Author: Carrie Genzel

We SLAY Together

I had the privilege of sitting down yesterday with a group of incredible women, all from different parts of the country, different ages, different types of jobs, skills and family lives, from the outside we all looked different, but inside we were all the same. We had similar experiences, we had done, and do, similar things to get by, to live life, we had made a lot of the same mistakes, and had many of the same fears, hopes, and dreams. It made me smile, and it filled my heart with love. All of these beautiful people were doing their best, they were survivors, warriors, fighters, and all, at different times came to realize at some point in their life that their journey was not meant to walked alone, that there was strength in numbers. We are all stronger together. We back each other up. We lift each other up. And when we do, we get stronger, and we rise. When I started on this path and it was suggested I get involved with a group of people for support, my first reactions was, “I don’t like groups, I’m a one-on-one-person.” And I was. The thought of sitting in a group of people I didn’t know and have to listen to their “problems,” and then share about mine made my skin crawl. Who the heck wants to do that? But I did it anyway. I did it because my life depended on it. So I sat there that first time, not wanting to be there, and the first person who spoke told my story. I realized in that moment I wasn’t alone, and I realized by all the nodding heads in the room as she spoke, that I was in a room full of people just like me, I wasn’t the only one, I wasn’t a freak, a bad person, all of the people in that room had similar stories, and I related to something in all of them, and not only did I feel relieved that I wasn’t the only one, because I identified with the people in that room, I also found hope in the ones who had found a better way of life for themselves, I thought, if they had done it, maybe I could to. And that maybe is what kept me going back, and motivated me to do the work I needed to climb my way out.

I now love sitting in a group and sharing my truth, I get a charge from it, there’s an electricity, it’s palpable, you can feel it in the room, as is the love. I also learned a lot from sitting in those groups, I learned to listen and not interrupt until someone was finished, I learned to share my own truth in a concise and clear manner, and I learned how to be a friend to someone else, a true friend, but also how to set healthy boundaries for myself so that the friendships I was making, as well as the ones I had before, were in line with the path I was setting out to live my life on, a path that was about self-love and respect and being compassionate with others. I also learned that if I needed to talk to someone one-on-one that I wasn’t “bothering” them, that I may be helping them too. I am a firm believer that nothing happens by chance, we meet and interact with the people we are meant to, when we are meant to, and so when we reach out to someone because we need someone to listen, or we need some feedback, we’re not bothering them, we are meant to have that exchange with them because they need it to. They may need to hear what you have to say, or they may need to hear themselves say what they respond back with. It’s a two-way street, at least if it’s a healthy relationship or friendship. And, as SLAYERS, we’re working to only have healthy relationships and friendships, or at least ones on our own terms. So, when you don’t share what’s going on with you it’s actually selfish, because you are not only cheating yourself out of a conversation you should be having, but you’re also cheating the other person out of having a conversation they should  be having as well. Open your heart and share.

I am so proud of the SLAYERS who walk along with me, who share their authentic selves at any given moment, with me, with the people in their lives, and with anyone out there who can be helped by it. Every one of our stories has value, and you just never know who may hear and how that may help them, or possibly, save their life. It was a story that saved my life, and that is why I place so much importance on sharing mine with others. SLAY on!

SLAY OF THE DAY: Do find it difficult to share you story, or what’s going on for you, with others? Why? Do you have people in your life you can trust and can talk to? If yes, why don’t you share yourself with them if don’t? If you don’t feel you have people to go to, where can you go to find people who are like you, or that you can trust? For me, it started with one person I trusted, someone I knew had overcome a lot, someone I knew wouldn’t judge me, and by opening up to that one person, I was introduced to many, and my world grew exponentially. Challenge yourself SLAYER to reach out, to share, to find those like you you can share your journey with, your struggles, and know that we here, we SLAYERS, are all alike, and we all love you, even when you don’t love yourself. Stay close SLAYER, we’ve got your back.

S – self L – love A – appreciate Y – you

Slay Say

Good morning SLAYER!  You will never have a completely bad day, if you show kindness at least once.

New blog goes up Sunday, until then…SLAY on!

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Nice Lady

There’s a supermarket I frequent in Los Angeles, I typically go in two to three times a week, and most times I walk in there is a security guard I say hello to as I pick up my basket. I always make sure to start my shopping with a hello to him and a smile, and as a result he has dubbed me “nice lady.” Now at some point I know I introduced myself to him but he has stuck with “nice lady” as my name when I walk in the store. It always makes smile. It makes me smile because before I stepped on this path he probably wouldn’t have called me that. Not that I would necessarily be mean to him, but I most likely would have walked right and never made eye contact with him, ignored him, lost in my own thoughts and pit of darkness. I walked around like that for a long time, more than half my life, and it makes me wonder about all the missed opportunities I had to connect with genuine, nice people, people I may have seen regularly, but I would not engage with. I’ve talked about this many times before, how a smile or a hello can possibly change someone’s day, how important kindness is, or just to acknowledge someone is there. We all want to feel like we matter, that we’re being seen and heard, that we are noticed, and it’s easy to forget that others do as well as we go about our busy days with our to-do lists and eyes glued to our phones.

I was out for lunch the other day and there was a sign at the counter that said “we will gladly help you once you finish your phone call.” It didn’t surprise me that this restaurant, a very busy LA lunch spot, felt the need to put up that sign, and it made me sad to think that the cashiers that work there had experienced so many people ignoring them while talking on their phone that they felt a sign was needed. I have to say, the day I was there, there wasn’t a single person in line talking on their phone. Perhaps, people got the hint, or perhaps it was just luck, but it takes very little effort to be kind, to look someone in the eye and say hello, maybe even throw in a smile, or a “how are you?” And I understand there are days when you just don’t feel like connecting with anyone, or reaching out, especially to someone you don’t know, but I can tell you, that’s exactly when you should be reaching out, because that act will get you out of your own head, and your funk, really quickly. When we do something nice for someone else, and stop thinking about ourselves, we get out of our own way, we shift the focus away from us and engage with those around us, and even when we may be reluctant to do so, we still receive the gift of the relief of self, and, you never know, you just might find yourself in an unexpected conversation with a stranger who makes you smile in return.

I didn’t write this blog today to toot my own horn, I wrote it because it’s a reminder to myself how far I’ve come, how far we can all go when we focus our attention out and pay attention to those around us, when we let your true light shine, even when it feels dim, and we share that with someone else. I now look forward to those random or chance encounters, and I look for opportunities to make someone smile, especially when I may be in environment that is busy, or stressful, or there is someone else being unpleasant, I love that challenge, and most of the time I can turn it around, which in turn, makes me smile. It reminds me of Dean Martin singing “When You’re Smiling,” the lyrics, “When you’re smilin’, when you’re smilin,’ the whole world smiles with you, when you’re laughin’, oh when you’re laughin’the sun comes shinin’ through.” Now the whole world doesn’t always smile back at us when we smile, but a lot of it will, and isn’t it better to leave a situation better than how you found it,  rather than to be the cause of the problem? Keep smiling SLAYER!

SLAY OF THE DAY: Do you make a conscious effort to make contact with people when you are out in your day-to-day life? If yes, why? If not, why not? If you don’t, what do you think will happen if you start? How will this hurt you? How might this help you? How does it make you feel when someone smiles and acknowledges you? Do you see how reaching out to others during the course of your day can help you when you are having a day where you are struggling? I challenge you SLAYER to reach out, especially on days when you don’t feel like it, or you’re in your own head, smile, say hello, ask someone about their day, I guarantee you, you will feel better, and you never know, you may just turn someone else’s day around too. SLAY on!

S – self L – love A – appreciate Y – you

Slay Say

Good morning SLAYER!  Your only competition is you, you only need to be better than you were yesterday. You are the only one you need to be good enough for.

New blog goes up Friday, until then…SLAY on!

State Of Slay You 2

Slay Slay

Good morning SLAYER! You are enough and you have enough to get started, even if you only have a maybe in your heart, maybe is enough. Start now.

SLAY on!

State Of Slay Enough

 

Maybe Is Enough

Sometimes setting out to start on a new path can seem daunting. The hills you have to climb seem insurmountable, and you can feel defeated long before you even begin. Your mind will tell you you will fail, it will site all the times you’ve let yourself, and others, down, it will tell you you can’t do it, even when you can, but even if all you can muster is maybe I can, that is enough to get you started, to put one foot in front of the other, to take that leap of faith and jump. Maybe is enough. Maybe is the crack of the door being open, maybe is that little bit of light that you need to stay focused, to motivate you to work and maybe give you a place to work to, because if maybe gets you started, maybe can get you to believe that you can.

We all can make excuses for not starting something, we all can procrastinate, we place expectations on ourselves of where we’re supposed to be to get started, or what head-space we’re supposed to have, that we lose sight of the fact that we can just start, any time, any place, we can just choose to start. Nothing has to look any way other than the way it looks. We get to decide when the right time is, we get to decide when we’re ready, what we need to do, the steps we need to take, no one else gets to decide that for us, and when the road gets tough, remember what you’re fighting for, remember why it’s worth it, remember it’s for you. The best time to start may just be right now.

You also don’t have to know all the steps you have you need to get where you want to be, or even have everything in place, all you have to do is start. There have been many times I have started something new not knowing exactly how I was going to get to the finish line, but trusted that if I started that the next piece I needed to reach my goal would come if I just started doing the work, and, it has, every time. It’s about taking action, letting people know what you are trying to accomplish, and being accountable to that goal.  When we do those things, magic happens, something shifts and the missing pieces we need seem to come together and help us reach the finish line. Too many times we think we have to have all the pieces before we start, we don’t, all you need is a desire to do something and a belief you can, and you’ve got all the pieces you need to get started.

Don’t let negative self-talk get in the way of going after your dreams, or goals, or starting something new, dig deep and go after what you want, talk about what you want, and do the work to get what you want. No one can tell you what is right or wrong, except you, we make our own rules and we get to decide what is right and wrong for us. Use your strength, your drive, your stamina to go after the life you want to have SLAYER, and when the path seems dark and a little too steep of a hill to climb, remember that maybe is enough to get started, find your light and never lose sight of it, it will always bring you home.

SLAY OF THE DAY: Do you talk yourself out of things before you’ve even started? Why do you do that? How do you do that? What do you say to yourself? Where does this negative self-talk come from? What do you say to yourself? Would you allow anyone else in your life to speak to yourself like that? So why do you allow yourself? What is a kinder and gentler way to speak to yourself? How can you use words to encourage yourself? When you’ve attempted to start something in past and weren’t able to reach your goal, what stopped you? How can you overcome this for the next time? SLAYER, you have it in to reach your goals, your dreams, that life you want, the time to start is now, even if you don’t know where to begin, begin by taking action, any action, that will get you on the path to victory, trust that when you are doing the footwork the answers will come and you will be shown the next step, the people you will need to help you along the way will come, and what once seemed impossible, in reality, when you just try you may realize that you’ve been enough this whole time. SLAY on!

S – self L – love A – appreciate Y – you

Slay Say

Good morning SLAYER! What are you grateful for today?

New blog goes up Tuesday, until then…SLAY on!

State Of Slay Gratitude.jpg

A Great Day Of Gratitude

Monday will mark the 8th Anniversary of the night I almost died, and by all accounts, should have died. It is a day, for many years, that left me feeling lost, unsure, and sad. It took me a while to process the event, something I still don’t know what to call, a slip, a fall, an accident, I still don’t really know, but what I do know is that against all odds I did survive and I know I didn’t do it alone.

If you’re not familiar with my night on the beach my blog, A Power Greater Than Myself, can be found by clicking this link, A Power Great Than Myself, I talked about that night, the little bit of memory I do have from it and how I was saved by an unknown man who never left his name. I believe he was an angel, in every sense of the word, he most likely saved my life, a life that should have already been taken by a severe concussion, the ocean, and hypothermia. I still haven’t been back to that beach in Malibu, that place where I surrendered to a power greater than myself when I could no longer help myself, no longer walk, no longer fight what was, I was hooped, I thought I was going to die on that beach. And as angry as I was to be there, in the dark, shaking uncontrollably with no way of helping myself, or getting help, as angry as I was with God for having me go through all that I had been through, for seeing me through fighting my way to a better place, and for seemingly letting me die alone in the dark cold night, I realized I had gotten myself there, I had stayed out too long, too late, and I had decided to leave my phone in the car to cut myself off from the world to find some uninterrupted peace. Well, I had done just that, and now that I needed help and had nowhere to turn, I had no one to turn to but the God of my understanding to ask for help. Damn I was angry. But God isn’t there to do it for me, I have the power of choice, and my choices got me in that place, not God. It was a sense of entitlement that had gotten me angry, that sense that I had turned my life around so now I should be protected from bad things, from harm, but I hadn’t protected myself that day, and, just because we are living as our true selves and living in the light that doesn’t mean we are never touched by the darkness. I don’t think I articulated quite that well that night shivering in the night, but I did come to the realization that I had gotten myself there and all I could do was surrender. And surrender I did. I looked up at the night sky, the stars, and surrendered to whatever was next, and when I did that, I felt a wave of calm come over me. That was the last memory I have on that beach. My next memory was waking up the next day in emergency room in Santa Monica.

A lot has happened since that night, and as I had mentioned, it took me a while to process what had happened and to come to terms with why I survived, why I was saved. I’ve shared this before, I feel I am here to be of service, to give back, to share my light with those who may be sitting in the dark, and I think we all have that gift to give. For me it took something almost catastrophic to realize that lesson, with me it often does, but what it taught me is, even though we do have the ability to make our own choices and take our own action, there is something out there watching over us, protecting us when we get ourselves way off track, even when it doesn’t seem like there is, if you look back there were signs, mine were more than signs, I heard a voice that night, it told me everything was going to be OK, and it was, and that voice is a reminder on days that might go dark that there is a light waiting for me to reach for the switch, because when I surrendered and stopped fighting, an angel appeared and saved my life.

If you are struggling or fighting today I encourage you to surrender, I don’t mean give up, I mean stop fighting because you feel like you should have been given better, stop fighting yourself, stop fighting for things to only looking a certain way and embrace what is, and what can be. It is only then that we can rise above the darkness, that we can live in the light, and, we can spread our wings and fly.

SLAY OF THE DAY: Do you fight what you know you should do because you want things to be or look a certain way? What is the result of that? Do you think it helps? How does it hurt you? Are you open to new things? Do you see that your best thinking, or your way of doing things, may have brought you to the place where you are not happy and quite possibly stuck spinning your wheels? How can you change that? If you are unsure of how to take positive steps in your life, who or what can you go to ask for guidance? If no one comes to mind, where can you look? The answers are out there SLAYER when we look, when we have an open mind and an open heart, the answers, and help, is all around us. Surrender to the light, to the good, to the unknown of doing things differently, you just may have more help than you ever could have imagined. SLAY on.

S – self L – love A – appreciate Y – you

Slay Say

Good morning SLAYER! Walk through life with love in your heart and you are ready for any battle. Even when you feel lost, trust, you are exactly where you are meant to be.

New blog goes up Sunday, until then…SLAY on!

State Of Slay Nowhere

Peaceful Warrior

I was sitting across from someone the other day who was wearing a cap that said Peaceful Warrior. I watched him, and he certainly did look like a warrior—he was a solid guy—but he also looked grounded, and, as advertised, peaceful.

It reminded me how, as we walk our paths and go to battle each day—fighting for ourselves and those we love—we often don’t do it peacefully. We may start out that way, but once we get caught in the charge of action, the adrenaline, we lose that peace. We lose our serenity. And, often, we lose ourselves to anger, rage, or fear.

The idea of being peaceful among chaos is beautiful. Like a Matrix-style calm, where the action slows around us and we remain still and focused. While we can’t physically create that, we can spiritually and mentally.

So how do we keep the peace in our daily lives, with chaos all around?

Manage Our Fear

Fear sets us into overdrive. It removes calm and peace, puts us into reaction mode, and blinds us to what’s real. To find peace, we need to manage our fears. Remember—fears are not facts. Stick to what’s true. Stay present. Focus on what you can do in each moment to move forward.

Keep Our Intentions Pure

Do things because you want to, not for what they’ll get you or how they’ll make you look. That’s the way of a peaceful warrior. Focus less on the outcome and more on the reasons behind your actions and the journey itself.

Let Go of Old Ideas

Past experiences or old beliefs can limit what we can accomplish. We are evolving every day. Let go of the past. Believe in who you are becoming. When you do, limitations fall away and new possibilities open up.

Avoid Over-Scheduling

We juggle a lot, but when we over-schedule, we lose peace and scramble for control. We risk losing sight of who we’re working to be. Set realistic goals. Focus on each task. If you can’t finish it all today, that’s okay—tomorrow is another chance.

Win or Lose, You Win

Stop framing everything as a win or loss. The fact that you’re trying is a win. If things don’t go as planned, that’s a lesson. Maybe it wasn’t supposed to go your way that day. Now it’s your turn to handle it in a way that builds your growth.

Don’t Judge Your Thoughts

Negative or surprising thoughts will pop up. They’re not your truth unless you let them be. Notice them, ask yourself why they’re there, and let them go. Often, these thoughts come when we’re in H.A.L.T.—hungry, angry, lonely, or tired. Check in with your self-care when negativity creeps in.

SLAY OF THE DAY: Reflect & Rise

  • Do you think of yourself as a peaceful warrior? If yes, why? If not, why not?

  • Are there things you can tackle peacefully and some not? List what you can, and what you cannot. Why do you struggle with the ones on your not list?

  • What can you do to change that?

  • How can you practice being a peaceful warrior, even on the tough days?

  • What will it take for you to lose peace, then find it again—and not let that loss be a loss but a lesson?

Call to Action: Join the Conversation

I’d love to hear from you.
What’s one way you can step into your power as a peaceful warrior today?
Share your story in the comments. Let’s support each other in finding peace.

And if you know someone who’s navigating chaos right now, send this to them.
Sometimes, a little encouragement is all we need to rediscover our peace.