change

Other People Are Not Your Problem To Solve

We can sometimes get caught up in wanting to fix people. But, people are not our problems to fix. Each of us is responsible for ourselves, and when we meddle in someone else’s life, or try to school them on what they should be doing, we’re not only doing ourselves a disservice, but also them as well, as it’s their responsibility to find their own journey on their own path. It is also usually an indicator that we’re trying to avoid something in our own lives by focusing on someone else’s. It’s always much easier to tell someone else what to do rather than take action on those things in our lives that we should be working on our changing. And, when we’re in avoidance, looking for other people to fix becomes easy as we tend to look for the things that we dislike about ourselves in those around us.

No one has the right to tell us how to live our own lives, or to point out the things they think are wrong with the way we’re living, and, that goes for us too, if someone asks for an opinion, sure, go ahead and give it, but if we’re not asked, we must assume our opinion is not welcome and we need to keep it to ourselves. There are some of us too, who like to fancy ourselves as teachers, but typically what’s really going on there is that we’re feeling less than, or know we’re not doing all we can for our own growth and betterment and are deflecting our energies to someone else we think we can ‘help.’ Any time we think we’re better than someone else, or know better, we’re living from a place of ego, that ego may be covering up our insecurities, but we’re not living in a place in line with the universe, and, ourselves. So when we find those urges come up to school someone we should sit ourselves down and look at our own behavior before trying to teach someone else.

When I was living in my disease I often thought I knew better than most of the people around me. And, I often shared my opinion, especially if it wasn’t asked for, because I thought I was doing them a favor. Meanwhile, my own life was a total train wreck, and, was still barreling down the tracks collecting more and more collateral damage. But, to talk to me, I had it all together, and I knew just how you could too. What a hypocrite. On the flip-side, if someone did see through my bravado, I certainly didn’t welcome their opinion on my life. I would be offended and tell any unsuspecting do-gooder that they didn’t know what they were talking about and they should mind their own business, so why did I think it was OK to do just that to someone else? Well, again, I was sick, and in full denial about how sick I really was, so if I could get the spotlight off of me, I would do that at any cost. When I finally had to take a look at my own life, I realized that those things I used to say that others should do was exactly what I needed to do to live a healthy and productive life, and so I had to put my ego aside and get to work.

Today, I don’t look for people to fix, that’s their job, but what I can do is encourage them as they do make changes, support them as they take changes they never have, and love them even when they fall, in fact, especially as they fall because I know they are trying, as I do every day, and I know that those people in my day-to-day life offer me the same, and we all can lift each other up as we grow and learn and focus on making our lives the exciting adventure we deserve, and worked for. Let everyone have their own experience, give them that honor, and do the same for yourself.  Allow yourself to make mistakes and have the courage to do the work you need to to become someone you are proud of today, and someone who feels good in the place they stand in.  You can SLAYER, just keep that spotlight on yourself, and let everybody else shine theirs on them, so together, you can help each other shine.

SLAY OF THE DAY: Have you in the past fallen into the trap of trying to fix other people? What was the result? How did this help you? How did this hurt you? Were you able to “fix” them? What did you see in them that needed fixing? Is that, or are those the things that need fixing in your own life? Do people in your life try to fix you? If yes, how does that feel? Do you welcome that? If not, why not? How does that make you feel? So, knowing how that makes you feel, why do you try to do it to others? Do you find that you go looking for people to fix when you’re not feeling good about yourself? Do you see a pattern in your behavior? How can you change that pattern SLAYER? What can you do this week to turn that spotlight on you and make some changes in your own life that will help you grow? Take action SLAYER, and take back your power to make some good changes for you. SLAY on!

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

Slay Say

Good morning SLAYER! When you try something new you face new challenges, but those challenges also bring new results.

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

State Of Slay Challenge

Does Feeling Bad Feel Comfortable?

When I was living in the dark, I wasn’t happy there, but it was what I knew, and where I felt comfortable. I was torn between being in love with my sadness and wanting to let it go. I didn’t know how to let it go, and I also was afraid to, because my identity had become my sadness, like a black cloak I pulled tightly around me. That cloak got heavier and heavier as the years went on, so much so it became hard to breathe from the weight of it, but I stayed there, and I kept wearing it until the weight of it became too much for me to stand and it brought me to my knees. I’m grateful I was able to reach that point. I am grateful I made it that long. That I found the strength in me to finally lift that heavy cloak off of me and leave it behind. I almost wasn’t able to. And I think the danger of that for me is why it needed to be that heavy, so that I always remember how dark and heavy that place was, and how difficult it was for me to get out.

Sometimes we stay where we shouldn’t because it’s all we’ve ever known, or, it’s what we think we deserve, even when we may realize that we should go, we can stay stuck thinking it’s better to live in a place that we’re familiar with rather than stepping out to unknown territory. We keep ourselves locked away, or sick, and find people who feed into that sickness so we can feel okay for being there, even possibly be encouraged to stay by those with us, as it feeds into their sickness as well. It takes a lot of courage to reach for the light, to change the way we’ve been living, how we’re living and who we’re living with. But we have to believe we deserve more, or better, or something different from what we’ve had to live as our authentic selves and discover what our true potential is. Because when we live in the dark, when we hide in those places that may make us feel safe, but are places we shouldn’t be in, we lose a part of ourselves, and the longer we stay there the more we lose. We step down on those places in our heart that are meant to shine, those parts of us we’re meant to share with the world, and ourselves, we suffocate our true selves and we slowly die there, and even though it can be terrifying to let go and trust that we’re not meant to live a life in the shadows, what we gain when we do is worth every moment of fear we have to walk through to get us there. And the more we we push past that fear to find our happiness, the less we’ll put up with anything, or anyone, that causes us to feel bad, and as we do, that dark place becomes less comfortable.

We have the power to change the place we live in our hearts, we can choose to live in a place that makes us feel bad, or one that gives us joy, one that let’s our heart shine, even if the place of sadness is all we’ve known, we can still see out our own place of happy. It does take some work, and some trust that you can get to that place, but as someone who found her way to her own I can tell you, it is possible, and once you’re there the possibilities become limitless. Go find your happy place and find it within you to believe you deserve it. SLAY on.

SLAY OF THE DAY: Does feeling bad feel comfortable? Why? Have you always lived in that place? If you haven’t, how have you found yourself there? Why haven’t you left? If you have, do you want to find a better place for yourself, a happier place, a healthier place to live? What does that place look like to you SLAYER? Can you imagine it? Where can you find that place? If you can’t imagine it, if you could make it up, being realistic about it, what does it look like, feel like, where is it? Can you find it? Can you work toward it? How? What steps can you take? SLAYER we are more than what has happened to us, we are more than what we’ve been told we deserve, or who we’ve been told we are, only we get to decide that, us, so take some time and think about where you are, why you’re there, and where you want to go, because you can go there, you just have to believe you can and get to work on getting there. I believe in you SLAYER, now it’s your turn to believe in yourself, and believe you deserve more than finding a comfortable place in your sadness.

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

Slay Say

Good morning SLAYER! Life will continue to challenge us, until those challenges become better decisions.

SLAY on!

State Of Slay Demonstrate

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

Are You Killing Yourself To Live?

Sometimes we stay somewhere that feels safe even though it’s killing us. Sometimes we go after a job, a relationship, a situation that we feel we want, need, deserve, but we don’t belong there, and the pursuit of it is killing us. Sometimes we believe if we don’t get something or can’t maintain something we will die, but it’s the forcing of our will or the story we tell ourselves that we don’t deserve more than we have, or things have to look a certain way, that slowly kills us inside.

Life shows us where we’re supposed to be, what we can attain and who we can attain it with. We don’t always listen, out of fear, or not believing it to be true, but the signs are always there. When we’re in a situation that does not serve us there will be many signs that we should get out, people in our lives may even tell us to get out. Many times we make excuses and may stay telling ourselves we’re better off where we are, maybe even safer there, but the truth is, if it is not where we are meant to be, if we’re not reaching our full potential, we will slowly die there. Our soul will atrophy, and we will never see and feel the things we are meant to. I find this so sad, and yet, for most of my life I was slowly killing myself to live in the shadows, to be invisible, and as I lived there, I slowly slipped away and was killing myself in the process. I did realize that at the time, and I welcomed it. I wanted to disappear from the place I was, it had become too painful to live there and to complicated to numb myself enough to make it OK. I stayed out of fear, out of shame, ego, and from self-hatred, not believing, truly, that I deserved better. I was lucky that someone came into my life and showed me that it was possible to have more than I did, and that I did deserve better, and then the work began for me to believe it myself and go get it.

Why do we stay? Why do we try to force situations that don’t feed our soul, that don’t nourish us, encourage us, inspire us? Why do we tell ourselves it’s OK? It’s not. The price is too high to pay if something is killing you to stay there, killing any part of you, there is always a way out, another option if you look for it, if you’re open to it, if you allow yourself to look outside of where you are. We have the power to change our story, our situation, even a little, to make it better for us, to change the direction of where we are headed, or where we should be. Sometimes the greatest gift we can give ourselves is to pause and ask ourselves if we’re happy. If we’re living up to our potential. If where we are is true to who we are? And if it’s not, asking ourselves what we can do today to make a positive change in that situation, no matter how small, because that little crack through an open door, can sometimes let enough light in that you will find that door, and eventually, hopefully, kick it down, or at least turn the knob and walk through.

It’s time to get really honest with yourself SLAYER, it’s time to look at the place you stand, right now, and ask yourself if it’s killing you to be there, to stay there, or to get there? If it is, that price is too high to pay. Make the investment in you, in finding your place, what you love, where you need to be. All of those things you have dreamed of may be just within your reach, with a little work, trust and faith you are being led to them. Follow your heart, always, and get to work, your destiny is waiting for you.

SLAY OF THE DAY: Are you happy where you are today? If not, why not? How can you change your situation to become happier? To make it better for yourself? Do you try to force things to be a certain way because you think they should be that way? Is the fact that you are trying to force something to be a certain way killing you? Making you unhappy? Are there other options out there that may make you happier, even if they are different from what you think things should look like? What are they? What stops you from going after those things? Get quiet today SLAYER, ask yourself if you are truly happy where you are, if you’re not, ask yourself where you could be that will make you happy, and what step you can take today to get you there. It’s all within our reach with an open mind, open heart and the courage to walk through that fear to get what we truly want. SLAY on!

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

Slay Slay

Good morning SLAYER! You are the author of your own story, don’t like the story, change the narrative.

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

State Of Slay Story 2

Walk Up From The Basement

We forget sometimes that we have the power to walk away from a situation that no longer serves us, or maybe never did. We don’t have to stay down in the basement. In the dark. We can walk up those stairs and live the life we want, have dreamed of, and truly deserve.

We sometimes keep ourselves in the dark, thinking we deserve to be there, or don’t deserve any better, but we are the only ones who our holding ourselves back, we are the ones telling ourselves those lies that prevent us from finding our own happy ending, or maybe beginning, but finding our happy. It’s out there for the taking, but you have to have the courage to take it.

Before walking on this path I lived in the basement of my own life. And I was the only one in the house! No one was keeping me down there except myself. And I had lived there so long that I couldn’t remember living anywhere else. I didn’t like it there, but it was what I knew. I told myself it was safer there, even though I felt alone there. I thought I deserved to live in the darkness, where it was cold and damp. It clung to me when I tried to step into the light, like it was reaching out for me from the shadows, and I would let it pull me back down, retreating from the world and from my true self. I played the victim and would say that I didn’t deserve good things because I was a bad person. I wasn’t a bad person, I just wasn’t being good to myself. And didn’t believe in myself.

When I finally found the courage to reach out for help, I was told that my recovery, the improvement of my life, was in my hands, that I had the power to change, and I was the only one with the key to unlock the door and step out into the light. It had never occurred to me that I had that key. I used to blame everyone else, or just the world in general, for my life in the basement, but it was me who kept me down there all along. And once I had realized that it was my job to come up those stairs and live the life I was meant to live. Letting myself come up from the basement was the first of many big steps. Learning how to live outside of it came next, and it wasn’t always easy, as that basement was always calling me with it’s familiarity and it’s cloak of sadness a part of me still believed felt right. Change can be difficult. But it can be done. And as I kept taking more and more steps into the light, that basement didn’t seem so appealing anymore. And that feeling of familiarity started to fade. I started to crave the light, and living in it, and eventually threw away the key that opened that basement door.

We all have a choice, ever day, where we want to live, not necessarily physically, but mentally and spiritually, but we have to believe we deserve more than we have, if what we have doesn’t fill our hearts and minds with love. We are only as stuck as we allow ourselves to be, and sure, sometimes circumstances may make it difficult to extract ourselves from our current situation, but it can be done, and if need be, there are always people out there willing to lend you a hand for a better opportunity or place you can call home. Share you truth, let go of your fears and start climbing that staircase, there’s a bright future waiting for you up there. SLAY on!

SLAY OF THE DAY: Do you keep yourself locked in the basement when you should be living your life upstairs? Why do you think you do that? What do you do to keep yourself there? What can you do to get yourself out? What do you imagine your life would look like out of the basement? Have you lived in the basement so long you’ve forgotten, or don’t know? You hold the key SLAYER to your own freedom, but first you have to believe that you deserve to be set free. You also have to let go of the lies you’ve told yourself, or maybe someone else has told you, to let yourself live freely in the light. It’s all there, what you want, what you imagined, on the other side of that basement door, you locked yourself.

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

Swap Out I Can’t With Actually I Can

I used to tell myself I can’t a lot. What that really meant for me a lot of the time was that I was too afraid to try or I didn’t think I deserved to. And the more I said it to myself, the more I believed it. In fact, it got so ingrained in my brain that I no longer believed I could do it. But when you swap out I can’t with actually I can, you give yourself permission to try.

That switch for me came the morning I finally reached out for help. For years I told myself that I couldn’t tell anyone what was going on for fear of what the response would be, and for fear of what that admission meant to me as a person. I let those things stand in the way of my own well-being, of me getting better, and stopping my own self-punishment. But when I finally let out my big secret and told someone what my truth was, that embarrassment, that fear, that huge burden and power that secret had over me was gone. I opened the door to ‘actually I can’ the moment my truth became more important than my shame.

In the end, there is nothing to be ashamed of. We do the best we can with what we have. And if we aren’t able to do our best, even if we do have what it takes to do better, well then maybe that’s all the best we could muster in those moments. We now have a choice each day to make our best our best. To do better. To learn. Grow. And to start looking at what you can do rather than what you can’t.

When we shift our focus from cannot to can and start dwelling on those things, rather than the later, we start to look for the things we can change, and those things we can’t, don’t come so much into focus. And as we celebrate each new victory of those things we can do, our list of what we think we can’t gets shorter, or becomes less important. We put our energies into what we focus on, so why not focus on the positive, and seek out the positive if we feel we don’t have enough, or any, in our lives. Look for it. It’s there. It may be small when you start, but find it, but set your sights on it and it will grow.

We are the only ones who stand in our own way. Even when others try to put roadblocks in our way, they can’t stop us, they might slow us down or distract us, but we have the power to push through and overcome the obstacles, but many times the obstacle that is the hardest to overcome is ourselves. Try swapping out I can’t with actually I can in your life. See how that changes your perspective, and, how you start to get things done. Focus on what you can do and leave the rest. Soon you’ll notice those ‘I can’ts’ will move over to the ‘I cans’ and you’ll wonder why you ever doubted yourself. SLAY on!

SLAY OF THE DAY: Do you tell yourself that you can’t do things? Do others tell you you can’t do things? What do they say? Why do they say it? Are they wrong? They are SLAYER. You can do whatever you put your mind to. The victory comes in just trying to do it. Write down 5 things you want for yourself. Write ‘actually I can’ next to those 5 things. Now write down what action you can take to get those things. Even if you’re not able to complete them write down, write down what you can do. Write down what you are willing to do. Write down what you are going to do. Much of what holds us back in life is a matter of perspective, so when we start looking for the positive we see more positive. Make a commitment to yourself to change your way of thinking and talking to yourself, instead of saying I can’t, say actually, I can. You can, and you will!

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