bright

Slay Say

Good morning SLAYER! No one ever hurt their eyes looking at the bright side.

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

State Of Slay Laugh To Heal

The Living Dead – Numbing Parts Of Yourself And Letting Them Die Off

For most of my life I lived my life like the living dead. I was living a life, well, going through the motions, but was numbing our stuffing down those parts of me that were too painful or I didn’t want to face. I had done that for so long that it became normal to shut down my feelings and thoughts until some of them started to die off. Some of those parts I didn’t even notice were gone and others I was glad to see go because I thought it made my life easier not to feel them. I thought those parts dying off made my life easier. But what was happening is I was slowly becoming dead inside and the only thing I was making easier was for the negative voices in my head to take over and control my life.

My whole life I had tried to fill a void inside of me with outside things, something I was never able to do, and couldn’t do, but by numbing parts of myself or letting parts of me die off I made that void even bigger. My brain was telling me that this was a good thing, but what it was really doing was letting my disease progress and start to take over from those parts of me that knew better or would resist. I look back at myself at that time and I looked dead. There was no life in my eyes, and there have been times I haven’t even recognized myself in photographs. If you had asked me during that time how I was I would have said great, but I would have been lying. I would even lie to myself, but underneath my own bullshit I knew it wasn’t true, that I was dying, and I was letting it happen. It got to a point where I was almost completely dead inside, and the rest of those parts of me that hadn’t died, were in grave danger of forever being numb, but I somehow found one tiny bit of light left, one little bit of hope that I hadn’t killed off, and that little bit was enough to give me the courage to reach out for help before I had let go all together and succumbed to death itself.

Today, after many years of work and learning to love myself, I have also learned to feel my feelings without being afraid of them. No matter what life throws at me I won’t allow myself to numb what comes up, and I certainly won’t allow any piece of me to die off because I’m afraid of it. That does make some days difficult, it can be uncomfortable to sit in my feelings and then have to find a way to work through them, and I do it. I do it because I’m worth it. I’m worth the work, and I know that today. And so are you.

We are not meant to go through life numb, or let parts of us die off just so we can get by without feeling things we don’t want to feel. Those feelings are there to tell us things, to teach us things, and to guide us to where we are meant to be. Those feelings are there for a reason, so to take them away we are walking through life blind, and wandering aimlessly to whatever destination seems the easiest, and not where we are necessarily meant to be to help us grow and learn. If you find something too painful use that as in indicator to change, to seek out help, to understand why these memories or feelings have come up, there is always a reason for everything, so trust that you are experiencing exactly what you are supposed to and instead of grabbing for the nearest thing to numb those feelings, ask yourself what you can do to learn from what it is coming up, no matter how daunting that may seem, there is always a way to find your way on the other side of them, and find a way to let your inner light shine and burn bright. I was able to find my light in the darkness, and I know you can too. SLAY on!

SLAY OF THE DAY: When you feel uncomfortable with your feelings do you immediately try to numb them or make them go away? Why? How do you do that? How does that help you? How does that hurt you? How long have you done that? Do you ever let yourself feel your feelings? What scares you about your feelings? Where you ever told you weren’t allowed to have feelings? Who told you that? Why? You are allowed SLAYER, we’re all entitled to feel what we feel, and we can use what we feel to get stronger and to let those feelings guide us to where we are meant to be next, and typically the feelings we are resisting the most are the ones that are going to teach us the most, so dive in and feel what you feel.

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

It’s Not The Pain That Helps Us Grow, It’s Our Response To It

Before stepping on this path I walked through a lot of pain, not always gracefully, in fact, often not gracefully, but more like the Tasmanian Devil spinning out of control, taking down anything and everything I could in my path. I would tell myself, as would those around me, that the pain was making me stronger. The truth was, that I was the source of most of that pain, which to me, is a sign that were was a weakness in my strength of character, a sign that I didn’t love myself and that my spirit was dim, that light that burns bright inside of me today, back then, was weak. The pain I wasn’t causing myself, that was the pain I could use to grow, because it wasn’t about what that pain was, or who or what caused it, it was about how I responded to it.

We always have a choice how we react or respond to things in our life, even pain. We can choose to let it go, to let it fester inside of us and grow, or learn from it and move forward with the new knowledge of what was learned. That third option is the real growth one, but for many of us, just letting it go let’s us grow as well.

I’ve talked a lot here at State Of Slay™ about getting the facts, and that when we have the facts we are safe. And in gathering the facts we need to do so from a place of honesty, of really just looking at things as they are, not as we’d like them to be or how we feel about them, it’s then and only then that we can use them to grow. It’s inevitable that we are going to get hurt, it happens, whether intentional or not, but it’s what we do with that pain that separates us, that gives us the knowledge and strength to move forward so we don’t get hurt again, or at least not in the exact same way. That belief that the pain itself is what builds us strength is part of our old story, that narrative we used to tell ourselves so we could keep hurting ourselves or engage with people who would do it for us. It’s our choices after the fact that our strength comes from, and the more we make the right decisions, the more strength is built, and, the easier it becomes to do the right thing the next time we’re hurt, because when we’re living in a place of honesty and self-love only doing the right thing feels good, and when we’re working so hard to feel good and to feel love, why would we want to tear that down with our old destructive behavior? Well, some of us do because we may not believe we deserve it, but we do deserve to feel good, we do deserve love, all of us, so why not try to learn what you can from your pain instead of just reacting to it, or using it to gain sympathy, use it to help you grow, use it to let your light shine brighter, use it be a better you.

You may up until now never thought about how you react to the pain in your life. I encourage you to look at the facts next time you feel pain, look at the source, the circumstances, without clouding them with feelings or old stories from your past, just look at what the truth is, once you have that you can decide on what the best course of action is, one that will help you grow, learn and let you be your best you as you continue to travel on this road of self-discovery and self-love. Give yourself the gift of investigation into your pain, and find out the true source, so you can turn those negative moments in your life into possibly the greatest gifts you could have been given, the gift of growth, of learning and of the information you may need to filter out what in life is causing you the most pain. SLAY on!

SLAY OF THE DAY: What do you think is the cause of most of your pain? How much control do you have over that pain? How much of it are you letting in? How much of it are you creating? How much could be avoided by not engaging with certain people in your life? When you do feel pain, how do you typically react? Is this reaction serving you? How does it hurt you? When you feel pain SLAYER, find out the source, the true source, ask yourself why it’s happening, what you could have done to have avoided it, if you let it in, and why, and what can you learn from it so you can move on and let it go. We hold the key to our own happiness, and we have the power to turn our pain into growth, it’s all in how you respond to it.

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

Slay Say

Good morning SLAYERS! Forgiveness does not change the past, but it brightens your future.

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

State Of Slay Forgiveness

Don’t Abandon Yourself

Before stepping on this path I abandoned myself every day. I did it for years. I stopped caring about myself and let my toxic thoughts run my life. It was like I just left the front door open and was daring someone to come in and take everything that was left because I placed no value on what I had to offer. It was a pretty awful way to live, if you could call it living. I was just the shell of a person going through the motions of life, doing what I could to seem normal on the outside, while I was dying on the inside. Until one night, just one random night, when I found myself at the darkest place you can get to, I got really scared, and I finally asked for help. I didn’t realize until I started to get better that I had abandoned myself years before, I had given up, not thought I was worthy, and just left myself there with nothing to defend myself. Looking back it makes me sad to think I did that, because now I am so fiercely protective of who I am and what I stand for, but I did, and I’m not the only one. Why do we abandon ourselves, the one person we should be there for, show up for, and support through thick and thin, why do we walk away from the one person who should mean the most?

For me it started when I began to believe that I wasn’t worthy of the good. That I was less than. That I was weird and awkward, and if you got to know the real me you wouldn’t like me. That’s where it started, and that thinking took me down a very dark path. Because I didn’t believe in myself, I started to do things that I wasn’t proud of, keeping those things a secret, hiding them, and me, from the people who loved and cared about me, which perpetuated my narrative of me being someone who didn’t deserve good things. That lead me to thinking I was a bad person, which led to worse behavior, self-destructive behavior, which brought me down even darker paths, and so on, until I had gotten myself to a place so dark and so alone that even I didn’t want to be there with myself.

We are the only ones who can fight for us. Sure, people can stand up for us, but if we don’t believe we deserve it, or can attain it, it doesn’t do us much good to have a cheering section when we don’t believe should be cheered for. We have to cheer for ourselves, believe in ourselves and fight for ourselves. No matter what anyone says or does, if we don’t believe what is being said it will fall on deaf ears, it will do us no good, because no one else can do the work for us. Now, I certainly have learned to love myself because others loved me first, they showed I was lovable and worthy of love, but I had to find my own self-love or I wouldn’t still be here, I had to find that flame inside of myself and had to learn to fan it so it could grow bigger. I had to show up for myself. I did that by telling people my truth, by getting help, by finding a group of people who were also fighting the same fight I was, I had to be open to try new things, and I had to try to stand up for my well-being and mental health. It wasn’t easy at first, and I had a lot of help in the beginning, but each time I did I gained more self-esteem, more self-worth and more self-love. Each time I was able to show up for myself my flame got brighter, and as it did I got a lot more protective of it because I had fought to get it to burn bright after living in the darkness so long.

No one is worth fighting for more than you are. It is up to you to stand by who you are and for yourself, to encourage, to love, to be proud of your true self. Don’t walk away from the most important human being there is, you, you are worth fighting for. SLAY on.

SLAY OF THE DAY: Are there times you feel you abandoned yourself? When? Why? Would you choose today to take different actions? What are they? Why do you think you abandoned yourself? Where did that thinking come from? Is that information true today? Was it ever true? How are you different from the person who abandoned themselves? How are you the same? Do you still struggle with this? Why do you think you do? Write down 5 reasons that you should fight for you. Look at those reasons at times when you feel you are backing down, when you are not standing up for who you are and fighting for what you believe. No one has the power that you do to support, love, and give strength to yourself, even if it’s just a small gesture, do something today to show yourself that you have not abandoned yourself. Show yourself some love SLAYER.

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

Slay Say

Good morning SLAYER! Happiness is always knocking at your door, you just have to let it in.

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

State Of Slay Happy

Hope: The Greatest Gift Of All

I was sharing recently on SLAY TALK LIVE about giving the gift of hope and that it was that gift, that someone gave me years ago, that saved my life. It was the tiniest of sparks, but it was enough to get me to reach out for help. To reach for more than what I had, and to believe that it was possible to get it. I’m not talking material things here, I’m talking life, I’m talking self-esteem, I’m talking self-love. I hated myself and didn’t think that I deserved anything good in my life. The voices that I was listening to, the voices that had gotten so loud, told me I wasn’t worthy of more and because I wasn’t sharing my truth with anyone, those voices, even though they were lying to me, became my truth. I was lucky to receive that gift of hope from a friend, and I was lucky I was able to see that light in him, and that I recognized the darkness from where he came. There is no greater gift, to see that there is a solution, a way out, from someone who found it themselves. And as incredible as it was to have gotten that gift, it is also a gift to give that away. By being someone else’s light, their torch, and that tiny bit of hope that gives them a glimpse of what may be possible for them.

We do that by sharing ourselves with others, by being honest about our own story, or journey, and what we overcome, or have overcome, to get where we are today. We can listen to them, encourage them to speak their truth, and show them kindness. For me it took someone who had walked the path before to share his story for me to see that there was a solution for the way I was living my life, that he had done it, and maybe, so could I. My outlook had gotten so dim, but the light was just enough that I picked up the phone one morning and asked for help. It is by sharing that we connect with others, it is by sharing that those things we think are our deepest darkest secrets lose their power over us, it is by sharing that we start to get well. But offering someone hope can be as simple as listening to someone. As simple as letting someone know that they matter, that their voice is being heard and that their experience is valid. Sometimes it’s just listening, looking someone in the eye and saying, “I know,” or “I hear you.” In the end we all want to be loved, we want to know that we are not alone, and we want to connect with others we feel understand who we are, or where we’ve been. We want our dignity back, and we want to know how to get it back, even if we were the ones that took it away in the first place. Hope allows us to open the door to a better life, to a better us, to the possibility of doing things differently, and the possibility of different results. When we have hope and we see it in action, we start to fight for it, we start to fight for what we want, and when we do our path gets brighter, and when the light starts to come in we start to see things for what they are and not what we’ve told ourselves or built up in our heads. From hope comes healing.

People have overcome seemingly insurmountable obstacles because they had hope, whether internally themselves, or because it was given to them from others, but when we have hope in our hearts we have a fire burning inside of us that can propel us to make change, to fight for what we want, to resolves issues, to survive, and, to flourish. Hope won’t do it alone, because along with hope we have to roll up our sleeves and get to work, but it’s hope that will get us through when things get tough, when we get tired and when that voice tells we can’t win, hope tells we can. Hope is the greatest gift, hope saved my life, and I know the power in giving that away to someone else, in fact to keep it, we have to give it away, to see that spark in others, to see that light start to get bright for those who were living in the darkness. How can you SLAYER, pass on hope to someone in your life? To someone in your community? To someone in need of your light?

SLAY OF THE DAY: Have there been times in your life that hope got you through a tough time or a difficult decision? List those times. Have there been times that your hope burned brighter from helping someone else, and giving them hope? How did it? When you feel in need of hope, what do you do to find it? Or, how can you find it? Who or what in your life gives you the most hope? How can you share your hope with others? How do you feel when you do? Shine on SLAYER, and share the light that burns inside of you with those around you, when we give hope we get even more in return, and it turns our flame even brighter. SLAY on!

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