power

Slay Say

Good morning SLAYER! Bitterness and resentment only hurt one person, you.

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

State Of Slay Choose

Anger Is A Response To Fear

Might have made you think about that for a moment. It’s been regarded for some time that fear is not a base feeling or emotion. It is something we use to cover up feeling disregarded, unimportant, accused, guilty, untrustworthy, devalued, rejected, powerless, and unlovable. None of those feelings are good, and we certainly don’t want to feel any of those feelings, so many of us, will go to great lengths to cover them up, and anger is one heck of a smokescreen.

Anger can scare people away, get them off the scent of what’s really going on, especially when it seems to come out of nowhere, people can get jolted by, fearful of it, or match that emotion and get angry themselves, it can be contagious, and when everyone is angry the true source of the anger gets lost.

When I think back to who I used to be I got angry a lot. And, when I’m really looking at the source to my anger many times it was to hide what was really going on, because, I figured, no one really wants to deal with an angry person, so people will just leave me alone or just give me what I want so I would go away. That sounds really sad when I see it in black and white. But it’s the truth. I hid behind anger as a shield so I wouldn’t have to look at what was really going on. And what was really going on is that I wasn’t able, or willing, to look at my part in all of the things I was using anger to hide. I wanted to blame everybody else, any thing else, rather than even consider I may be causing myself most of my pain by the decisions and choices I was making. So when I got caught in a place where I had made a bad decision and felt embarrassed by the outcome, I would get mad, angry, to hide my own shame.

It’s funny because now that I no longer allow myself to do that, I see it in others. When someone gets mad or angry I begin to think what might be the actual issue, rather than just jump in and match their anger, or, feel hurt by their actions. Now, I’m human, so there are times I do get hurt in the moment, but I try to peel that back and look into what really may have been going on. It allows me to find some compassion for the other person, and, if they’re willing to talk, find out what the real issue is. For me today, if I suddenly flare up and feel angry, it is my job to look at what is really going on. Now that I no longer live my life in fear, many times it’s base is from a choice I’ve made, that I probably knew was not the best choice, but I made it anyway and now I’m suffering the result of that choice, so, I’m angry. But the right response to those situations should be, lesson learned, I’ll make the right choice next time. Allow myself to feel the frustration of that result, but not let it take over and have power over me letting it escalate to anger.

When we take away anger as a base feeling, it already seems to lessen it’s power and strength over us. And when we feel anger creep in, that’s another time to get out our SLAYER detective hats on and find out what’s really going on. What our anger really is is an opportunity to do better next time, it’s giving us information we need to avoid feeling that way again from the same source, and, we may feel it again from that same source a few times over, I know for me, it usually takes more than once before I get the hint, but, the point is we look for it and we try.

Take away anger’s power, look at it for what it truly is. Change what you can, and accept what you can not. Those are truly the only two antidotes for anger. SLAY on my friends!

SLAY OF THE DAY: Do you let anger get the best of you? Do you find yourself angry and don’t know why? Do you know why and are using anger to hide something? What do you typically use anger to hide? Why do you do that? Is there something you can do so you’re not making the same decisions that get you to anger? What can you change or do differently? When you feel angry, are you able to pinpoint the source of it? Think of the last time you were angry. What was the source of it? And, no, I don’t mean point fingers to someone or something else. What was your part? What can you change for the next time so you don’t find yourself in anger. Take responsibility for actions SLAYER, we all make mistakes, so admit them when you’ve made them, you’ll be surprised how many people will understand, and maybe even help you, when you are honest about who you are and what you’ve done. Anger doesn’t help anyone, and it keeps you in the same cycle you’ve always been in. Break the cycle, kick anger to the curb by changing your path, our actions, the choices you make, and take your power back from anger.

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

Slay Say

Good morning SLAYER! Your past does not determine who you are, your past prepares you for who are you to become.

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

State Of Slay Shape Your Future

It’s OK Not To Be OK

I’ve talked about this in previous blogs, and on numerous occasions on SLAY TALK LIVE, but wanted to give this some attention of its own, for those of you out there struggling, hiding how you feel, putting on a smile when your heart is broken, pretending that everything is OK, here’s what I want to say, it’s OK not to be OK. I almost didn’t get the opportunity to learn this. I spent my whole life pretending everything was OK, and I got so good at it, at stuffing down my true feelings, that pretty much everyone bought it, and no one caught on to the collision course with death I was really on.

I thought, that if I pretended everything was OK all the time that no one would ask any questions, and you know what, for the most part I was right, but in many cases the people I was choosing to have in my life were emotionally unavailable so I knew they wouldn’t ask me any questions, and if they started to, I would phase them out. I thought, that if I told you something was wrong or that I had a problem you wouldn’t want to talk to me, that you had your own problems and didn’t want to hear about mine. I was wrong. But it took a long slide into the darkness to finally see how I wrong I was.

It wasn’t until I finally reached out for help, when I finally, in a place of desperation, said I wasn’t OK and I didn’t know what to do about it, that I realized, slowly I might add, that it was OK not to be OK. That if being not OK was my truth I needed to share it. I needed to talk about it. I needed to let people know. I had thought people would distance themselves from me when I finally pulled the curtain back to reveal the sad and damaged woman I truly was, the complete opposite of what I had been portraying for my entire life up until then. I thought people would retreat. But I knew my life depended on my honesty in that moment, I knew, regardless of the outcome, I had to speak my truth. What happened wasn’t a retreat, but the outpouring of a lot of support, a lot of love, and a lot of friendships that were strengthened because of my honesty, and, a lot of new friendships with others who were also struggling like I was, or, had been and were doing better. There was strength in saying I wasn’t OK, in declaring it, being honest about it, voicing it. The shame of it lost its power over me. It was out, and nothing bad happened, in fact, a lot of good happened. I started to get better. I started to have more self-confidence. More self-love. Self-respect. I started being honest, with myself, and those around me, and that felt good. It wasn’t fun holding everything in, not sharing, lying to people about how I was, it was a lot of work, exhausting, and deceitful. It was actually a relief to let it all out and not hide in the shadows anymore. Now as great as it felt, it was also scary at first, it wasn’t what I used to, and it wasn’t always as easy as it is now, but the more I did it, the more comfortable I got, and the more I realized that my truth was connecting me to others in my life, so even when I wasn’t OK, I had the love and support of other people to help me get to the other side.

No one is OK all the time. No one. So why do you expect yourself to be? We all have good days and bad days, or weeks, months, years even, but when you keep it all in, hiding the truth, those bad times get magnified, they grow, manifest worse, and even darker darkness. Speak your truth, share what is going on, and when you do, you will find a SLAYER army around you to support you as you walk through that time. We are all alike, we’ve all been there, and, will be again, so we understand, and we stand by you on those days when you are not OK. SLAY on!

SLAY OF THE DAY: When you are not OK, do you share that with others? What is the result? If you don’t, why don’t you? What are you afraid of? Is this fear-based on facts, or an imagined outcome in your mind? Do you have people in your life who you trust? Who you admire? Who you can talk to? If not, why not? Write down an instance when you shared your truth with someone and something good came out of that. If you never have, I challenge you SLAYER to do it, to share your truth with someone you trust, or connect with. It’s OK to not be OK, and just saying we’re not, gets us on the road to recovery. Take that step SLAYER.

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

Slay Say

Good morning SLAYER! The key to being happy is knowing you have the power to choose what to accept and what to let go.

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

State Of Slay Choice

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

Nothing Changes If Nothing Changes

Why are we so averse to change? Well, we’re certainly not averse to the circumstances changing in our lives that we don’t like, we just don’t want to have to change to change it. Therein lies the rub. Change starts with us. In order for anything in our lives to change, we have to make changes in order for that to happen. Did that just make you break out in hives?

Change used to make my anxiety level shoot up immediately. I hated change. I can still sometimes be resistant to it, but now it’s more about when a website changes its interface and I can’t find anything, or a favorite restaurant changes its menu and gets rid of my favorite dish, why do they do things like that? I have learned on my journey so far that I need to make the changes I want to see happen, I need to do the footwork, without that nothing changes.

I used to live my life in this constant cycle of same. One day just like the next because I kept doing the same things. I hated where I was, but I only knew one thing and I stayed there, just spinning my wheels to insanity because every day was just like the last. I kept thinking that life would just change it for me, by somehow just wishing for it, without any more effort from me than that. Well, if that’s you I’ve got a newsflash for you, it won’t change, and if it does, it’s probably for the worse, not better. You have the power to make a change and to set your life in a new direction. When I did that for myself, for me, it was reaching out for help, that act set the course of my life into one of recovery, of hope, of better choices, of self-love and healing, that one act of change changed the entire direction of my life, which as lead me right here.

Knowing what the power of change has done for me, I now look at change as a powerful act, something I can do because it’s within my control, I can choose to make different choices, better choices, I can make choices that are loving to myself, that honor myself, and when I do that, my life always changes for the better. Instead of looking at it as work, I now look at it as taking my power back instead of acting like a victim of life, I can make positive changes that will take me in the direction that I want to go, life will always do it’s dance, but if we can change our steps or learn some new dance moves, we can learn to dance along with it, even if we get knocked down from time to time, when we fall, we learn, and we make different choices the next time that same dance comes our way.

If we are not changing, we are not learning, we are not challenging ourselves, and testing what we are capable of, what we believe we deserve, and showing the universe we are willing to do the work to get it. When we demonstrate our willingness to change, the universe listens. And sometimes it starts right there, just by being willing, even before we are ready for the act, just the consideration of it can bring about change.

We all have sat in a state of frustration and thought, when are things going to change, they’re going to change when you do, so why not start today? What’s stopping you SLAYER?

SLAY OF THE DAY: Are you averse to change? Why do you think that is? What about change scares you, or makes you uncomfortable? What do you think your biggest roadblock is to change? How do you think you can overcome that? In the past, have there been instances where you have made a change and the result was different? Site those examples. Do you see that you making the change or changes caused things in your life to change? What stops you today from making changes? What in your life today, that you have control over, can you change to live your life in a healthier happier way? What’s stopping you? I challenge you SLAYER to be open to that change, to consider it, and of course, to take the necessary steps to make that change for you. Find it in you to overcome your fear to change, and make that fear less than the fear of staying the same. SLAY on!

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

Slay Say

Good morning SLAYER! Your power comes from living in the present, it is in the present that you can take action.

SLAY on!

State Of Slay Moment

Slay Say

Good morning SLAYER! When we know the facts we are safe.

SLAY on!

State Of Slay Knowledge

Knowledge Is Power

I used to be a “I don’t wanna know” kind of gal. I would put off going to the Doctor or looking into something I didn’t really want to know the answer to, or was afraid of. Consequently, by the time I would find out the answers is was generally too late to do anything about it because that opportunity had passed. I write a lot about finding out the facts, or focusing on the facts, and that, when we have the facts, we are safe. But we can take that one step further with, when we have knowledge, we have power. For instance, I was a passenger in a car accident this past summer, I got injured, not horribly, nothing was broken, but just your average car accident stuff, stiff neck, sore back, even though I was in pain I powered on, thinking it would right itself eventually. Well, it didn’t, so I started treatment, and it has improved over the past few months, but having just moved I had to switch doctors, and he ordered X-Rays, that sounded kind of scary, like, what if he finds out things are really bad in there, or, even worse, finds something else wrong? The old me would have avoided those X-Rays like the plague, coming up with excuses to not getting them, but now, even though I was nervous about the results, I went and got them done, because if there is something wrong, now is the time to correct it, not later when the body cannot be adjusted and has locked itself in to being a certain way. Looking at the X-Rays I learned a lot about my body, and why it does certain things, I gained knowledge, and, in the end, what I learned was that things weren’t nearly as bad as I had worried they might be, what is there is fixable, for the most part, and will help me live an active and healthy life, so, with that knowledge I know that everything will get better, and my Doctor now knows what plan of attack to start to get things back on track. I feel better having the knowledge about what is really going on and what it looks like, instead of just blindly going to treatment and trusting what’s being done is the right thing and helping. Now it’s not the unknown.

Why are we so afraid of the unknown? Why do we let it paralyze us? Why do we let it get in our way of taking care of ourselves and seeking out the best care? I know, for me, that even though I can have some fear around something, finding out the truth and learning about something I may not know about, far exceeds that fear, in fact, a lot of time it stomps all over it. Sometimes, gaining that knowledge takes some work, so we don’t do it, but if we’re not willing to work for ourselves, to help ourselves, then who are we willing to do the work for? If it’s for our well-being we should always be willing to do the work, no matter what it is, no one is certainly going to do it for us, nor can they most of the time, so invest in you, put in the work, put in the time, put in the energy to learn more about you and those things that affect you. I know, each of us carries around the baggage of our past of certain things having gone badly, but think about those times and ask yourself if you sought out the knowledge around those circumstances, did you get the facts? Sometimes no matter what we do there’s nothing we can do to change or better the outcome, but at least in those situations we can prepare ourselves for what’s coming, and possibly find a way to lessen the blow. Knowledge is always better than ignorance, or diversion, or not doing what’s best for you. Get the knowledge. Seek out the knowledge that helps you make the best decisions for you, that allows you to be our best you, and that gives you the tools to so you can help yourself.

Knowledge is power, don’t you want to arm yourself with as much power as you can?

SLAY OF THE DAY: Do you always seek out the answers to a problem, or do you avoid them hoping they’ll fix themselves? Name 5 instances when a situation got worse because you didn’t take action. What could you have done differently? What can you do in the future to avoid this same result? Name some times when you did take action and found out the truth and got some answers. How did that make you feel? How was this better than ignoring it? Make a pledge to yourself SLAYER, to get as much knowledge as you can, to find the answers in any given situation, and to give yourself the power to make the right decisions for you, and perhaps, find a better path. SLAY on.

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