parameters

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

Sometimes You Have To Unfollow Your Old Dreams To Chase New Ones

We grow up with hopes and dreams of what we would like our lives to look like. Some change as we grow but some we stick on to, hold onto like a life raft in the ocean. We have put so much time into crafting some dreams, and have worked so hard to lay the groundwork that we may not even see that that dream may not work for us anymore, or is no longer viable. Instead of reassessing our choices, we dig in, trying to make it happen by force. Nothing good happens by force. If something isn’t happening, even after putting in countless attempts and hours into it, you may be following the wrong dream, or have limited yourself for it to only look one way. You may have already found it, but because you are hard set on it being one thing, you don’t see it and you continue to work towards something that is not meant for you. Sometimes you have to unfollow your dreams to chase new ones.

In our lives we’re constantly growing, or we should be, challenging ourselves, doing new things with new people, we’re getting new information, educating ourselves, so it is completely rational that our dreams change over time, as we do. There are definitely big picture dreams that we work to attain, but even those can change as we settle into who we are and what is best for us today. The trick is to recognize those things and not get stuck in the dreams of our past.

Before stepping on this path I thought that things had to look a certain way or I couldn’t be happy. And, with that mindset, I wouldn’t have been happy if they looked any different than how I had imagined them. But those ideas were based on when I was young, and I had an idealized view of what life should look like, or what I wanted it to, so why did I think that those same dreams still hold up today? I had to be open to new things, to new experiences, to letting go of old ideas and dreams so I could be open to what else was out there. I’ve lived a lot of life from when I set those dreams many years ago, and my ideas were fabricated with very limited information compared to what I have now. So why would I want to limit my dreams by using old information?

Well, for one, at the beginning of this journey, I was still scared to let go. I felt that I had to control everything, or at least try, and if I didn’t everything would just fall apart. I had to recognize that everything had fallen apart with me hanging on, so, perhaps that thinking and action wasn’t working in my best interest. It was hard to release the past, to be OK with being open to what is and what could be. I felt like I was floating in an abyss. But while I let myself float, new dreams emerged. I discovered things I had never let myself be open to before, and consequently I learned new things, and that opened up my vision of what my dreams were for myself.

My dreams today have changed, although there are some that have still stayed with me, but I have let go of the parameters I had once set on them, and let them be as they are meant to be, allowing them to look the way they are supposed to, not with some naive childlike rigid guidelines that I used to place on them. Check-in with your dreams, and yourself, and see if those dreams you’ve held on to are actually holding you back. See if you need to unfollow some of your dreams to chase new ones, because you have outgrown them. Let yourself dream in the now, not the way you thought it was supposed to be. SLAY on!

SLAY OF THE DAY: Do you think you’ve held on to old dreams that no longer serve you, or are no longer valid? Which dreams fall into this category? Why do you think you’ve held on to them? Do you feel that you should let them go? If yes, why? If no, why? Do you think that if you are able to let go of some of your old dreams you might find new ones that are better for you today? Do you place expectations on them to only look a certain way? Do you see how that can get in your way? What if you let go SLAYER, and trusted you are being guided to where you’re supposed to be, what if you were open to new things, do you see how maybe you might receive a set of new dreams, dreams that are more fitting with who you are today? I challenge you SLAYER, to write down your dreams, and make sure that they represent who you are today, if they don’t, unfollow them, and make room for some updated dreams that you can chase, and perhaps, just might make you forget those old dreams altogether.

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