contrary action

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 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

Slay Say

Good morning SLAYER! Loving yourself is the greatest revolution.

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

State Of Slay Love Yourself 2

Hyper-Vigilance: Looking For Danger

When we’ve come from a situation, whether from our childhood or as we’ve moved through life, where we felt, or where, in danger, we move forward from that place always looking for danger. We are in a constant state of alert, always looking for what is coming next to hurt us, or knock us down. It’s a horrible place to live, and steals our peace of mind, never allowing us to fully relax and enjoy where we are if we’ve finally found good and love in our life. And even when we do, there is still an underlying concern that something is about to happen, so we always have a suspicious eye, or are constantly scanning for any signs of danger.

Living in that place is exhausting, and causes us to miss genuine moments with those we love because we’re so busy looking for, and waiting for, the next bomb to go off. I know for myself that there have been many moments from my past that have caused me to always be on the lookout of the danger that may be lurking ahead. But there is no danger. There is no danger because I have learned from my past. I’ve chosen to weed out those people in my life who wish to cause me harm, or may be insensitive to my well-being, and for those I can’t remove from my life, I have learned to set boundaries or not engage with them in a way that will allow them back into my life and give them access and have the power to wreak havoc in my life today. And yet, sometimes, I will still look for danger.

For me, it comes down to practicing self-love and contrary action. I need to put my trust in the people I have chosen to be a part of my life and when my mind wants to head into  hyper-vigilance I need to focus on the good, focus on the love around me, and focus on staying in the moment and not looking around for things that are not there. It takes time to change this behavior, and for some of us, it may never really be gone, but we can certainly work to lessen it and allow ourselves to enjoy our lives and those we’ve chosen to be in it. This is when honing our people-picker comes in to play. Of really fine-tuning our choices of those we choose to trust and assuring ourselves that we have put ourselves in safer situations, assuming that we have, because there are those of us too who will continue to put ourselves in unsafe places because that is what we know, I have been guilty of this in the past, those choices not only keep us in a place that we know, they also give us the opportunity to tell that negative narrative we also know, so, it’s about being rigorously honest with ourselves about where we find ourselves and with whom,and making sure we are making better choices, healthier choices, for ourselves today.

As SLAYERS we are the guardians of our own well-being, we need to protect our safety and make sure we are living our lives in places that allow us to be our best selves, that allow us to shine, and share our light with those around us, we can’t do that if we’re always on the look-out for danger. Make sure you are giving yourself the opportunity to live without the fear of what may be coming next, find those places in your life that you are safe, loved and encouraged and live in those places, stay in those places, and don’t let yourself believe that you deserve anything less. SLAY on!

SLAY OF THE DAY: Do you put yourself in situations that may not be safe for you? If you do, why do you do that? How does constantly being, or feeling, like you’re in danger benefit you? How does it hurt you? Do realize you are doing it to yourself? What can you do to stop it? What signs do you see that you have put yourself in danger in your life? If you are not in danger, do you still look for it? How has this damaged your relationships? What have you thought was there, but really wasn’t? Looking back, why do you think you found danger when there wasn’t any there? What can you do to stop this behavior? SLAYER, you deserve to feel safe and out of harms way, but you have to make sure you are choosing the right people and right environment to find your safety, and, that safety comes from you first by learning to trust yourself and your choices. Only you can decide what is best for you, make sure you choose wisely.

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

Avoiding Happiness Is Not The Road To Happiness

Now, this one seems obvious right? But for many of us who don’t think we deserve the good, or make choices that sabotage the good in our lives, whether consciously or unconsciously, we may find ourselves in a state of frustration that we haven’t found happiness. We have to seek out happiness to find it, and to live a happy life.

Happiness is different for all of us, we all have our own definition of happiness, and there is no right or wrong, as long as you haven’t defined happiness as something that is destroying you…it happens, but we get to design and designate what our happiness is, but, to find it we have to let happiness in. And not only do we have to let it in, we have to go after it.

For me, when I first started to walk on this path I don’t think I even knew what happiness meant for me. I probably would have just rattled off a bunch of outside things that I thought I needed to be happy, I had no idea, really, of what the concept of happy was for me. As I started to get better I started to see it, I think I saw it first in others, that shine, that sparkle, I  would call those people the Shiny Happy People, and I certainly wasn’t one of them, but I wanted to be, they intrigued me, so I started to hang out with them to find out their secrets. What I learned is that they had found a way to love themselves enough that they overcame the ugliness of their past, of who they were and what they had done, they had learned to forgive themselves and those around them, they had found peace, and even though that didn’t mean life had stopped happening to them, bad things still come to everyone, even to the Shiny Happy People, they had found enough happy that they were able to walk through it without throwing it all away and falling back down the rabbit hole of depression and despair. See, when you’re living a happy life, and letting happy in, that may get tarnished a bit from time to time, but life can’t take away your happy unless you give it the power to, and the key to that is continue to seek out happiness even through the tough times, and eventually those tough times will pass and you’ll fall back into a state a happiness, although, you never really left it, it just might not have been as shiny and happy as you would have liked.

We all deserve to be happy. We all deserve to have good things. But we have to let them in, go after them, believe we do deserve them for them to come to us and manifest in our lives. It can be hard, at the beginning, to ignore the negative chatter in our heads that tell us we don’t belong there, we don’t get to be happy, and to avoid happiness when we see it, but we can get there by practicing contrary action and going after it anyways, by acting “as if” and by taking action in a positive way our own mindset may change and we may just start looking for the happiness on our own, I know I did. That happiness you imagine or want yourself is out there, you just have to take the necessary steps to get there, and realize that your own happiness is whatever you deem it to be, it’s yours and can be found in most places, so get out and get it SLAYER.

SLAY OF THE DAY: Do you avoid happiness? If so, why? Do you think you don’t deserve to be happy or deserve good things? Why? What if you did? What if you made the decision to go after your happy, what would that look like? What can you do this week to let some happy in? To work towards your happy? No matter how small if it leads you to your happy it’s a big step in the right direction. Instead of avoiding happy, seek it out, go after it, embrace it, it may feel strange at first but soon you’ll find it feels good, and you want more of it, and before you know it you may just find yourself, well, happy. SLAY on!

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

Be Gentle With Others When You Are Hurt

When we are hurt, our automatic defense many times is to lash out and hurt someone else, even of they have nothing to do with the reason we’re hurt in the first place. It’s easy to make someone the target of our anger, fear, or pain, but, that is when we need to practice contrary action, take a breath, and be gentle to those around us, just as we would want others to be gentle with us.

I’ve spoken about this before, how a friend, who helped me tremendously at the start of my journey, commented that I had a barbed tongue, and I still can, I just try to cut that barbed wire now before it can hurt somebody, but every once in a while, it still manages to lash out. That barbed tongue is fast, and it’s viscous. It used to be something I was really proud of. Something I had honed over the years to protect myself. Something that always brought about the desired results, to be left alone. Really I wanted everyone to leave me alone to suffer in silence, in isolation, because that’s what I thought I deserved, and if I pushed everyone away, no one was going to discover how deeply damaged I really was. There, also, was a part of me that, the really damaged part, wanted others to feel as bad as I did, that wanted others to suffer, especially those who I thought valued me less than themselves, or, who I deemed had too much good going on in their lives, I played judge and jury and thought it was my right to knock them down a peg or two. That sounds really disgusting to see that in print now, but it’s the truth.

But here’s the real truth, when we are feeling down, when we are angry, when we are feeling less than, it’s important that we are gentle with those around us, to acknowledge the place we’re in, and to also not forget to be gentle with ourselves. Oh yes, we also need to practice gentleness towards ourselves, in fact, when we practice being gentle with ourselves we find it much easier to practice it with others, and, even find some compassion for them. When we recognize our own feelings, moods, and needs, when can then take action to find a solution to them, or at least take action to ease the pain or frustration, and when we can identify that in our own behavior, it gives us a window into those around us, we start to recognize those same feelings, moods, and angers in others, so even when we don’t feel like being kind, or someone isn’t with us, if we’re living in a state of gentleness, we can be gentle back, or at the very least, walk away and not engage so we’re not adding to their pain, and ours.

Here’s another truth about acting gentle towards others when we’re hurt. When we practice doing this our own hurt diminishes. True. When we are kind to someone else, we get out of our own head, our own problems, worries, anger, we shift the focus off of us and onto doing something kind for someone else, and low and behold, our own mood shifts, things become lighter, brighter, better. I know that may sound crazy to you other barbed-tongued SLAYERS, but it’s absolutely true, and, I challenge you to try it. It’s also a fantastic way to break your pattern, to change the direction of what you’ve always done, and create a new trajectory for yourself. It’s kind of the stop, drop and roll of anger management, instead of just igniting in a flurry of flames, or anger, stop, drop and roll, breath, take that breath, and then respond. Our breath is the fire extinguisher of anger, it will put out the flames every time. Practice compassion towards yourself, and towards others that come across your path, you’ll find yourself in far fewer altercations, and you might just start to identify with what connects you to those people on your path, and those connections, keep us in the light.

SLAY OF THE DAY: When you are in anger or in pain do you lash out at those around you? How do you do this? Do you feel badly afterwards? How does it make you feel? Do you apologize? How can you stop yourself from getting into those situations in the first place? Have you ever considered being gentle when you know you are not in a good place? How have you practiced this? How do you feel differently when you’ve practiced gentleness over when you’ve lashed out? How can you, SLAYER, practice gentleness this week? What steps can you take to ensure that you are taking responsibility for your actions? Be kind, be gentle, and remember that goes for you too. SLAY on!

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

Slay Say

Good morning SLAYER!  Things only change when you do, start making different choices and get different results.

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

State Of Slay Changes

Contrary Action

When I first began this path, I had to rewire the way I thought—completely.

My mind defaulted to negativity. It convinced me people were against me. It whispered that I’d never make it, that I didn’t belong, that failure was inevitable. And because I believed it, I acted on it. That belief nearly cost me everything.

So when I committed to healing—to getting better, to learning how to love myself and live differently—I had to learn something new: contrary action.

What Is Contrary Action?

Quite simply, contrary action means doing the opposite of what you would normally do—especially if what you’ve always done hasn’t brought you peace, joy, or healing.

It’s breaking patterns.
It’s pausing before reacting.
It’s asking: What’s the loving, honest response here?

That pause is the magic.

At State of Slay™, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again—life is not a game show.
There is no prize for the fastest answer.
And most of the time, our fastest answer is coming from an old wound or old wiring.

A Different Way to Respond

In the beginning, I had to practice contrary action nearly every time I opened my mouth—or even thought about opening my mouth.
It didn’t come naturally. In fact, it felt strange.
Awkward. Uncomfortable. Like backing down.

But here’s what I learned:

  • I wasn’t backing down—I was growing up.

  • I wasn’t avoiding conflict—I was choosing peace.

  • I wasn’t shrinking—I was showing up for myself in a new, more aligned way.

Old me might’ve lied to get what I wanted, manipulated to stay in control, or started a fight just to feel something.
New me? Learned to take a breath. To tell the truth. To walk away if needed.
That shift changed everything.

Building a New Foundation

Practicing contrary action gave me something I hadn’t had in a long time: self-esteem.

Every time I did the right thing—even when it felt weird or hard—it built a new brick in the foundation I now stand on.
And once I started building that self-esteem, I didn’t want to do things that tore it down.

Was it always easy? No.
Did I mess up sometimes? Absolutely.
But the more I practiced contrary action, the more I started to trust myself—and life began to open up in ways I couldn’t have imagined.

10 Ways to Practice Contrary Action

Here are a few simple ways you can try it today:

  1. Give someone a compliment when you’re feeling jealous or insecure.

  2. Own your part instead of seeking revenge.

  3. Take a walk instead of reaching for something to numb the feeling.

  4. Breathe deeply instead of lashing out.

  5. Visualize the life you want instead of reliving your worst decisions.

  6. Remember a win when fear tells you to quit.

  7. Take time for yourself instead of saying there’s never enough time.

  8. Say no with love instead of saying yes out of guilt.

  9. Go to bed instead of scrolling endlessly.

  10. Speak about dreams instead of gossip.

Each time you choose contrary action, you’re choosing yourself.
You’re choosing growth.
You’re choosing a future that looks nothing like your past.

SLAY Reflection: Where Can You Shift?

  1. Do you tend to react quickly without thinking?
    What’s usually the result?

  2. Have old patterns led you into places you didn’t want to go?
    How did it feel?

  3. What could’ve gone differently if you had paused—or chosen contrary action?

  4. Where in your life could you try the opposite of what you’d normally do?
    How might that change things?

  5. Who can you talk to when you’re unsure how to respond?
    Could their insight offer a healthier way forward?

Call to Action: Join the Conversation

I’d love to hear from you.
What’s one way you can practice contrary action this week—especially when your first instinct is to go back to old patterns?
Share your story in the comments. Let’s cheer each other on.

And if you know someone who’s stuck in the same old loops, send this to them.
Sometimes, all we need is a new way to move forward.