Freedom

Slay Say

Good morning SLAYER! If you want to fly, let go of everything that weighs you down.

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

State Of Slay Hope And Freedom (1)

You Can Waste Your Life Trying To Stay In The Lines, Or You Can Live Your Life Crossing Them

I’ve always identified myself as a rule breaker. Someone who didn’t follow the pack and didn’t stay within the lines, and I did to an extent, but what I didn’t realize is that, even though I wasn’t following and staying in the lines that society told me I had to,  that freedom I wore so proudly like a badge of honor, that freedom, was actually false, because I had imprisoned myself with my own set of lines to stay within. In a sense, those self-imposed lines were even worse than someone else’s because I had set them myself, and, I was in denial that they were even there at all. I walked around self-righteous about my freedom, but was keeping myself from the freedom I actually thought I had.

Much of those restrictions had to do with my own sickness. A way to keep myself within the lines of my own design to that I could function and still appear to be “normal” to the outside world, so that no one would ask any questions. I kept myself within those lines to keep things under control, or so I thought, and as I got sicker, I moved those lines around to accommodate my disease and to fool myself that I still was free even though I had built a prison for myself within those lines. I wasn’t being true to myself and who I was because I didn’t want to admit there was anything wrong. So, instead of getting help, I kept drawing more lines and those lines kept getting closer and closer to where I was standing, until I got boxed in. And I had no where else to go. I just stood there, terrified that I no longer had my freedom, so I just stood there hoping no one would find out I had boxed myself in.

Fortunately for me I realized that I could cross those lines I had drawn and by doing so I could regain my freedom, it wasn’t easy, but I found the courage to step over them to a healthier way of living, and a place to start over and erase all of those lines from my past to draw a new design for myself, one with a few simple lines to keep me healthy and safe, but one with a lot more room to move and discover who I really was.

Society, people in our lives, even our own minds, love to tell us to stay within the lines, but only we get to decide where those are, and what they are, and, if they’re healthy for us. And, if we find out that those don’t work for us, or don’t anymore, we get to step over them and live our lives in a way that suits us, that allows us to grow, to shine, to live out loud. Even as kid, I often would start a picture staying in the lines, and then would start to color over them, to make a new picture, or a different perspective, people didn’t always get it, but they didn’t need to, I did, and I could still see the perfect lines underneath, but then the flurry of my own creativity on top, even though I used to think I was supposed to do it perfectly, there was something in me that just didn’t feel right when I did it.

Set your own lines, or don’t set any at all, discover what works best for you, not what you’re told to do, step over some lines and allow yourself to make your own rules, feel what is right for you and give yourself the freedom to find your best you without the parameters set by others, or maybe even yourself. SLAY on!

SLAY OF THE DAY: Are you someone who stays within the lines or crosses them when those lines do not suit you? What keeps you from crossing them if you don’t? If you do, what lines have you crossed in the past that didn’t suit you? How did it feel to cross those lines? Do you still cross them? If not, why not? What lines in your life should you cross, but haven’t? What stops you from crossing them? The lines in your life, are they set by society, friends, family, or are they set by you? Why do you think you need to stay in any of them? You don’t SLAYER, you get to decide what works best for you, you can step over any line as long is it is for your betterment. Take a step, and maybe a leap of faith, and step over the lines in your life that no longer serve you, or maybe never did, and discover what’s on the other side. Freedom.

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

Slay Say

Good morning SLAYER! Sometimes what you are most afraid of is the very thing that will set you free.

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

State Of Slay Set Free

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 SLAYER! Seeking validation will keep you trapped. You don’t need anyone or anything to prove your worth. When you believe this, you will be free.

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

State Of Slay Worth

Level Up

I was never much of a gamer, and if you’re asking yourself what a gamer is, you’re probably not much of one either. Growing up my brother was always into video games, I would sometimes sit and watch him for hours as he mastered the game and always managed to find those secret parts to it that unlocked something special or take you to a secret level. I was always intrigued by that as a kid, those secret places with those magical things that not everyone knew about. Life has those things, I feel like I’ve found many over the past 12 years, those times I opened my eyes to something or because I let go and had faith, unlocked something new. One of the reasons I decided to start STATE OF SLAY was to give people the secrets that I’ve uncovered, and a lot of them aren’t so secret, we just haven’t been aware of them, or we haven’t chosen not to see them, or implement them in our lives, but as someone who has, I can be your guide based on my own experiences in the hopes that you can also, in your own life, find those secret and magical places so you can level up.

It’s easy to stay stuck where we are. We can feel comfortable there, even if it doesn’t feel like we should be there anymore, sometimes the fear of not knowing what’s outside of what we know is stronger than the place we stay that no longer serves us. We want to get out, but we stay, telling ourselves it’s better where we are, and safer. We may even tell ourselves we deserve to stay in that place. We don’t. What we deserve is to continue to grow and expand our lives, challenge ourselves, and move forward from the places that keep is stagnant and stuck where we are. For me the first secret to unlock a brand new life was to be willing to look for it. Willingness was the key to the first door. From there I reached out to someone I trusted, someone I knew had been through that door and I asked for help. Asking for help unlocked a lot of doors and brought me in contact with countless people who all helped me on my journey, those who had been there before, and those who were exactly where I was on my path. Once I had these people in my life the secrets and magic in the game of life kept unlocking, especially as I kept working on myself and was learning to let go of my past and work on learning to love myself. That path has led me down some winding roads, but those roads have brought me so much more goodness than hardship, and when I think back to the dead-end I was on, even my best day there doesn’t compare to my worst day here. I have leveled up many times, and, if I continue to work, will again many more times.

We all have the opportunity to get a higher level than where we are. But we have to take that first step. We have to be willing to go after it, no matter what that brings, or what we may need to face. In the end I may have learned a few things watching my brother all those hours many years back, I learned that perseverance is what it takes to win, and that when you look for it, there is always something magical on the horizon.

SLAY OF THE DAY: Are there moments in your life that you feel you leveled up? What were they? How did you get there? Are there moments in your life when you know you should level up, but you stop yourself? What stops you? What are you afraid of? Or, why don’t you think you deserve it? What areas in your life today would you like to level up? How can you achieve this? If you don’t know, who can you go to for advice to find out what steps to take? Do you share your hopes, dreams, and goals with others in your life? If not, why not? What scares you about that? I challenge you SLAYER, to level up, in whatever way that means to you. I challenge you to be honest with yourself, with those around you, and if you don’t have a good group of people around you to help get you there, find them, they’re out there. Walk with them and walk through your fear to go after what you want, or where you are being directed to go, go there, stand tall, and level up to where you’re supposed to be next. SLAY on.

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

Setting Them Free Frees You

Holding a resentment against someone ties you to them, it forms an attachment to them,  it connects you cosmically. And when you are angry with someone, and dare I say, hate someone, do you really want to be tied to them? There’s a saying that a resentment is like drinking poison and then waiting for the other person to die. They won’t. But you might. What good does harboring a wrong or your anger really do? It does nothing except keep punishing you for someone else’s actions. You may be holding someone in a cell, but you as the jailer are also a prisoner, and, you are your own prisoner! So, how do we learn to let go, and, possibly, forgive, those who have wronged us?

The reason why you should find a way to move on and forgive is simple, for you. It’s not about letting someone get away with it or letting them off the hook, it’s about setting yourself free. We as SLAYERS are not pushovers, but we don’t continue to harm ourselves with our own actions, the healthier choice, the stronger, more self-loving choice, is to find forgiveness and let them go. At the end of the day, our own peace of mind far outweighs some grudge we have against someone else, or some plot to find revenge, that behavior does not serve us, it only brings us down to a lower level, a level that brings with it more anger, more hate, and more negative energy.

Finding forgiveness doesn’t mean we are pardoning or excusing the other person’s actions. It doesn’t mean that we need to tell the other person they’ve been forgiven. It also doesn’t mean we are not entitled to have feelings about the situation or person. It doesn’t mean that there isn’t further work to be done if we choose to continue a relationship with that person, we’re not giving them a free pass, we’re not forgetting the actions took place. Forgiveness is not something we’re doing for the other person, it’s something that we are doing for us. It is a loving action that allows us to move on and be free of what happened. So, how do we do this?

First, it takes time. Allow yourself to find some peace with it gradually, and some take longer than others, but it’s also about not letting yourself wallow in it too long, which also doesn’t serve us, nor does letting it become your identity. You are not a victim, you are a SLAYER! To start with, you have to be willing to forgive. I’ve talked about willingness in a previous blog post, and without willingness, you’re not going to get too far. Even if it’s small to start, willingness will open the door to forgiveness, even if it’s just a crack to start. From there we go to:

1) Accept – accept that the incident happened. Accept the facts of the circumstances, how you felt, and how you reacted. In order to forgive you have to find acceptance around it, and focus on the facts rather than the feelings it has brought up, as our feelings may be attached to other things, and other incidents from our past.

2) Find The Growth – what did you learn from the incident? Was there something you could have done differently that could have prevented it or lessened it? Did you ignore warning signs that you now know to pay attention to? What did the incident teach out about boundaries? Could you have been clearer. Not placing the blame solely on ourselves, but typically it does take two to tango, so as a SLAYER, are there ways you could have protected yourself from the incident giving you more strength and power? Use this as an opportunity to grow and learn for next time, turning it into something positive for yourself.

3) Perspective – try to look at the situation or incident from the other person’s perspective. We all have bad days, is it possible the person did not mean to hurt you but his/her perspective was off, or skewed, blurring their judgment? Again, we’re not giving them a free pass here, just trying to see the incident from a different angle. Was there a misunderstanding? Or were the person’s motives to deceive, hurt, or always had malicious intent? We as human beings are all flawed, many times it is those flaws that cause us to hurt or clash with others, perhaps it could have been one of those times.

4) Take Stock – does it serve you to hold on, to not let go of the resentment? I’m going to go out on a limb here and say no, in every case no. There are certainly varying degrees of forgiveness, from flat-out letting it go and moving on to finding as much forgiveness as you can so you can move forward, and revisiting it later when you have some distance from it. But, ask yourself how it benefits you to hold on to the past? It doesn’t. It only holds you back.

5) Letting Go – letting go can come in many forms. Perhaps it is telling the person you forgive them in person. Maybe you write them a letter. Maybe you send that letter, maybe you don’t. Maybe you write it and then burn it to let it go. And maybe you just make a living amends to yourself, to do things differently, to set more boundaries, to ask more questions, to make different choices to you don’t get caught in the same situation again. Finding a way to turn a negative into a positive. You can. You have that power.

Stop drinking the poison and let it go. Forgiving someone is a beautiful way to honor yourself, and to break the tie that holds you to someone or something that hurt you, it also affirms to the universe that you deserve the good, and deserve to be happy. SLAY on!

SLAY OF THE DAY: Do you hold resentments or grudges instead of moving on? Why? How does this benefit you? How does it hurt you? What can you do let go of the resentments in your life? How can you turn those incidents from negative to positive for you? Write out a list of resentments you currently have, using the points above go through each one and find ways to take away some positive actions from them, and, maybe even find some forgiveness for those people, and yourself.

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

In The Doing, Something Happens

We’ve all heard the saying, “fake it til you make it.” It’s something I have used in the past when I’m unsure about something but know I need to find a way to accept it, or a way to do it, but sometimes people have a problem with the word “fake,” and I understand that, we as SLAYERS are meant to live as our authentic selves, so how can we do that if we are faking something? Valid point. But instead of “faking” it, why not look at it as just doing it, just doing it even if you don’t believe it will help, just doing even if you don’t know if it will work, just, well, do it. Sometimes in the act of just doing it, something happens, an understanding, a revelation, and a belief that we can. In the doing, something happens.

When I first stepped on this path, a lot of things were suggested to me that didn’t sound like anything I wanted to do, or things that seemed like they wouldn’t help. I was told to do them anyway. To go through the motions and see how I felt. It felt fake to me. I thought, if I don’t believe, or want to do this, how will this help? But it did. The things that were suggested for me did help, they helped me to get out of my comfort zone and reach out, to share my truth, to connect with other people who were also on the same path, and to give back. Give back. At a time I thought I had nothing to offer, I did, and by just doing it I realized that no matter how low I may have felt, there was someone out there that may feel lower, and might look to me for inspiration, and in just doing, I not only helped someone else, but I helped myself, and I started to believe. In the act of just doing, taking the suggestions and just doing them, miracles happened. I started to feel better, I started to have self-esteem, I started to connect with people and didn’t feel so alone, I began to see some light in the darkness. In the doing, something happened.

It’s not a matter of believing to get started, it’s merely the act itself that can bring you to believe, and sometimes, that’s all we have. For me, my life depended on me just doing it, the voices in my head were still so loud, telling me it wouldn’t work, and I just yelled back louder, “I’m going to try!” Sometimes we’re so set in our old ways, or so afraid, or so determined to fail that we don’t believe things can get better, we shoot the suggestions down before we even start, but if we can get ourselves to just begin, to inch forward, to just do it, incredible things start to happen. And, although it may feel scary, or strange, or awkward, we’ve all felt those things before, and we’ve all survived them, so push through them and SLAY on, learn to find your comfortableness in the uncomfortableness, learn to find excitement there, learn to love that feeling of being unsure but trusting it’s right, learn to believe.

Every new chapter, every victory, every new life begins with taking action, there are always a million reasons to not do something, but there are a million and one to start, that one is you, and that is the most important one. You are worth it. You matter. You can and will make a difference. Just do it. You hold the key to your own freedom, but you have to turn the key in the lock you’ve created, turn it, walk through, and set yourself free.

You don’t have to have all the answers. You don’t have to have it all figured out. It’s about taking it one moment at a time, one step at a time, one action at a time, and as you do you’ll gain momentum, you’ll gain confidence, you’ll gain freedom. All you have to do, is do.

SLAY OF THE DAY: Are there things in your life you know are good for you, or better for you, that you just don’t start? Why? What’s stopping you? What if you chose one and just did it? Just started, even if you didn’t know what the result would be? What do you think could go wrong? What do you think could go right? Do it SLAYER! Even if things don’t go as you would like them to, you still learn, and maybe within that lesson is the solution you’re looking for. But, you’ll never know unless you start. Just do it and SLAY on!

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

Slay Say

Good morning SLAYER! Fears are not facts, they lie to us and hold us back from reaching our potential. You hold the key to setting yourself free by walking through your fears to freedom.

SLAY on!

State Of Slay Fears

Slayer Say

Good morning SLAYER!  It can be scary to begin, to make changes in your life, and start a new path, but the willingness to try is your key to freedom, just the act of being willing opens the door to a whole new world, and your willingness will help you take each step as you walk towards the life and goals you dream of.

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

State Of Slay Willingness