opportunities

Life Is A Road Not A Rest Stop

Most of us set goals for ourselves, or have a destination in mind we’d like to get to. We keep working and striving to get where we want to be, or may get diverted to where we should be. But there are those of us too, or times in our lives, that stop. Sometimes those rests are needed, we do need to take breaks and allow ourselves to regain focus, recharge or rethink where we’re headed, but keeping ourselves in check so we don’t get too comfortable where we are and overstay our welcome is important. We’re not meant to stand still and remain where we are, we are meant to learn, grow and move forward, even though that place where we may find ourselves may feel safe, or all we can every attain, it is not, on both accounts, unless we believe that, and we shouldn’t allow ourselves to.

I used to talk myself out of many opportunities even before they started. I would allow my negative self-talk convince me that I wasn’t good enough, or it was too difficult or I didn’t deserve what I wanted or what was presented in front of me. I had goals, there were things I wanted, and if I obtained them enough, I would sit tight and hide, thinking it would be taken away or in fear of the next goal or milestone. I would let the entirety of the journey ahead stall me before I even left the gate, and those voices in my head would tell me I was reaching too high and could never get there. It wasn’t until I changed paths and started on the path I am now that I was told that all I had to do was what was in front of me today, and do the best I could within that day, that things changed for me. Just focusing on today was much more manageable, and sometimes at the start, it was focusing on minute by minute, but it helped me to break it down into more manageable parts. As I began to practice this new way of life I started reaching new milestones and goals I had set for myself, my life was moving forward and I was leaving my old life behind. I attribute that to the work I was doing and my change in method, but I also attribute that to finally being in the right path, the path I was meant to be on. I find that when we are trying to force a certain path that movement forward is painstakingly slow, if at all, and each step feels like trying to run through quick sand, but when we are where we are meant to be, those steps can easily turn into long strides of achievement. I was not mean to stay where I was, in fact I would have died there, I was and am meant to be exactly where I am today.

It is always important to take breaks and rest, but we need to make sure we haven’t lost track of time and have stayed in a rest stop when we are meant to be back on the road. We all have a purpose, a reason for being here, whether you know what your calling is or not, it’s about following your heart, your soul, that inner voice inside of you that guides you and shows you the way, or it may be finding that to start, but it’s there, if you let yourself be quiet enough to hear it, maybe that is your path, right here, right now. Many times life doesn’t look the way we thought it would be, or should be, but we are shown different paths or lead to them for a reason, if you don’t like the one you’re on, stop and look around, listen, take rest, and then get back on the road that calls your name. SLAY on!

SLAY OF THE DAY: Do you feel like you’re on road or stuck in a rest stop? Why do you feel this way? Do you feel like you need a rest, or got stuck there? Or, are you afraid to leave there? Are you happy with the road you find yourself on today? If not, why not? How can you find the right road for you? What road would you like to find yourself on? What steps can you take today to get yourself closer to that road? Each and every day there are many roads in front of us, with many exits and rest stops, take the road that feels most authentic to you, even if it’s the more difficult, if it is where you are meant to be, that road will become less treacherous, and you may just find yourself on the expressway.

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

 

Avoid Slippery Places

As we walk our own path, working to be our best selves, giving back to others, and challenging ourselves to grow and move forward, we can sometimes hit a slippery patch if we’re not paying attention to where we’re going. Those slippery patches can be different for all of us, depending on what we’re not wanting to slip back to. For an alcoholic it could be a bar or social situation that we used to drink at, for a gambler it could be a casino, for a overeater it can be passing by our favorite bakery, and it can be as simple as engaging with family and friends. Anyone, or anything, that triggers us to our old way of thinking can cause us to slide back to our old ways, if we’re not careful.

For me, those emotional places are the trickiest, as specific situations or actions can cause me to recoil, reminding me of someone or something from my past. They can, at times, seemingly, come out of nowhere, and then BAM, they’re right in my face, and it’s in those moments when I have to make a choice, to do what I’ve always done, or to make a different and better choice than I used to. Those slippery places are much more difficult for me than any physical place, or object, that may remind me of my past. And, I also have to ask myself honestly, if I sought out a specific situation because it’s one I know, even if it wasn’t done consciously. I would have to say no, today, but the universe has a way to testing us, and disguising otherwise different looking situations and then we realize they are not. For me, it’s important to acknowledge what my part may be in finding myself there, and if there were no warning signs or self-sabotage, asking why the universe has chosen to place me there and what am I there to learn. You see, just because we find ourselves in a similar situation as we have before, doesn’t mean it’s necessarily bad for us, it may be just another opportunity to do things better than we have before and to move past that issue or pain from our past and finally let it go. It takes some sleuth work to look at it for what it is, and a lot of honesty, but if we walk our new path with awareness of who we are today, and where we don’t want to go again, most things should be easy to navigate through, some are a little more difficult to identify, which is why it always helps to have some good sounding boards in our lives, those people who are like us, and can help us walk through those murky waters.

It is up to us to stay away from the slippery places in our lives, and when we find ourselves there, to recognize them and safely walk ourselves through them. Life is full of slippery places, but it’s important to stay firmly on our path and continue to make decisions and choices that honor who we are today and the way of life we are currently living. There is nothing waiting for us in the past, it has already happened, and hopefully, taught us what we need to know today and in the future, nothing can be gained by sliding back. Watch your steps today and make sure you’re not unnecessarily tempting yourself by walking too close to your old way of life. SLAY on!

SLAY OF THE DAY: Do you tempt yourself by putting yourself in old situations or with triggers from your past? Why do you do this? If not, why do you think you’ve stopped? Do you sometimes find yourself in situations that are the same or remind you of your past? How do you think you get there? Do you think you seek out those situations? Or, do you think that sometimes those situations look different to start and the universe has disguised them as something they are not to see if you’ve moved past who you were before? What situations today do you avoid to live a healthier and happier life? How did you overcome them? What can you still work on to avoid slipping back? We naturally do tend to look for situations we are familiar with, but it is up to us to not engage in those activities, or those people, who pull us back to who we used to be, we must be diligent about our path today and protecting it from the those slippery places that can cause us to fall.

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

Never, Never Again

There were so many times in my life, before walking this path, that I would say never again. And yet, I would repeat those same behaviors over and over, even the ones I knew were self-destructive and were taking down an even darker road than I was already on. My attitude, always, was, well if I’ve already messed up this little bit I might as go whole hog and hit the “f*ck it button.” There was no middle ground, I was either doing great, or down in the dumps, I gave myself no room for anything in between. Living within those tight parameters I was setting myself up to fail, most of the time, and truthfully that’s where my head wanted me, to constantly be failing so I would increasingly get worse and think there was no way out. But there was.

When I finally fell to my knees and was able ask for help, I was told it takes time to break old habits and to begin a new way of life, and that even if I made mistakes, or failed in my opinion, that was part of the recovery process. That I had to wrap my head around. Failure was part of the process? Well, the truth was, it wasn’t really “failure,” it was all just part of the process, something I had to learn as I fell and got back up again. I also learned that those falls were where I learned the most, so they, for me, were an essential part of the process. I had to find comfortabililty in the gray areas between what I viewed as “right” or “wrong.” Being OK in the gray wasn’t easy at first because the minute I wasn’t perfect at this new way of life and slipped back into old behaviors or patterns, that negative bullshit committee in my head would pipe up and say, “see, you can’t do it!” In fact, they would scream it. And, I had to learn to say, “you’re lying, I can, watch me.”

Change takes time. It takes of trying, over and over again, until it becomes less effort. Until it becomes a part of who you are and not something you have to think about anymore. You are going to fail, or fall, or make mistakes, that’s part of making changes, but the important thing is to not give up, to keep going, to do better next time, or try again. Don’t put those parameters on yourself and say never again, you may do it again, you may do it many times before you stop doing it, and even when you stop doing it, you may do it another time. Allow yourself to have some wiggle room, to be in the gray space in between, where you’re trying your best, and that’s good enough, it is actually more than good enough. It was pointed out to me in my early journey that I had done things the old way much longer than I had the new way, so it wasn’t fair to beat myself for falling back to what I knew or once did, but I always had the chance to do it better the next time. And that’s what I did. It’s been over 13 years now and sometimes I can still fall back, but I know now that when I do it’s just a moment and it’s not who I am today, and maybe I fall back from time to time to remind myself where I don’t want to fall back to, and that’s OK, because today I know the right choices for me and what I need to do to live this life I’ve worked so hard for, a slip from time to time isn’t the end of the world, it’s just part of the process.

Allow yourself to make mistakes, and when you do, never say never again, say, I’ll do better next time, or I’ll try to, or, I did my best today. No one is perfect, and embracing those times we may fall back, and learning to look at them as learning opportunities rather than failures is the mindset that will get us to the place we’re working so hard for, I know, because I got there, and I know you can too. SLAY on!

SLAY OF THE DAY: Do you feel like you’ve failed if you fall back on old behaviors? Do you beat yourself up for it? Do you set strict parameters for yourself that you can’t possibly live within to grow and learn naturally? Why do you think you do this? How do you think you can ease those parameters to let yourself grow and make mistakes as part of your process and journey? What do you think will happen if you do? Let yourself live in the gray area sometimes, let go of the restrictions of right or wrong and let yourself find your way, always striving to do better the next time if you haven’t made the best choice in the moment, let yourself find the right way and not beat yourself up for the mistakes along the way, those mistakes might just be what’s guiding you to the right choice the next time.

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

Just Show Up

There were so many times in my life, before stepping on this path, when I never started things. When I meant to make better choices, different choices, healthier choices, but didn’t feel like I had enough information to start, or it wasn’t the right time, or I thought I should wait for a bigger sign, when really all I had to do was just show up. There are always excuses or reasons not to start something, or show up for someone or yourself, but all that is required is to show up, to do the best you can and figure it out as you go. No one has all the answers. No one. There isn’t some magical guide out there with the right way to do everything. Well, I guess there is, but it’s not something you can hold in your hand, it’s inside of us. Each an every one of us has that magical guide, it burns inside of us and when we connect with it, and listen to it, it shows us, not only by the way we feel, but it will show us in ways we can see, hear and touch. We just have to be open to it.

When I was living in the dark I had turned off that inner guide. My mental illness told me I knew better. that I didn’t need to listen to it, or that it wasn’t actually there at all, but it was, I had just stuffed it down, piled a bunch of stuff on top of it and had numbed myself so much I couldn’t hear it anymore, or feel that it was there. That’s exactly where my disease wanted me, so it could tell me things that weren’t true. It told me that there was no use in starting something new because it wouldn’t work, or I wouldn’t be good at it, or no one would accept me. And since I had turned off my inner guide and wasn’t sharing these thoughts with anyone, I believed it. I watched opportunity after opportunity pass me by and each time I did, I sank deeper in the darkness. The only opportunities not taking those opportunities gave me was the ability to continue to knock myself down and tell myself I wasn’t good enough, that I was too much of a coward to start something new or try to live a better life, or that I wasn’t worth showing up for. It seems so simple, looking back, that each time an opportunity did come up all I had to do was show up to make a difference, to change the pattern I was in, but I stayed where it felt safe, where my disease wanted me, until I had to make a change to save my life.

I can’t say what exactly happened to make me finally show up for myself, I just knew that I had to or I would no longer have a choice. That little bit of light inside of me shined that night as bright as it could, but it was enough, it was enough to ask for help and to finally show up. When I did, I had no idea what to do next, or how things were going to go, but I was there, I was present for me, and I asked for direction from those who had stood where I was, and I kept just showing up, each day, and each day I got stronger, I got better, I started to shine brighter.

You don’t have to know all the answers, or the path you need to be on to change your life. Just show up. Be willing. Be open. Just be. One of my favorite quotes is by Zig Ziglar, it goes “You don’t have to be great to start, but you do have to start to be great.” Just start, because that in itself is great, and if you show up each day ready to start and take on whatever may come, one day you may just realize how great you really are. SLAY on!

SLAY OF THE DAY: Do you stop yourself from starting something new or something you know is good for you? Why? What’s stops you? What do you tell yourself that stops you? How can you get around this? What should you be starting that you haven’t? What can you do to start? How will starting help you? Focus on the good SLAYER, focus on how showing up can help you grow, help you to move on, and help you to move forward to where you are meant to be. I know that can be scary, walking on a path you’ve never walked, but trust that you are there for a reason, and know that there are many of us walking that same path who will walk with you. You are not alone. Just show up. You’ll see us there.

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

Contempt Prior To Investigation

I used to think I knew better. I thought I knew better than all of you, and I thought I knew if I was going to like something, even if I had never done it before. And because I lived in a negative space, I often said no to things without ever trying them. Before someone could even finish asking me to join in or participate in something I had already made up my mind I didn’t want to do it. Some of that came from fear, fear of never having done it and now knowing what the result will be, or, maybe looking stupid because I didn’t know what I was doing. My first reaction to any invite or suggestion was no. As a result, I missed out on a lot of things, a lot of opportunities, because I had already condemned something before it happened.

When I stepped on this path, I was encouraged to say yes. Yes was a word that made my anxiety shoot up immediately. What if I didn’t like what I agreed to do? What if I didn’t like the people? What if they didn’t like me? What if? What if? But I knew if multiple people kept encouraging me to say yes, I had to try, I had to say yes to saying yes, no matter how nervous that made me. I had to watch myself, in the beginning, I had to watch that I didn’t jump in each time with a quick no, I would breathe, make myself listen and then tell myself, regardless of what it was, I had to say yes, just to try. If I didn’t like it I didn’t have to do it again. I made a commitment to myself, that in that first year I had to say yes, so the year of yes began.

The first few times it was tough, saying yes, but as I kept doing it it got easier. And, I was discovering some new things about myself. When you say no all the time you don’t give yourself an opportunity to grow, to learn, to test yourself. As we move through life, our wants and needs change, as we do, but when we’re not testing the waters to see what works best for us today, we stay stuck and keep doing the same things, or nothing, and not growing to our potential. Saying yes does take courage, and faith, that you’re being asked to say yes for a reason. Nothing happens randomly, typically things come to us when we need them, or should take part in them, so we can take away what we should to move forward, or possibly, change the direction we’re going in completely. So when we keep saying no, we’re not only stuck, we’re not were we’re supposed to be.

Now after almost 13 years of saying yes, I can say that the yes’s have been very good to me. Yes has gotten me to a pretty incredible place today, and one I wouldn’t have had to courage to say yes to if I hadn’t had years of practice of saying yes, because this yes, is life-changing, and has taken a big leap of faith that what was given to me was exactly where I am meant to be, and I know that with every fiber of my soul. When we say yes, the universe says yes back. We open the road of possibilities and allow the flow of new ideas and new challenges that are meant to prepare us for the next yes, and possibly, prepare us for the biggest yes yet. SLAY on!

SLAY OF THE DAY: Is your immediate reaction when being asked to do something a no? Why? What happened the last time you said yes? Why don’t you say yes more often? What do you think will happen? When you think about the times you may have said yes, how do you feel about those choices? How do you feel when you see other people saying yes and getting remarkable results while you’re still saying no? You can be one of those yes people SLAYER. Challenge yourself this week to say yes, at least twice. Ignore the negative voices that tell you to say no and just say yes, say it without even thinking about, just blurt out yes! You may just discover some new things about yourself, and may even meet some new people who are also saying yes. Surround yourself with people who say yes, try new things, challenge yourself to move forward, to uncharted waters, and say yes to exploring who you are and where you are meant to be. One yes may just change your whole life.

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

If It’s Happening To You You Must Need It

I used to think that life was just something that was happening to me. Now, after being on this path for many years, I realize that life is something that is happening for me. And what I mean by that is that what life gives me is what I need. What I need to be a better person. What I need to move forward. What I need to learn, to grow, to give me the opportunities to reach my full potential, and to help me make better choices so I don’t keep making the same mistakes.

I find that when I don’t make the right decisions, or take the right actions, life has a way of giving me those same situations over and over until I do. When I was living in my disease and mentally sick, I would often think, why does this keep happening to me, I was always the victim, never looking at the actions I had taken to get me back to that same place. I didn’t realize that I had the power to stop myself from getting there time and time again. All I had to do was learn and make better decisions and I wouldn’t keep finding myself in those same places. The opportunity to make a better choice came to me yesterday morning. I had handled something poorly a few days prior, and was upset at myself for how I let a frustrating situation affect me, and ruin something else I enjoy because I couldn’t let go of the frustrating situation. I thought about it after, how I could have handled it better, and lo and behold that same frustrating situation popped up again, around the same event, I could feel the frustration bubble up from my belly, and I took a deep breath and stayed calm. Ultimately it situation was worked out, it didn’t go as smoothly as I would have liked, but it got done, and, I handled it with much more grace than I had a few days before. When I thought about it later, I smiled, because I realized that things didn’t go smoothly yesterday morning so I would have the opportunity to do it better than I had, and when something like that pops up again, I can think back to yesterday morning and remember what the right action is to take, and how much better it felt to not let it get the best of me.

When I look back at my life when I lived in the darkness, I am grateful for it. I am grateful that I survived, because I shouldn’t have, and I am grateful for all of those things that didn’t go my way, or didn’t go well, or just didn’t go, because I have since learned from them. I look at them all as lessons, as information and chances to do better today, to know what I don’t want or need, and to know that I have the power of choice today.  I have more knowledge and I have enough self-love to make the right decisions and choices for me, so when things happen that I may find frustrating or aggravating, I now know that that is happening for a reason, that I likely need to work on this part of my life, or fine-tune what I’ve already worked on so that as I move forward I’ve done the work I need to bring me to where I need to be going. Life builds on itself, and if we try to skip the steps or ignore them, we don’t get to move forward and just leave those lessons behind, we stay stuck where we are while life goes on without us.

Look for those lessons in your life. Look to make a situation you might find frustrating into an opportunity to do better, or make different choices, and maybe look at the times in your life that you may have been given this opportunity before and the choices you made around that opportunity. There may just be room for improvement SLAYER, and, that may just be why you find yourself in that space once again. How can you make better choices today so that you don’t have to make the same mistakes again tomorrow? SLAY on!

SLAY OF THE DAY: Do you see patterns in your life where you’ve always done certain things one way and the same people, places and things keep coming up as a result? Write down those patterns in your life and what you’ve done about them in the past. What can you do today that may be better choices for you? Do you look at life as something that is happening to you, or do you see the opportunities it provides to teach and challenge you for what may lie ahead? Write down when life gave you an opportunity to do something better. Did you make the improvement? How did that feel? That’s all those events are in our lives. Those little lessons that pop up to challenge us, look at them as your chance to do better for yourself and you may just find they stop popping up, because you’ve moved past the place you were and are on to the place you’re supposed to be.

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

Look At Rejection As Redirection

It’s easy to feel defeated by what we feel is rejection. We get our hopes up, have expectations, and may have worked hard to reach a specific goal, only to have the door slammed in the face of our dreams. I used to let those rejections get me down, I would let that negative bullshit committee get loud in my head telling me I wasn’t good enough, or that I didn’t deserve good things. It fed into the narrative of me being a loser, so as much as I wanted to succeed, that part of me that was sick, relished in the defeat so it could keep me down, or, push me down even more.

Looking back, there were many times when those perceived rejections were actually a blessing. Either I wasn’t ready for what I was aiming for, I was saved from a bad situation, or, I wasn’t meant to go down that path because something else was waiting for me. As I’ve said before, we know only a little, we only know our part, and not what the big picture is, so what may seem like the right path to us is really only based on the little information we have, our perception of that information, and what our will is propelling us to do. All of that, can steer us in the wrong direction. I’m a big believer that there is a plan for all of us, that we’re all here to do certain things, learn certain things, and take certain action to fulfill the lessons and life we are meant to. We don’t know what that is, but I do believe it is what our “gut” guides us to, those moments of intuition or feelings that send us off into a specific directions. But, because there are so many other factors that can throw us off course, distract us, or perhaps our ego may start to run the show, what should be a straight line often gets broken up into some curvy twists and turns. I know in my life, when I’ve gotten way off track, there has always been something to knock me back on the right path again, so when something doesn’t go my way, I take notice. Sure, it can be disappointing, and trust me, I’ve had plenty of disappointments in my life, but I do trust that those opportunities weren’t meant for me, or, weren’t meant for me at that time. Timing is everything, and much of what we struggle with is trying to make something happen in our own time, instead of waiting for something to organically unfold when it is meant to. And that doesn’t mean sitting around just waiting for things to happen, we have to take action, with the all the information we have in front of us, but it’s also about being open to what else is out there, looking for the signs, the opportunities, the roads we haven’t traveled on, because we may be meant to be on those roads rather than the one we’ve stubbornly stayed on.

Nothing happens by accident, even accidents, everything serves a purpose, and it may take a lifetime to figure that out in some cases, but when we look at a so-called rejection as just information, and look where that rejection may lead us, it may just be nudging us in the direction we’re meant to be heading. The end may be the same as what we had been working towards, but maybe we’re meant to take a different route, maybe there is something to learn there that we need on our journey, something we wouldn’t learn otherwise. So when things don’t go your way don’t retreat, look for other avenues, other roads to travel on, try a new approach, or perhaps with someone new, see what you can learn from the rejection and look to see where else that can lead you. You never know, that big disappointment may just lead you to your biggest accomplishment yet, but at the very least, it can lead you to an open mind and on open heart, and a life that is meant to be, not one you are chasing because you think it’s supposed to look a certain way. Trust the signs, learn from the struggles, and go where the path leads you. SLAY on.

SLAY OF THE DAY: When something doesn’t go your way do you let that defeat you? Why? Can you think of a time something didn’t go your way and as a result you discovered something new? What was that? Can you think of a time when you didn’t get what you wanted and found out later it would have been a bad situation? When you find yourself rejected, how can you turn that around into something positive for yourself? Look back at your life SLAYER, at all the times you’ve been redirected in your life, trust that you are exactly where you are meant to be right now, even if that’s a tough place, know that there is something to be learned there, and once you do, you will move on. Take each defeat as new information, and learn to use that information to find your path, the signs are all around you, you just have to be open to things looking differently than what you might have imagined, but your path is there, if your open to finding it.

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