change

Slay Say

Good morning SLAYER! Without your struggle you may not have stumbled on your strength.

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

State Of Slay Opportunity Loyalty

Slay Say

Good morning SLAYERS! Life has a way of evening things out, focus your energy on your own success.

SLAY on!

State Of Slay Best Revenge

Don’t Ever Pray For Justice, You Might Just Get It

We’ve all been wronged, hurt, or misled, and it’s easy to sit in our hate or anger wanting revenge, or justice, but when we sit on that space and want negative things to happen to others, we invite the darkness in. We allow that darkness to take over and dominate our thoughts and soon it makes it’s way to our actions, or, by sitting in our hate we have brought on punishment to ourselves. It’s easy to judge someone else for what they’ve done, but we may be guilty of our own crimes, and forgetting our own actions we are just as guilty and shouldn’t be so quick to only look at the actions of others. We always have a choice of how to respond to what happens to us and when we invite revenge to come in we may just get a dose back we’re not expecting.

When I made a choice to walk this path I was eager to point the finger at all the people who I thought had wronged me, who I blamed for all of my bad behavior and bad decisions, but it was pointed out to me that in most cases, the exception was when I was child, I had a choice in who I allowed into my life, who I engaged with, who I chose to trust, and how I interacted with each of those people. It was easier to play the victim and blame everyone else for my problems and to sit and plot my revenge or wish bad things on those people who I thought had hurt me. The truth was, I hurt myself, time and time again, by the choices I was making, and by sitting in that misdirected hurt I became angrier and more depressed, praying for justice didn’t make me feel any better, it fueled my hate and if I was really being honest with myself, it concerned me that the same fate I wished upon others could be coming for me. Living in the light I have been encouraged to wish what I would want for myself for others, even when they have wronged me. Now, that can be a tough one, but I have done it, many times, and it does work to keep me out of negative thinking and keep me in the light. When you’ve been hurt instead of praying for justice, pray they receive everything you would want every day for 2 weeks, trust me, you will feel better, and that anger will pass. And by doing this you let the light in, you focus on the positive and from that place real change can happen, good change. It’s like the blinders come off and we can see clearly, the whole picture, and not just what we want to see because it suits the narrative we want to tell. We, as adults, always have a part, and perhaps what has happened is there to show us changes we need to make, or to teach us something, perhaps, just maybe, we should be thanking that person for that lesson rather than condemning them.

We should never be wishing or praying for something we would not want for ourselves, when we do we are working from a place of victim-hood and not taking responsibility for our part or the power we have. Even if we are a victim of a random crime or accident, we still have a choice how we respond to what happened, and when we choose revenge we are also choosing to live in the darkness which only invites more darkness in our lives. It’s important to practice contrary action and send out good energy, even to those who may have harmed us, and it’s important to send it back to ourselves as well, as we likely contributed to our own harm. Send out positive energy and positive is what you’ll get back and what you’ll see moving forward. SLAY on!

SLAY OF THE DAY: Do you pray for revenge when you’ve been wronged, hurt or harmed? How do you feel when you do that? Does it make the situation any better? Do you find that your thoughts stay in the negative and affect your daily life? How do they do that? Does that feel good? Are you able to see your part in those situations? Do you think you could wish good things for someone who may have wronged, hurt or harmed you? Do you think you could try? Trust me SLAYER, when we are able to send out love, even to those who have not shown us love, we win, and we allow ourselves to live in the light and look for the positive in our lives. Light attracts light, and when we choose to live in it we find more, and, we find more people who also live there instead of focusing on those who do not.

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

Slay Slay

Good morning SLAYER! Holding on is believing there is only a past, letting go is knowing there is a future.

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

state-of-slay Hurt Holding Back

Slay Say

Good morning SLAYER! Negative thoughts don’t protect you, they make you smaller.

SLAY on!

State Of Slay Believing Negative Thoughts

Cherishing Our Character Defects

When I stepped on this path I was encouraged to write down what I thought were my character defects. Defects? That seemed harsh. I mean, clearly, there were some things that weren’t working in my life, after all, I had gotten myself to a place where I could no longer find a way out on my own, but defects, let me digest that for a moment. When I looked up the definition it said that a character defect was a fault, failing, weakness, I didn’t like that one, flaw, shortcoming and inadequacy, it implies moral and psychological failings, yikes! It took me a while to wrap my head around, what I considered, harsh language, and yet, on the flip side, the words I would have used to describe myself at that moment in my life would have been far harsher than those. Outside of just my ego not wanting to admit I had character defects that there preventing me from having the life I would like, it was realizing that many of them, I may have grown fond of, and, may not be willing to let them go.

We all have behaviors, things we do, that we may realize are probably not the best, but we’ve been using them for so long that they feel comfortable to us, or, we practice them out of habit, not even realizing we’re using them. So the first step for me to making a list of things I use or did that ultimately harmed me, or stood in my way of freedom, was to recognize them for what they were. I started out with pen in hand and began writing down what I thought were bad qualities, still thinking of myself as a horrible person, that pen starting flying across the page as I feverishly started to purge what I thought were the worst of my worst defects. And as I wrote, my ego tried to take some of them back as helpful or tools I needed to protect myself, or keep others in line, that’s where I had to get honest. See, I found myself in a place of complete darkness and despair because my ego and negative thinking had been running the show, I had used those defects to get me right where I was, which was total emptiness, so I had to let go of anything that was not going to contribute to my greater good, every one of them had to go. It helped that I was told to write the positive attribute next to each defect I had written down, that way when I caught myself falling back on old behavior I had a quick reference to the opposite behavior to combat the negative. And I wish I could say that just that alone wiped them all out, it didn’t, I still struggle with some today, 14 years later, but, the point is to be willing to let them go, or change, and focus on practicing contrary action, finding a positive attribute to replace the one that is not working for me, and retraining myself to not romanticize the negative into something I need or want.

We all have things we may know hold us back, keep us from moving forward or build a wall between us or others. We may feel these things are our friends and keep us safe and out of harm’s way, but really they themselves are harming us by not allowing us to engage with others and be our best selves. Look at your behaviors and patterns for what they are, not what you want them to be, and be willing to let the ones go that are holding you back from where you are meant to be. SLAY on!

SLAY OF THE DAY: Do you recognize behaviors or patterns in your life that would be labeled as a character defect? What are they? Do you hold on to them knowing you should let them go? Why? What stops you from letting them go? Do you romanticize them? How does this hurt you? How have they prevented you from receiving what you would like in your life? What can you do to change that? Write down the character defects or flaws you see in yourself, not to beat yourself up, to use a tool to change, and next to each one write the positive attribute to the negative, then you have a path to removing the negative and focusing on the positive. It takes work and a willingness to change, but it’s worth it when you begin to make better choices that reflect the light within you.

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

Are You Disconnected From Yourself?

For much of my life, I felt like I had stepped out of myself and was observing my life from a distance. Not having a way to feel my feelings in a healthy way and a way that promoted my growth, I hide from my feelings and eventually, when the pain got to be too much, disassociated from them and myself. It was a very lonely existence knowing I didn’t have myself on my own side, and feeling like someone else, or something else, was running the show. And even on a night when I made a decision that could have proved to be fatal, I sat back and watched it happen until the fear of what I had done brought me back to myself long enough to surrender and ask for help. It’s frightening to think about now, as I have worked over the past 14 years to be present and in the moment, no matter how uncomfortable or painful that might be, it is important to me to feel my feelings and work through them in a healthy and productive way. To get to this point in my journey, I had to get honest and I had to learn to feel.

I had, at a very young age, stuffed down my feelings. I was afraid to share how I felt, feeling I would be judged for it, made fun of, I would not look smart, or, that I was wrong feeling what I felt. That thinking caused me a tremendous amount of anxiety, which made me feel even more self-conscious and made me disconnect from myself even more. Not giving myself permission to feel my feelings I never learned how to process them when they came up, so I started looking for outside things to change how I felt or to mask or numb what I didn’t want to feel. I constantly lived in my own head, creating other places for myself to go, then I started to control what I ate, then how I did things, having to do them in very specific ways or that anxiety or feeling of dread would pop up again, and on and on it continued, until what I needed to do to stuff down my feelings became bigger and bigger, and, would later threaten my life. Having to sit in the uncomfortableness of my feelings was difficult at first, but I was taught to breathe through it and to acknowledge how I felt, but then let it go, some things were easier to let go than others, but the more I practiced it the easier it got. I began to write down how I felt, which I found to be helpful in showing patterns of when my feelings popped up and what they were attached to. I worked with a counselor to help me make sense of the feelings I didn’t understand, and I began to carve out some quiet time each day to find some peace and to focus on finding a foundation I could build on in this new journey. Feelings aren’t facts, and most times they are tied into something that has nothing to do with our present circumstances, they are old ideas, stories and narratives we’ve told ourselves, or have been told, that we cling to making them our truths even when they are not, or may not be anymore. But feelings can be indicators that something is wrong and can be used as tools if we acknowledge them and process them as such, and they can be wonderful, positive and something we can cherish and enjoy. The bottom line is we have to stay connected to who we are and what we feel and making sure what we feel is accurate, or take note of what they’re telling us as they might be what we need to know to move forward.

Staying connected and present can be challenging at times, we don’t always want to feel our feelings, but avoiding them only puts up a wall between them and us, and the more we avoid them the higher that wall becomes until we may not be able to see ourselves anymore. Stay connected to who you are and know that, even if you don’t want to feel what you feel, feelings pass, and they may be trying to tell you something you should know. SLAY on!

SLAY OF THE DAY: Do you feel like you are connected to yourself? If not, why not? Why do you think you disconnect from yourself? How do you think it helps you? How does it harm you? What type of feelings you do try to avoid? Why is that? How do you avoid them? Do you go to unhealthy lengths to avoid your feelings? How do you do that? What can you do to stay connected with yourself and how you feel today? What type of things can you do to keep that connection? We are not meant to live a life disconnected from who we are, we are meant to find a connection within ourselves and to what is around us, to live in harmony within our own lives but within a community that we identify with and fills us with joy. Find your own joy within as you love yourself and honor yourself in each present moment.

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

Slay Say

Good morning SLAYER! Sometimes the hardest part of the journey is believing you’re worth the trip.

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

State Of Slay Just A Reminder

Slay Say

Good morning SLAYER! 97% of what you worry about never happens.

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

State Of Slay Anxiety Figure Out

Slay Say

Good morning SLAYER! What’s behind your walls?

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

State Of Slay Confined By The Walls