seek

Slay Say

Good morning SLAYER! Walk in the direction where your peace is found.

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

Peace Within

Slay Say

Good morning SLAYER! Finding oneself while seeking the approval of others is the murder of self.

SLAY on!

State Of Slay Find Yourself

Slay Say

Good morning SLAYER! Seeking validation will keep you trapped. You don’t need anyone or anything to prove your worth.

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

State Of Slay Tear You Down

We Do What We Know

We are only as good as the information that have been passed down to us. The information we’ve observed. And the information we’ve sought out. But many of us don’t seek out other ways of doing things because we usually think we have all the information we need. Many times we don’t. What may have worked for our parents, or theirs, or the people around us, may not work for us, yet we continue to try the ways of those other people and wonder why things are so difficult. Or, we know something isn’t working and we continue to do it anyway, trying to will it into working when it never will work. I can personally attest to that. My life before wasn’t working. I wasn’t happy and until things got to a place where I had to make some changes, some major changes, to save my life, I wasn’t willing to seek out a new way of doing things.

Up until that point I never even questioned how or why I would do the things I would. I was living with undiagnosed mental illness and trying to do things the way other people around me where doing them, or, how it appeared they were, through my warped sense of perspective. I also didn’t realize then that what we see on the outside, very often, does not reflect what’s going on on the inside for someone. I know it didn’t for me, and it didn’t occur to me that many of the people I came into contact with every day may also be showing the world one thing, but may be secretly struggling with something internally. Yet, I would continue to judge myself based on what was being presented. Using that as my guidelines, I wasn’t ever going to get any better.

When I made the decision to get well, I had to throw out most of what I knew. None of that was working and I had to find a new way of life if I wanted to be my best self. It was hard to break those patterns I had established over a lifetime, and to look at the behavior that contributed to me landing on my knees asking for help. Making different choices, new choices, better choices, wasn’t always easy to start, it felt strange and foreign a lot of the time, but I was encouraged to keep making them and if I did, I would see results. I helped to have a strong group of people in my life I could run things by when I wasn’t sure what the next right thing was to do, and sometimes even knowing what the right thing to do was, I would fall back into destructive behaviors from my past. And all of that, was OK. Even when we fall back, we have an awareness of what the better choices was, and, we can make that choice next time. For me, the more I was making better choices, those old choices from my past no longer felt good, I didn’t want to jeopardize the progress I was making, so I was making them less and less.

Until we question if what we’re doing is really best for us, we will do what we know, and what we know may be just the thing that’s standing in our way of happiness and good health. Today is a good time to ask yourself, am I doing what works for me, or am I just doing what I know? The answer may unlock the door to where you are supposed to be. SLAY on!

SLAY OF THE DAY: Do you look at the way you do things and question it, or just do what you know? When things go wrong, or don’t feel good, do you take that opportunity to look at how you got yourself there? What, in your life, have you changed to suit you that isn’t the way you used to do it, or what you knew? What prompted that change? Are there things in your life that you should also change? What are they? We should always be taking inventory, looking at our lives and asking ourselves what’s working and not working, what would we like to see change and how can we make that change happen? Even when we’ve made changes in the past, those changes might not be current with what we need today. Our lives are always changing and growing, or they should be, so we need to stay on top of what we need today, and what we need to do today to get to where we want to go, and should go.

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

There Is Beauty In Everything

I never used to think that. I thought there was only in beauty if I got what I wanted. Or if someone else got what was coming to them…from my point of view anyway. In fact I was conditioned to think that life was not beautiful, that it was dark, unforgiving, unpredictable, cruel, harsh. I could only see what I wanted to see, and what I wanted to see was what a victim I was, coupled with believing I only deserved bad things. My life was dark, vengeful, angry, full of fear, but I was my own jailer, I held the key to letting myself out of the prison I had locked myself into.

When we’re looking for the negative, the negative will present itself. Like attracts like. The energy we put out comes back to us. I never believed I held that much power. I just thought life was something that was happening to me. Funny enough, it was the act of surrendering, of asking for help, that gave me that power. It took a while for me to learn how to use it, but even the act of saying that I needed help, started the process.

As I started getting better, I started to strip away the darkness, the hurt, the hate, the pain. My days got brighter and I started looking for the light, the goodness in my life. It became easier to see the beauty in my life, the world around me, and the more I looked for it the more I found it. But it was also just as important to find the beauty in the days I had left behind. Not romanticize it, or downplay how bad it had been, but to realize that there was beauty in the breakdown, because without it, I wouldn’t have never gotten to where I am today.

For me it took a lot for me to get help. There was no other way. I wasn’t going to go into this journey willingly if I could still tolerate or justify the way I had been living my life, and, I could tolerate a lot. So it took, almost loosing everything, for me to finally fall to my knees and say I need help, I surrender. Which, is one of the most beautiful moments of my life. That is the moment I actually began my life. It’s that date I consider my birth day. And what’s more beautiful than that? I look for the beauty in everything, and everyone. It is there, most times, if you look. Even in tragedy there are always incredible acts of beauty that happen, people, places and things, that rise out of the ashes and bring beauty even in the most darkest of days. It’s those instances that we continue to have hope. And to me, hope is the most beautiful thing there is. Hope saved my life, it was a gift that was handed to me from someone else who had found it, and that is why it’s important to me to share it and give it away, as it was given to me.

Beauty doesn’t always appear to us as beautiful things. It can come from the ugliest of circumstances, which is why we should never give up, because something beautiful may just be around the corner…or maybe is always here, maybe, you’re just not seeing it yet. SLAY on!

SLAY OF THE DAY: Do you have trouble seeing the beauty in life? In other people? In yourself? When was the last time you recognized something beautiful? What if you sat for a moment SLAYER, and thought about the beautiful things in your life? Write them down. Then write down 5 beautiful things about yourself. Ask a friend, family member, or co-worker to write down 5 beautiful things about you and give it back to you. Do you see those things in yourself? If not, why not? How do you think others see them in you? Focus on seeing those things in you. Focus on the beauty in your life. Even if it’s small, it’s a start. It was only the size of a pin for me at the beginning, and now, I see it all around me. I see it in you. Now it’s your turn to see.

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

Slay Say

Good morning SLAYER! Seek and you shall find. But somethings we are not meant to find when we are seeking. A quite mind always produces the answers we are looking for.

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

State Of Slay Still

Slay Say

Good morning SLAYER! Change will not happen if you’re waiting for some other person or some other time.  You are the change you are looking for. You can make the change you seek.

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

State Of Slay Chapter

Slay Say

Good morning SLAYER! Happiness can always be found, even on the darkest days, if you remember to leave a light on.

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

State Of Slay Find Happiness

How We Love Ourselves Teaches Others How To Love Us

Fasten your seat belts, we’re talking self-love again today! I know, this is a struggle for some of you SLAYERS. But here’s the thing, as we learn to love ourselves, we teach those around us how we want to be loved, and how we expect to be treated by those in our lives. How we love ourselves causes a ripple effect in every aspect of our lives. It starts with us and as we learn and love ourselves we change our pattern of self-doubt, hate, disrespect, abuse, harm, and we start to replace it with healthier behaviors, loving behaviors, and as we do the people in our lives take notice, some, maybe, not in a positive way, as they’ve grown accustomed to the way we were, and, how they’ve been interacting with us, but how they receive this new information of self-love isn’t our business, what is our business is continuing to grow and love who we are and showing the world how to love us back in the same ways.

It all starts with us. Now, I understand that sometimes before we love ourselves we’re better able to love others, and for some of us, that is a great way to back into loving ourselves, as long as loving others doesn’t replace loving ourselves, but when we love others it shows us that we have the capacity for love, that we are caring individuals, that we can give love, so if we turn that back on ourselves, and think about why we love to give love to others, how that makes us feel, why we love to do it, why we think it’s important, and what we think about as we’re doing something nice for someone else, all of those things pertain to you as well. Apply all of those same reasons, feelings, motivations, back to you. And, if you have trouble at the start, ask your friends or family, what they love about you, and, write them down. Write down what they say and look at those things, take them in, and don’t listen to that bullshit committee who might be telling you that they’re lies, they’re not, look at those beautiful words and say, “that’s me, I am all of those things,” and once you can accept that, why wouldn’t you want to love that person, nurture that person, take care of that person who would be described using all of those beautiful words? Of course you would, you are a loving person, I know you are. The fact that you took the time to read this blog today tells me you do love yourself, even just a little today, to seek out the answers for you, to learn and grow for you, to see if maybe there was something you were missing on your journey of self-love.

Now, as I mentioned, not everyone might be on board with this new self-love change, and that’s OK. It might not feel OK when they resist it, but it will as you realize that if they are not willing to love you, and respect you’re new way of life, then they cannot be a part of it, our at the very least, as active in it as they once were, if they are pushing back that is not a loving gesture to you, and they might not be capable, or wanting, to change their behavior to adapt to the new self-loving you because they really enjoyed the way they’ve been able to treat you when you didn’t love yourself. Let them go. They may come back at another time, when they are ready to make the changes, or they may not, but, as difficult as it may be to say goodbye, new people will come in, people who will love you and be on board with this new way of life, sometimes it takes people time to change, and to understand the new us, sometimes it’s just a matter of time, and sometimes it’s not about time, it’s about moving on. We have to remind ourselves that when we’re living in a self-destructive, self-loathing, self-hating way of life, that we look for and attract people who will treat us that way, so when we change, they may not, but we need to stay the course of our self-love destination and trust that we will be surrounded by love as we continue to love ourselves. Trust me on this, I’ve walked this path, and not everyone made it with me down the road, but many did, and our relationships got stronger, better, deeper, as I learned to love myself. It takes work, but it can be done, and, you’re worth it.

SLAY OF THE DAY: Do you see how loving yourself can lead others to love you the same way? Can you think of examples in your life that by you showing someone how you’d like to be treated they’ve started to change how they interact with you? Can you think of examples when someone has pushed back, not wanting to change? Who are the people you would rather have in your life, the ones who love us enough to follow our lead, or the ones who refuse to? On the path of self-love SLAYER we aim to have people in our lives who also love us, who grow and change with us, who honor our authentic selves and lift us higher by showing us their love and support, as we do them. It always starts with us. When we love ourselves, we show them how we’d like to be loved, so set the example and then reap the rewards. SLAY on!

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