Author: Carrie Genzel

If It’s Happening To You You Must Need It

I used to think that life was just something that was happening to me. Now, after being on this path for many years, I realize that life is something that is happening for me. And what I mean by that is that what life gives me is what I need. What I need to be a better person. What I need to move forward. What I need to learn, to grow, to give me the opportunities to reach my full potential, and to help me make better choices so I don’t keep making the same mistakes.

I find that when I don’t make the right decisions, or take the right actions, life has a way of giving me those same situations over and over until I do. When I was living in my disease and mentally sick, I would often think, why does this keep happening to me, I was always the victim, never looking at the actions I had taken to get me back to that same place. I didn’t realize that I had the power to stop myself from getting there time and time again. All I had to do was learn and make better decisions and I wouldn’t keep finding myself in those same places. The opportunity to make a better choice came to me yesterday morning. I had handled something poorly a few days prior, and was upset at myself for how I let a frustrating situation affect me, and ruin something else I enjoy because I couldn’t let go of the frustrating situation. I thought about it after, how I could have handled it better, and lo and behold that same frustrating situation popped up again, around the same event, I could feel the frustration bubble up from my belly, and I took a deep breath and stayed calm. Ultimately it situation was worked out, it didn’t go as smoothly as I would have liked, but it got done, and, I handled it with much more grace than I had a few days before. When I thought about it later, I smiled, because I realized that things didn’t go smoothly yesterday morning so I would have the opportunity to do it better than I had, and when something like that pops up again, I can think back to yesterday morning and remember what the right action is to take, and how much better it felt to not let it get the best of me.

When I look back at my life when I lived in the darkness, I am grateful for it. I am grateful that I survived, because I shouldn’t have, and I am grateful for all of those things that didn’t go my way, or didn’t go well, or just didn’t go, because I have since learned from them. I look at them all as lessons, as information and chances to do better today, to know what I don’t want or need, and to know that I have the power of choice today.  I have more knowledge and I have enough self-love to make the right decisions and choices for me, so when things happen that I may find frustrating or aggravating, I now know that that is happening for a reason, that I likely need to work on this part of my life, or fine-tune what I’ve already worked on so that as I move forward I’ve done the work I need to bring me to where I need to be going. Life builds on itself, and if we try to skip the steps or ignore them, we don’t get to move forward and just leave those lessons behind, we stay stuck where we are while life goes on without us.

Look for those lessons in your life. Look to make a situation you might find frustrating into an opportunity to do better, or make different choices, and maybe look at the times in your life that you may have been given this opportunity before and the choices you made around that opportunity. There may just be room for improvement SLAYER, and, that may just be why you find yourself in that space once again. How can you make better choices today so that you don’t have to make the same mistakes again tomorrow? SLAY on!

SLAY OF THE DAY: Do you see patterns in your life where you’ve always done certain things one way and the same people, places and things keep coming up as a result? Write down those patterns in your life and what you’ve done about them in the past. What can you do today that may be better choices for you? Do you look at life as something that is happening to you, or do you see the opportunities it provides to teach and challenge you for what may lie ahead? Write down when life gave you an opportunity to do something better. Did you make the improvement? How did that feel? That’s all those events are in our lives. Those little lessons that pop up to challenge us, look at them as your chance to do better for yourself and you may just find they stop popping up, because you’ve moved past the place you were and are on to the place you’re supposed to be.

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

Slay Say

Good morning SLAYER! What we find disturbing in other people is often what we dislike about ourselves.

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

State Of Slay Point

If You Feel Like Shining A Flashlight, Pick Up A Mirror

There are times when we all judge people in our lives, we think we have a better solution, or better way of living, or we don’t agree with the decisions they are making. Before stepping on this path, I often had opinions of how others should be doing things, but never wanted anyone to do the same to me, and I certainly didn’t want to do it to myself. It made me feel better about myself to tell others what they should be doing, what they were doing wrong but that behavior was really must a smokescreen, what I was doing in my own life also could have been done better, and I was doing plenty of things wrong, even though I wouldn’t have admitted it then.

What I’ve learned on this path is that when those urges to direct other people’s lives comes up for me, that’s an indication that I need some direction myself. That I’m not practicing my own self-care and because of that old behaviors are coming up to deflect those feelings that I am not doing the work to give myself what I need to live a healthy life. For me, my mental health hinges on me taking care of myself and when I don’t, those voices, that negative bullshit committee, starts to chime in and get rowdy. It will tell me that I’m fine and have me look out instead of in. I used to fall for those voices, listen to them, and even though there were times I knew they were lying to me, it seemed easier to focus on everyone else’s life and what I thought they were doing wrong, than turn the spotlight on myself. Now, having been on this path for over 12 ½ years, I know when I start to have those thoughts or urges to direct others today, I need to look back at myself, because there is probably some work to do there.

What we typically find wrong with other people’s lives are the same things we also should change or look at within ourselves. We find those things in others so offensive because we recognize our own behavior in them and want to fix them, but may recoil at the thought of applying those same fixes to ourselves. We may have gotten comfortable being stagnant, we may have dug ourselves in there, thinking that’s where we belong, but to truly be happy, to truly reach our full potential and to truly live authentically we need to be constantly checking in to make sure we’re doing all the things we need to do to give ourselves what we need to be happy and healthy, and that does require some work. It’s funny how, when we’re in a lot of pain, we’re willing to be to great lengths to find a solution, but when things get good we can get lazy, and that’s when the bad sneak can sneak back in and find a home, because as much as we’re learning so is whatever drives the negativity of our mental health, it’s learning right along with us, and it’s always trying to figure out the workaround and how to crash that bus.

In those times when you feel the need to tell others how to fix their lives, pause, and use that opportunity to look within and make sure that all those things you like to do tell others to do, you are doing yourself. SLAY on!

SLAY OF THE DAY: Do you feel compelled to show or tell people how to run their life? Why do you think you do that? Do you take your own advice? How well do you receive direction or suggestions from other people? How does it feel when someone does it to you? Do you think about what is said? Do you take action on what they suggest? Do you see how your need to tell others what to do can be a deflection of work you should be doing and are not? Write down some examples of when you’ve noticed this. What was the result of not doing the work? Did you finally do the work? How did that feel? When you recognized what need to be done, was it the same work that you have suggested others do? When you have the urge to look out SLAYER, use that as an indicator to look within, to take inventory and see if there is work there that you have been putting off, or should do to be your best self.

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

Slay Say

Good morning SLAYER! You don’t have to fight every battle. You don’t have to respond to every critic.. You don’t have to be offended by what others say. You can simply walk away.

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

State Of Slay Argument

Are You Going To Get In The Car, Or Watch It Go By?

Everyday we have a choice. Choices. We have the power to choose each day whether we are going to engage with each person we encounter or not. It’s our choice. No one can force us. We always have the power to walk away, or, not get in the car and watch it go by.

Before stepping on this path I didn’t realize I had a choice. I felt compelled to always get in the car, to always engage. I had this fire inside of me and a need to be right, even when I knew I was wrong. In fact, I sometimes engaged with even more passion when I knew I was wrong, to see if I could convince you otherwise. It was part of my sickness. Having to be right. I felt like I had to and it took a lot of work to sit on my hands and to stop that behavior. Like many things on this path it was about breaking patterns, old behaviors that no longer suited me, or ones that never did. My need to be right, to fight, was really a deflection for me feeling less than. I didn’t feel good about myself so to prove to everyone else that I had worth, and to myself, I would engage, fight, argue, just to prove a point. But all it really did was chip away at my own self, it didn’t give me confidence, it didn’t give me worth, it always had me in a state of agitation and self-righteousness. I was never going to find peace there.

When I stepped on this path, I was working very closely with a woman, someone who understood my journey, as she had walked it years before me, and still was, and she would ask me, when I would talk about an argument I had gotten in or a heated debate, “do you want to be right, or do you want to be happy?” And when I was new to this life I would always say, “both,” or “being right does make me happy.” But it didn’t really. It might for a moment or two, and then I was off looking for the next battle, or car to get into. I remember very distinctly the first time I didn’t. Someone was baiting me to engage with them and I stopped, paused and excused myself. I walked out the door, shut it behind me and paused, I thought to myself, you just broke the pattern, just now, you stopped yourself. Tears welled up in my eyes because in that moment I knew I was going to be OK, that I had it in me to get better, to change and become the woman I had always wanted to be.

When we consciously make the choice to change, and make better choices for ourselves our lives get better. Easier. With less conflict. Drama. We always have the power to walk away, to not engage with those individuals who are looking for conflict, or the old you, you don’t have to play along, you can do what’s best for you and let that car go by, and let go of old ideas that used to shackle you to having to be right, or make sure your opinion is known, sometimes you can say a lot more by not saying anything at all, and in doing so, get your power back as that car speeds away down the road. SLAY on.

SLAY OF THE DAY: Do you feel compelled to always be right? Or to engage with everyone who crosses your path? Do you go looking for conflict? Why do you think you do this? What do you think will happen if you stop? Do you feel the need to always be right? Why do you think that is? How do you feel when you’re right? How do you feel when you’re wrong? Why does it matter to you one way or the other? What if you just didn’t engage? What do you think would happen? Who would you feel? What patterns in your life would you like to change? How can you go about changing them? Write down the behaviors you have that don’t serve you, cause you pain or unrest. The next time one of these comes up, pause, take a breath and let it go, don’t engage, just excuse yourself and walk away, you’ll be surprised SLAYER just how freeing it is, and just how right taking that right action will make you feel.

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

Slay Say

Good morning SLAYER! It’s not so much knowing when to speak, it’s knowing when to pause.

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

state-of-slay-green Pause (1)

Slay Talk Live Video

Hey SLAYERS! Missed us tonight for SLAY TALK LIVE, don’t worry, I’ve got you covered.

SLAY on!

Give Yourself Space

Too often we put a lot of pressure on ourselves to be a certain way, to not make mistakes or to appear to be something we may not be. What we are, is human. We are fallible. We stumble. Stutter. We make mistakes. We are meant to, that’s how we learn. So it’s important in those moments to give ourselves space between what we did do and what we should have done. To allow ourselves to breathe and pause, to feel what it feels like and to think about what we could do differently the next time, not to give ourselves ample time to beat ourselves up, but to just give ourselves those moments before we rush to negative self-talk and just let ourselves learn, let ourselves learn.

I never gave myself space for anything but perfection before stepping on this path, and if I wasn’t perfect, I was an awful person, less than, undeserving of good things. There was no space to breathe, there was just right or wrong, no middle. I was quick to chastise myself when things went wrong and slow to give myself the credit when I did something right, or had accomplished something I had worked for. When I didn’t reach my expectations I was quick to tear myself down and not believing I truly deserved good things I never allowed myself to celebrate my victories. It was a very unhappy place to live, but my mental illness told me I didn’t deserve any breaks, or moments to learn from, to take a pause from the direction I was heading in and really look at the things I had done. My disease only wanted me to beat myself up for those things, not receive anything positive from them, because it wanted to me stay sick, and, it wanted me to get sicker.

We all deserve a break. We all deserve second chances, maybe even thirds, fourths, fifths, sometimes it takes us many tries to get it right, to feel what it feels like to get it wrong enough that we don’t want to feel that anymore. That’s why it’s important to pause. To let yourself feel and to ask yourself if there was a different path you should have taken. If we don’t do that we’re doomed to keep taking the same path, so take that moment, give that gift to yourself. It may feel strange at first, even uncomfortable, but stay there for a moment, and make it a safe place for yourself. A place you can go to to regroup, to exhale and take away what you need to from what may have happened, or what you’ve just experienced, and, give yourself permission to fail. Let yourself learn, allow yourself to make mistakes without beating yourself up for them. Failing at something can always be looked at a positive thing, as we’ve just learned what not to do the next time so we don’t have to do it again.

Give yourself space. Learn who you are, understand why you do certain things and learn how to do what you do better. None of that happens when we are quick to judge your own actions and then try to bulldoze on to the next thing to run away from the mess you just created. Acknowledge the mess, learn from the mess, and make better decisions to not make those same messes moving forward. Find it within yourself to give yourself that place to love and forgive those things that make us human. SLAY on!

SLAY OF THE DAY: When you make a mistake, are you quick to punish yourself? Why do you do that? Is that helping you? Is that hurting you? How? What if you didn’t do that? What if you gave yourself space to make mistakes, to learn and to make better choices next time? What do you think that feels like? How can you make that happen for yourself? How do you think that will help you? Remember SLAYER, no one is perfect, no one gets it right every time, we’re not meant to, what we’re meant to do is make better choices, to listen to our needs and listen to our heart to guide us to where we’re supposed to be, if we don’t pause we’re not learning and we’re not listening. Stop. Pause. Listen. Learn. Now you’re SLAYIN’!

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

Slay Say

Good morning SLAYER! Know that whatever comes your way, you have the ability to accept the good and learn from the bad to allow yourself to be your best  you.

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

State Of Slay Within You

Thank You For Being Exactly Who You Are

It might sound strange at first, but I genuinely mean it—thank you. Thank you for being exactly who you are. Whether you’re someone who supports me, challenges me, or doesn’t quite understand me at all, your presence has helped shape who I am today.

Yes, even the critics.
Maybe especially the critics.

Some of the biggest lessons in my life came from people who didn’t support me. They challenged my confidence, pushed my buttons, and forced me to look inward. They held up a mirror and asked me to examine who I was and how I wanted to respond.

Sometimes they revealed parts of myself I didn’t want to see.
Sometimes they uncovered strength I didn’t know I had.

Everyone we encounter—good, bad, or somewhere in between—is part of our journey. Each person teaches us something. Each interaction reveals a piece of the bigger picture. And when we choose to see those experiences as information instead of judgment, we gain wisdom. That’s when the real shift begins.

Let the Good In

Let’s talk about the people who do love us, support us, and root for us when we can’t even root for ourselves. Sometimes they see us more clearly than we see ourselves. Sometimes they love us before we’ve learned to love ourselves. And sometimes, that’s hard to accept.

We’re conditioned to doubt praise, to question compliments, to scan every kind word for hidden motives. We brush it off. We minimize it. We say, “Oh, that’s not really me.”
But what if it is?
What if the version of you they see is actually more accurate than the one you’ve been hiding behind?

What if it’s time to stop arguing with the good and start believing it?

One of the most powerful things I’ve learned on my journey is that receiving love and kindness is just as important as giving it. When someone offers a compliment or sees the best in you, you don’t need to overthink it. You don’t need to explain why they’re wrong. Just pause… and say thank you. Let it in. Even if it’s just a crack in the armor at first, it’s a start.

Discernment Over Defense

And then there’s the flip side—the criticism. The judgment. The negativity. That, too, is part of the process.

We get to decide how much power those moments hold. When someone comes at you sideways, you can pause and ask: Is there truth here? Is this about me… or about them?
Sometimes it’s a reflection of their pain, not yours.
Sometimes it’s a reminder to check your own side of the street.
And sometimes it’s just noise—and you’re allowed to walk away from it without taking it in.

You don’t need to accept every opinion that comes your way. You’re allowed to be discerning.
You’re allowed to say, “That’s not mine to carry.”

It’s All Information

Gratitude isn’t just for the easy moments—it’s for all of it.
The love.
The challenge.
The growth.
The reflection.

When we stop labeling interactions as good or bad and start seeing them as opportunities for understanding, we step into our power. We reclaim our perspective. We make peace with the truth that people are exactly who they are—and they’re helping us become who we’re meant to be.

So, thank you.
Whether you’ve cheered me on or doubted me, whether you’ve stood by my side or walked away, thank you.
You’ve helped me show up as my fullest, most honest self—and that’s a gift I don’t take lightly.

Keep showing up. Keep being you. Because who you are matters.
And the world is better for it.

SLAY on.

SLAY Reflection

  • Are you able to accept compliments, or do you tend to deflect them?

  • What if you let someone else’s belief in you be the bridge to believing in yourself?

  • Do you see criticism as personal attack—or an opportunity for self-reflection?

  • Can you identify someone in your life who challenged you—and helped you grow?

  • What happens when you stop filtering your worth through someone else’s lens?

S-L-A-Y

See every interaction as a lesson
Let compliments land without argument
Accept what’s true and release what’s not
You are worthy just as you are

Call to Action: Join the Conversation

I’d love to hear from you.
What happens when you stop deflecting kindness and start letting the love in?
Share your story in the comments. Let’s cheer each other on.

And if you know someone who struggles to believe the good about themselves, send this to them.
Sometimes, all we need is a nudge.