Carrie

You Are Worth The Effort It Takes To Make You Feel Good

It’s difficult to believe you are worth fighting for if you hadn’t been taught that, have been in an abusive relationship, or believe you may have fallen too far back to ever see the light again. I know for myself, I wasn’t sure I worth fighting for, or, that I could come back from where I was. It’s tough to believe you are worthy of happiness when you feel so badly about yourself, or in my case, even hated yourself. How do you stop making choices that hurt yourself when that may be the only thing you’ve been taught, or, have become accustomed to living that way? It starts with you making decisions and choices that allow you to experience your own sense of worth and get you on a path of believing you are worth believing in.

For me, that journey started by joining a group that allowed me to be honest and open about who I was, what I had done, and where I wanted to go. It was that group that taught me to love myself, they showed me love before I was able to love myself, and through their love I was able to find some of my own. I also found, in identifying myself in their stories and struggles, I was able to find love and compassion for them, and ultimately, for myself. I knew I had a long road ahead of me, and truthfully, it’s a journey that never ends, it’s a daily effort to stay on this path, but it is much less laborious than it was at the start. With the help of those people, with the love of friends and family, and the guidance of professionals, I found a plan of what needed to be done to get me feeling stronger, better and brighter. And, I started to believe I was worth it. I started to focus on that work I know I needed to do, even the tough stuff, but I also focused on the stuff that made me feel good. I started to change my vocabulary, replacing I can’t, with I can, I will and I am, and I started to use that self-destructive energy I had been using to hurt myself for good, and started to practice saying the words to myself that I needed to hear, replacing the negative self-talk with positive encouraging words, enforcing that I was worth the work that needed to be done. As I did this I began to notice things change, shift, and those changes encouraged me to keep going. Today, knowing where I came from, I protect what I’ve worked so hard for, and am not willing to jeopardize it for anything or anyone. What I have today was earned. It started with a small amount of hope that I could have it, and has turned into the beautiful life I have today.

Find the words to say to yourself that you need to hear. Find a group of people, or maybe even one to start, to encourage you to be your best self. Do it because you’re worth it. Do it because you deserve it. Do you it because you believe in yourself, or believe you may believe in yourself one day. Make choices that show yourself that you believe in all of these things, and, believe in you. SLAY on!

SLAY OF THE DAY: Do you believe you are worth the work? If not, why not? If you do, what have you done to improve yourself or your situation? If you are still working on believing, what can you do today to start to believe? Are there times that you have believed in the past? What changed that belief? What can you do to change it back, knowing you’ve had it before. If you explained to someone who didn’t know you, what words would you choose to describe yourself? How many of those adjectives are positive? How many are negative? What can you do to change those negatives to positives? SLAYER, you are worth the work. You deserve to be who you are meant to be. To shine bright, to share your beautiful unique spirit with the world, and to inspire others to do the same. Do things today that will convince you that you deserve the best.

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

Knowledge Is Power

I used to be a “I don’t wanna know” kind of gal. I would put off going to the Doctor or looking into something I didn’t really want to know the answer to, or was afraid of. Consequently, by the time I would find out the answers is was generally too late to do anything about it because that opportunity had passed. I write a lot about finding out the facts, or focusing on the facts, and that, when we have the facts, we are safe. But we can take that one step further with, when we have knowledge, we have power. For instance, I was a passenger in a car accident this past summer, I got injured, not horribly, nothing was broken, but just your average car accident stuff, stiff neck, sore back, even though I was in pain I powered on, thinking it would right itself eventually. Well, it didn’t, so I started treatment, and it has improved over the past few months, but having just moved I had to switch doctors, and he ordered X-Rays, that sounded kind of scary, like, what if he finds out things are really bad in there, or, even worse, finds something else wrong? The old me would have avoided those X-Rays like the plague, coming up with excuses to not getting them, but now, even though I was nervous about the results, I went and got them done, because if there is something wrong, now is the time to correct it, not later when the body cannot be adjusted and has locked itself in to being a certain way. Looking at the X-Rays I learned a lot about my body, and why it does certain things, I gained knowledge, and, in the end, what I learned was that things weren’t nearly as bad as I had worried they might be, what is there is fixable, for the most part, and will help me live an active and healthy life, so, with that knowledge I know that everything will get better, and my Doctor now knows what plan of attack to start to get things back on track. I feel better having the knowledge about what is really going on and what it looks like, instead of just blindly going to treatment and trusting what’s being done is the right thing and helping. Now it’s not the unknown.

Why are we so afraid of the unknown? Why do we let it paralyze us? Why do we let it get in our way of taking care of ourselves and seeking out the best care? I know, for me, that even though I can have some fear around something, finding out the truth and learning about something I may not know about, far exceeds that fear, in fact, a lot of time it stomps all over it. Sometimes, gaining that knowledge takes some work, so we don’t do it, but if we’re not willing to work for ourselves, to help ourselves, then who are we willing to do the work for? If it’s for our well-being we should always be willing to do the work, no matter what it is, no one is certainly going to do it for us, nor can they most of the time, so invest in you, put in the work, put in the time, put in the energy to learn more about you and those things that affect you. I know, each of us carries around the baggage of our past of certain things having gone badly, but think about those times and ask yourself if you sought out the knowledge around those circumstances, did you get the facts? Sometimes no matter what we do there’s nothing we can do to change or better the outcome, but at least in those situations we can prepare ourselves for what’s coming, and possibly find a way to lessen the blow. Knowledge is always better than ignorance, or diversion, or not doing what’s best for you. Get the knowledge. Seek out the knowledge that helps you make the best decisions for you, that allows you to be our best you, and that gives you the tools to so you can help yourself.

Knowledge is power, don’t you want to arm yourself with as much power as you can?

SLAY OF THE DAY: Do you always seek out the answers to a problem, or do you avoid them hoping they’ll fix themselves? Name 5 instances when a situation got worse because you didn’t take action. What could you have done differently? What can you do in the future to avoid this same result? Name some times when you did take action and found out the truth and got some answers. How did that make you feel? How was this better than ignoring it? Make a pledge to yourself SLAYER, to get as much knowledge as you can, to find the answers in any given situation, and to give yourself the power to make the right decisions for you, and perhaps, find a better path. SLAY on.

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