repeat

Slay Say

Good morning SLAYER! Repeat after me: I release the need for old habits in my life!

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

state-of-slay Repeat

Slay Say

Good morning SLAYER! What we become today comes from our thoughts of yesterday.

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

State Of Slay Reality One Day

Live With Intent Not Out Of Habit

Before stepping on this path I lived out of habit. I was unhappy with the way I was living my life, but I did nothing to change it. Each day was like Groundhog Day, I just kept repeating the same behaviors and getting the same results, and yet, somehow, I hoped each that things would be different. They never were. Well, except they kept getting worse. My intent every day, back then, was to just disappear, to ignore the things I didn’t want to deal with and find ways to distract or numb myself so I wouldn’t feel. Now, I’m sure a few of you out there know ignoring something typically doesn’t make it go away. I had to learn to stop that cycle if I had any hope of getting better. Or even surviving the endless cycle I was in.

When I got on a path of recovery I realized I had a lot of habits I needed to break. I was told it takes 90 days to break a habit, I figured it probably took longer than that, but 90 days seemed like manageable number, so I set off, focusing on making positive changes to my life in those 90 days like my life depended on it, because it did. I did everything that was suggested, many things for the first time, or through anxiety or fear. But as I started to make better choices, and break those old habits, I started to feel better, it was tiny little steps at first, but they were there, and I could feel a shift. It wasn’t all easy going through the 90 days, the old me, and that negative self-talk in my head, wasn’t going to go down without a fight, and it got loud up there, but I learned to practice contrary action, to do the opposite of what my head was telling me and do what was right. Each time I did that, I not only took my power back but I took away the voice of that negative self-talk. I started to feel stronger, more confident and proud of taking my life back as I started to live with the intent of well-being, of peace and of better choices. It was within that space that I learned to love myself, something I had never done up until that point, because it was through those loving acts to myself that I found a love for myself, and on days when it slipped away I had the love and support of those around me to remind me how to find it.

It’s easy to live life as we always have, or as our parents have, or friends or co-workers have, but is that really in line with how you feel or what you want for yourself? Have you even asked yourself what you want? I know I had, but then never took the steps to go and get it. And sometimes it’s a matter of knowing what we want and not knowing how to get it, that also rang true for me, and the thought of not knowing can paralyze us and keep us where we are. My journey has taught me that if I take the first steps, the steps I may know, and I make my intent clear, that the next few steps will appear in front of me, or someone will who will show me the way. It’s the intent that sets us in motion and then from there we need to take action and build that momentum to where we want to go. And, we may get in our own way and try to convince ourselves what we want isn’t attainable for us, but it is, one step at a time. I know, because I did it, and I am no different than you are.

We all walk this road together, and it’s easy to follow the pack, but ask yourself where it is you want to go on your journey, and instead of just walking on the same path you always have, walk with intent of where you want to go next. SLAY on!

SLAY OF THE DAY: Do you live your life with intent or just do what you’ve always done? Have you asked yourself what you would like to do? Is that in line with how you’re living your life today? What steps can you take to live your life with intent? Where have you made mistakes in the past or gotten lazy in your resolve? What can you do to change that? Start each day with intent SLAYER, and if you’re unsure of what steps to take to get there, ask for help or look to someone who is living with intent that you may know for inspiration. We are not meant to stay stuck where we are, get yourself on a path that excites you and allows you to find and be your best you.

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

When Was The Last Time You Did Something For The First Time?

Good question. Today. The answer for me was today. But before stepping on this path, I probably had to think about it for a while, and if I was able to come up with an answer, it probably would have been a long time ago. I got stuck in a cycle of darkness and despair. I would wake up angry I woke up, having wished the night before that I would just die in my sleep, I would tell myself that the day ahead was going to be different, but it never was, and I went to bed angry that I had just repeated the same day over yet again. But, I wasn’t doing anything different, so how could I expect anything different than what I had been getting? My head wanted me to relive the same day over and over because it wanted to keep me sick. It wanted me to say right where I was until I couldn’t take it anymore. And I got to that point. The point of not being able to take it anymore, and then I was at a crossroads, do I do something different, something for the first time, or let the same things take me out? I chose to do something for the first time, and I reached out for help. That saved my life.

Now, doing something for the first time might not be as dire as that, but it might be. The decisions we make every day effect how we see ourselves, our lives, those around us, and the trajectory where we’re going and who we come into contact with. While I was on my road to recovery I was encouraged to say yes to things, to try new things and to break out of the routine I had been in. Saying yes to new things was a bit scary at first. As much I didn’t like the way things were, I knew what the result was going to be, there were no surprises, as sick as I was, there was comfort in that place I knew, trying new things felt scary, like falling from the sky without a parachute or net, but I had to jump if I wanted to learn to fly.

I tried to look at new things as something exciting, that perspective helped those three letters come out of my mouth, y-e-s. I said yes to pretty much everything, as long as it was moving me forward and helping me in my recovery. And you know what? The more I did it, the less scary it became, and, I learned a lot about myself in the process. I had never asked myself what I liked or wanted, outside of career, I just tried to blend in, and did what I thought you wanted me to do so you wouldn’t ask a lot of questions. This was now my time! My time to discovery who I really was, and what I really liked. I also met a lot of cool people along the way, people I never would have met if I had kept saying no and isolated in my apartment. Saying yes to me meant saying yes to life, and I was determined to live.

Today I still say yes to new things. In fact, I look for new things to say yes to. I continue to learn about myself because I continue to grow and explore, and saying yes to new things is a key ingredient to that. There is so much out there that I haven’t done, or even know about, saying no and only sticking with what I know is doing myself a huge disservice, I’ve come this far, why would I stop now? Are you getting in the way of your own growth or health by saying no to new things?

SLAY OF THE DAY: Are you open trying new things? If not, why not? When was the last time you said yes to something new? What was it? What was the result? Do you typically say yes to new things? What positive things has saying yes brought to your life? What has it taught you? How has it helped you grow? If you haven’t been saying yes, how do you think it may be hurting you? Are you currently happy where you are? Is there something you could say yes to that might move you forward, away from the place you currently find yourself? Where would you like to find yourself? How can you get there? Life presents us with many choices every day, if we don’t say yes to new things we stay stuck where we are, and, we may be missing out on where we should be.

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

Feelings: Changing What You Don’t Like

Feelings can help us, they can give us a sense of things, how we feel about someone, or something, but they can also deceive us, they can be tied up in old thinking, old behaviors, things that no longer serve us. When I was living in the dark, I didn’t want to feel anything, good, or bad. I just wanted to be numb,the bad feelings felt too bad, too much to handle, and I didn’t think I deserved the good ones, so I did what I could to not feel. I became so good at it, stuffing down my feelings and using outside things to shut them up, that I became dead inside. I told myself it was a way to protect myself, but I was slowly shutting myself down and, even though I couldn’t feel or hear them, all of those feelings were still there, including the ones that were hating myself for living the way I was.

When I sought help to get better, to learn to live in a healthier, honest way, those feelings all came at me like a tsunami. I used to wake up and hang on to my mattress thinking I would get blown off my bed from the sheer force of them if I didn’t hang on. I had to learn to process how I felt, to acknowledge those feelings, and to change the ones that no longer served me, or, perhaps never did. In this new way of life, I couldn’t hang on to my old ideas that had gotten me to a breaking point, I had to learn to let go and I had to learn to change what would stand in the way of my recovery.

My feelings can sometimes trick me, not as much today as they once did, but sometimes, those cunning little thoughts can make me think they’re valid to the situation I’m in, when really they’re dragging up old feelings from the past and trying to validate them in my present life. At the beginning, it was difficult to decipher if a feeling was how honestly felt in that moment, or my disease trying to pull me back. Staying present helped me filter through what was real and what was old and needed to go. Being honest with myself, asking myself how I really felt in that moment and why, what was making me feel that way, and if what was making me feel that way could actually make me feel that way or was it just my perception of what was going on based on the patterns of my life before. The waters sometimes got murky. But as I questioned it, things became clearer, for the most part, there are always some who are craftier about hiding themselves from the truth, but as I kept living in the truth, and looking at the facts, my feelings became clearer, and if I didn’t like how I felt, I learned how to change that feeling to something more constructive, or something positive, at the very least, something I could learn from, which, turned it into something positive.

We are not slaves to our feelings. We can use them to our advantage. We can let us show us what we like, what is good for us, who we should spend time with. We can let them warn us of repeating behaviors from our past, of people, places and things we probably not be around. We can learn to change them to fit in line with how we’re living our life today, or how we want to. Don’t like a feeling, change it. But only with healthy means.

For me if I’m feeling down, I ask myself why. I ask myself if this is a real, valid, feeling, based on facts, or if this is something imagined, or rooted in fear, once I get to the bottom of that feeling I can then work on changing it. I can do something positive for myself, which sometimes is as simple as going for a walk. The reason I might be feeling down is that I haven’t been getting out as much as I should, and those feelings may come from a need to get some fresh air. Sometimes, it’s as simple as that.

When feelings come up that make us feel uncomfortable there may be a reason for them, and once you find out why, or even if you haven’t and you just don’t want to stay in that place, find the counter action to change that feeling, once you’re in a better place, the reason you felt what you did, might become clear as day, and that gray day may just end by you liking what you feel. SLAY on.

SLAY OF THE DAY: Do you feel like you are a slave to your feelings? Do you feel like you have no control over them? How do they hold you back? How do you they help you? If they don’t, how can they? How can you use your feelings to guide you to where you are supposed to go, where you should be? How you can you use them to your advantage? How you can learn from them? How can you change them when they are not serving you? This all takes time SLAYER, it takes practice to acknowledge how you feel and learn why you do, but the more you look at the facts, what you know to be true, the easier it gets, and when things don’t seem right, they’re probably not, let your feelings guide you back to a place of self-love, of forgiveness, and the light, it’s from those places we learn to trust our feelings, and learn from them, instead of being enslaved by them.

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

Slay Say

Good morning SLAYER! When you believe, anything is possible, and when you believe in yourself, others believe in you. Your belief can change your world, and, quite possibly, change the world. Every accomplishment starts with the belief that you can.

New blog goes up Friday…SLAY on!

State Of Slay Believe