came rushing in and all I could do was cry. I was trying so hard to stay professional and calm that the second I unlocked my door and entered my apartment, the hot, stinging tears welled up and I was inconsolable.
I took immense pride in my job and my career. And in this moment, I felt that life as I knew it was over.
And in a way it was. And I needed to grieve for it. As humans, grief is such a terrible feeling but it is so necessary and cathartic. Grief is what we naturally feel when we lose something; and it’s not something that we just feel when we lose a person or a relationship in life.
The pain of grief is great, but it’s the first step in allowing ourselves to move forward once again.
Many women try to be strong and hide their grief - they try to power through it and keep hustling. They bury themselves in busywork to distract them from feeling. But ignoring your pain and trying to distract yourself from it will only prolong the feeling. For real healing to take place, you need to face your grief and actively deal with it.
Taking time to feel the hard and uncomfortable emotions is not a sign of weakness. It’s a means to acceptance. And there’s not really a timetable for that. Some people can accept in a day, or a month, or a year or more.
The time frame is not what’s important, it’s the processing and accepting that matters.
So, step one is to allow yourself to feel out of control. Allow yourself to grieve. Then move to acceptance where you can find peace with what has happened.
Step 2: Take ownership
The next step is to take ownership of your situation. Why do we want to blame others? Because it’s easy. It’s easy to blame your boss, your company, your upbringing, the stock market, the economy, the universe.
When I got the news of the layoff, the very first thing that I wanted to do was to blame. I wanted to pass the blame to my manager, to my former employees, to my former leadership. I wanted to wallow in self-pity and blame the company for my situation. And I did for a while.
It’s much more difficult to take ownership for your own situation. Because when we stop blaming our outside world, it forces us to look within. Taking responsibility for yourself feels a lot more uncomfortable.
But here’s the thing about blaming - it never ever serves you. Think about it - how does blaming someone or something else on your current situation ever help you move forward? It doesn’t - blaming your outside world only makes you bitter and jealous.
Does a queen just continually blame others for her circumstance? No. She takes control of her own life and her own destiny.
When you blame others, you give your power away. And a queen never relinquishes her power to others. She would never compromise something as cherished as her own power.
Step 3: Write a new story
The next step is to rewrite your story. Instead of focusing on all the negative in your life, look for ways that you can tell a new story. Your breakthrough is discovered in the breakdown.
In order to write a new story, you’ll first need to separate fact from fiction in your thoughts. When I got laid off, I had many thoughts racing through my head. Thoughts like, “If I had worked harder, I wouldn’t have been laid off” and “If my boss liked me more, I wouldn’t have been laid off.” But there’s fiction in those statements. The fact was that I was laid off. We could all agree to that. Was it a fact that I could have worked harder and kept the job? No, that’s an opinion. Was it a fact that my boss didn’t like me? No, we don’t really know that.
So strip all the thoughts down to the single fact. And stop speculating the rest. Then write a new story around that single fact.
The beauty of this is that we get to believe in whatever we want to believe. So then why not believe that this is the best thing that could have happened to you? Why not choose to believe that you will grow from this?
A queen chooses her own narrative. A queen knows that she is a phoenix who will always rise from the ashes.
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Step 4: Let go to expand
So now that you’ve armed yourself with a new story, like a coat of armor, it’s time to simplify the world around you. Shed old beliefs. Let go of old relationships that no longer serve you. Let go of the baggage that you’ve clung onto for so long so that you can free up new space in your mind and in your environment. With this newfound space, you’ll find creativity and meaning. Surround yourself with new ideas, new beauty, and new goals.
Your mind will try to keep you small because it’s comfortable as it is, but a queen decides to take her experiences and expand. A queen is constantly recreating her self-image. Because she refuses to let the past hold her back. She instead takes her past and uses it as fuel for her future.
Step 5: Surround Yourself with High-quality advisors for your court
No successful kingdom is complete without a court of advisors. A good queen knows that she can’t do it alone. She relies on support from friends, mentors, healers, babysitters, housekeepers, and more.
Asking for help is not a sign of weakness. In order to regain control of your kingdom as queen, you’ll need love, support, and inspiration from your court.
In your moments of self-doubt or overwhelm, it’s okay to reach out to others so that they can remind you that ‘you got this’.
Step 6: Show up
The final step is to show up for yourself like a true queen. Despite setbacks, choose to show up for yourself. Choose to love yourself unconditionally. Out of pain will come humility. Out of fear will come understanding. Out of chaos will come creativity. Out of darkness will come clarity.
And with that clarity, you can clearly see what it is that you want in life. With that clarity will come determination and motivation. And through this, you’ll be able to regain control of your kingdom ruling as queen once again.
Remember that it's okay to have setbacks. It’s okay to have challenges. We will all face them in our lifetime. What matters is how we choose to rise above them. What matters is what we choose to do next. And a queen will always choose to show up for herself and what she wants in life.
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author bio
Known as The Jet Set Blonde, Brittany Ryan inspires others to add more adventure to their childfree travel experiences. Brittany has visited 23 countries (and counting!) Connect with her to get access to detailed childfree travel itineraries, travel guides for weekend getaways, and updates on adult-only hotels, resorts, cruises, and other travel amenities.
