Self Love

Slay Say

Good morning SLAYER! The quieter you become the more you can hear.

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

state-of-slay Listen and Silent

You Can’t Receive The Message If You Don’t Show Up To Listen

I write a lot about looking and listening for signs, they are all around us, but if we are close-minded, think we know everything, or are determined to walk a certain path regardless of what you we be shown, we can easily miss these signs and messages all around us by not showing up for life, or deciding ourselves how it’s supposed to go.

I can relate, before I made a conscious decision to walk this path I thought I knew better, or, even if it was obvious that something should go a certain way, I tried to manipulate or force it to go the way I wanted it to. My ears and mind were closed, even when the signs were right in front of my face, screaming at me, I chose to ignore them and force my way ahead. All I really did was prolong my suffering, and, probably missed many opportunities for good things I would have wanted for myself, if, I had had the humility and an open mind to recognize them. I had to hit a very hard emotional and spiritual bottom before I was willing to listen to those signs, and I am grateful that it wasn’t too late.

We are given messages and signs every day, through music, people, nature and that thing we call our “gut instinct”, there are many ways that we are being guided, and, many ways we can ignore or choose not to listen to what we’re being shown. We do have freedom of choice, and there are many choices every day, but when we are open to listening and looking for that bit of guidance to help us on our journey we are often amazed at how often those signs appear.

For me, when I look back, even when I wasn’t open to them they were there, trying to nudge me in the right direction as I was careening off course. While I was living in ego, and listening to the negative voices in my head, I was almost defiant to them when I did notice them, I was resentful and pushed through them to forge my own path, even though that path was not one that was giving me what I wanted. I continued doing that until there were only two choices, get help, or give up, thankfully I remembered a message that had come to me months before and reached out for help.

Now I look for the signs, I think of them almost like my sidekick, that I am where I am supposed to be, or, when I am questioning starting something new, or looking to make a change, I reach out and ask for those signs, patiently waiting for them to appear when I am meant to see them. They have always appeared when I’ve asked, not always in that exact moment, but shortly after, and because it usually takes me a few times to really get it, I’ll usually get a few of them pointing me towards the same action or conclusion. Today they make me smile, and they comfort me, knowing that they are there walking this journey with me and working with me to get me to where I am supposed to go. I don’t know everything, there’s no way I can, so I look to them to help me on my path. The key is to be willing to listen, and with willingness change can come.

We often ask for signs but are we really open to seeing and hearing them? They only work for us when we are able to get out of our own way and hear them for what they are, if you’re unsure, ask again, in my experience they will keep coming until you are sure, and I know they will show up for you too if you show up and listen for them. SLAY on!

SLAY OF THE DAY: Do you look for signs in your day to day life? Do you see and hear them? Do you listen to them? If they are not what you want to hear do you keep doing what you’re doing and ignore them? What is the result? What has been the result when you have followed them? Do you think you are willing and open to their suggestions? If not, why not? What would you ask to see signs for today? Ask SLAYER, ask and listen, this blog may be the first sign to get you to look outward for answers you’ve trying to solve within yourself.

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

Slay Say

Good morning SLAYER! Without your struggle you may not have stumbled on your strength.

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

State Of Slay Opportunity Loyalty

Slay Say

Good morning SLAYERS! Life has a way of evening things out, focus your energy on your own success.

SLAY on!

State Of Slay Best Revenge

Don’t Ever Pray For Justice, You Might Just Get It

We’ve all been wronged, hurt, or misled, and it’s easy to sit in our hate or anger wanting revenge, or justice, but when we sit on that space and want negative things to happen to others, we invite the darkness in. We allow that darkness to take over and dominate our thoughts and soon it makes it’s way to our actions, or, by sitting in our hate we have brought on punishment to ourselves. It’s easy to judge someone else for what they’ve done, but we may be guilty of our own crimes, and forgetting our own actions we are just as guilty and shouldn’t be so quick to only look at the actions of others. We always have a choice of how to respond to what happens to us and when we invite revenge to come in we may just get a dose back we’re not expecting.

When I made a choice to walk this path I was eager to point the finger at all the people who I thought had wronged me, who I blamed for all of my bad behavior and bad decisions, but it was pointed out to me that in most cases, the exception was when I was child, I had a choice in who I allowed into my life, who I engaged with, who I chose to trust, and how I interacted with each of those people. It was easier to play the victim and blame everyone else for my problems and to sit and plot my revenge or wish bad things on those people who I thought had hurt me. The truth was, I hurt myself, time and time again, by the choices I was making, and by sitting in that misdirected hurt I became angrier and more depressed, praying for justice didn’t make me feel any better, it fueled my hate and if I was really being honest with myself, it concerned me that the same fate I wished upon others could be coming for me. Living in the light I have been encouraged to wish what I would want for myself for others, even when they have wronged me. Now, that can be a tough one, but I have done it, many times, and it does work to keep me out of negative thinking and keep me in the light. When you’ve been hurt instead of praying for justice, pray they receive everything you would want every day for 2 weeks, trust me, you will feel better, and that anger will pass. And by doing this you let the light in, you focus on the positive and from that place real change can happen, good change. It’s like the blinders come off and we can see clearly, the whole picture, and not just what we want to see because it suits the narrative we want to tell. We, as adults, always have a part, and perhaps what has happened is there to show us changes we need to make, or to teach us something, perhaps, just maybe, we should be thanking that person for that lesson rather than condemning them.

We should never be wishing or praying for something we would not want for ourselves, when we do we are working from a place of victim-hood and not taking responsibility for our part or the power we have. Even if we are a victim of a random crime or accident, we still have a choice how we respond to what happened, and when we choose revenge we are also choosing to live in the darkness which only invites more darkness in our lives. It’s important to practice contrary action and send out good energy, even to those who may have harmed us, and it’s important to send it back to ourselves as well, as we likely contributed to our own harm. Send out positive energy and positive is what you’ll get back and what you’ll see moving forward. SLAY on!

SLAY OF THE DAY: Do you pray for revenge when you’ve been wronged, hurt or harmed? How do you feel when you do that? Does it make the situation any better? Do you find that your thoughts stay in the negative and affect your daily life? How do they do that? Does that feel good? Are you able to see your part in those situations? Do you think you could wish good things for someone who may have wronged, hurt or harmed you? Do you think you could try? Trust me SLAYER, when we are able to send out love, even to those who have not shown us love, we win, and we allow ourselves to live in the light and look for the positive in our lives. Light attracts light, and when we choose to live in it we find more, and, we find more people who also live there instead of focusing on those who do not.

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

Slay Say

Good morning SLAYER! Never let yourself get in the way of seeing things as they truly are.

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

State Of Slay What It is

Repeating Old Behaviors

We know we’re doing it, we know we shouldn’t be doing it, and yet we do it, repeating old behaviors that no longer suit us, and maybe never did, but they were what we knew, or what we were taught, or, what we used to get by when we didn’t know or have the courage to do something better. They can feel, sometimes, like getting into our favorite pair of jeans, or a comfy sweater, but, that moment fades when we catch ourselves doing it, or someone else does. There are times too where we don’t even realize that we’re doing it, those old behaviors have become so ingrained in how we operate that we seamlessly dive in without a thought or the awareness that we’ve pulled ourselves back on our path. All of that is OK, no one is perfect, or gets it right all of the time, but what we need to do to move forward and release ourselves of those old behaviors that hold us back is to recognize and acknowledge them, and not just when we get caught.

Before stepping on this path most of what I did I did without much thought, and, if some thought went into it it was focused on justifying my bad behavior. I reacted quickly or dove in doing what I had always done. I didn’t realize that most of what I was doing was actually harming myself and my chances of living the life I wanted. In fact, by participating in my bad behavior I was preventing myself from ever making things better for myself and my thoughts and actions were actually causing me to slide down deeper into a place that I almost didn’t get out of. When I finally realized what I was doing I had to get honest and I had to call myself out and identify all of that bad behavior.

Change isn’t always easy, especially when what we do and say is ingrained in us from an early age, or we’ve convinced ourselves we have found the best way to navigate through life. For me, I could no longer deny my actions when I found myself emotionally and spiritually bankrupt. There was no lower bottom, except death. So, when I set out on this journey of recovery and I resisted letting go of old behavior, I had to remind myself of how bad it had gotten doing it my own way, and if I was to get any better I had to let go of those old behaviors and replace them with healthier ones. They say, practice makes perfect, I haven’t found that to be true, but practice does make it easier, and it’s OK if I’m not perfect as long as I am doing my best in the moment. You see perfection used to be what I strived for, and never feeling I was able to achieve it I labeled myself a loser, which gave me permission to act out in ways that harmed myself, my relationships and my chances of learning and growing from the place I was. But to get better I had to let go of my perfectionism and embrace the idea that I was going to make mistakes and fall back on old behavior, but that wasn’t an excuse to throw out all the progress I had made and allow myself to engage in that old behavior. Making mistakes was part of the process of growth and if I was able to use it as that, I would do just that, grow from there.

We all have things we like to do even when we know it’s not the best choice for us, but indulging in that old behavior doesn’t move us forward, it doesn’t help us make better and stronger choices and it holds back from being our best selves. Acknowledge when you are repeating old behaviors and set yourself on the right path for success. SLAY on!

SLAY OF THE DAY: Do you recognize behaviors from your past that you still practice today that may not be the best for you? What are they? When do you notice them come up? What do you tell yourself to let yourself engage in that behavior? Or, do you not realize you are doing it until later, or not at all? What behavior stands in your way to being who you want to be, or know you can be? What can you do to change that? It’s OK to make mistakes and fall back on your old ways, but work to make better choices and soon you may find that many of those old behaviors don’t feel so comfortable anymore.

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

Slay Slay

Good morning SLAYER! Holding on is believing there is only a past, letting go is knowing there is a future.

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

state-of-slay Hurt Holding Back

Slay Say

Good morning SLAYER! Negative thoughts don’t protect you, they make you smaller.

SLAY on!

State Of Slay Believing Negative Thoughts

Cherishing Our Character Defects

When I stepped on this path I was encouraged to write down what I thought were my character defects. Defects? That seemed harsh. I mean, clearly, there were some things that weren’t working in my life, after all, I had gotten myself to a place where I could no longer find a way out on my own, but defects, let me digest that for a moment. When I looked up the definition it said that a character defect was a fault, failing, weakness, I didn’t like that one, flaw, shortcoming and inadequacy, it implies moral and psychological failings, yikes! It took me a while to wrap my head around, what I considered, harsh language, and yet, on the flip side, the words I would have used to describe myself at that moment in my life would have been far harsher than those. Outside of just my ego not wanting to admit I had character defects that there preventing me from having the life I would like, it was realizing that many of them, I may have grown fond of, and, may not be willing to let them go.

We all have behaviors, things we do, that we may realize are probably not the best, but we’ve been using them for so long that they feel comfortable to us, or, we practice them out of habit, not even realizing we’re using them. So the first step for me to making a list of things I use or did that ultimately harmed me, or stood in my way of freedom, was to recognize them for what they were. I started out with pen in hand and began writing down what I thought were bad qualities, still thinking of myself as a horrible person, that pen starting flying across the page as I feverishly started to purge what I thought were the worst of my worst defects. And as I wrote, my ego tried to take some of them back as helpful or tools I needed to protect myself, or keep others in line, that’s where I had to get honest. See, I found myself in a place of complete darkness and despair because my ego and negative thinking had been running the show, I had used those defects to get me right where I was, which was total emptiness, so I had to let go of anything that was not going to contribute to my greater good, every one of them had to go. It helped that I was told to write the positive attribute next to each defect I had written down, that way when I caught myself falling back on old behavior I had a quick reference to the opposite behavior to combat the negative. And I wish I could say that just that alone wiped them all out, it didn’t, I still struggle with some today, 14 years later, but, the point is to be willing to let them go, or change, and focus on practicing contrary action, finding a positive attribute to replace the one that is not working for me, and retraining myself to not romanticize the negative into something I need or want.

We all have things we may know hold us back, keep us from moving forward or build a wall between us or others. We may feel these things are our friends and keep us safe and out of harm’s way, but really they themselves are harming us by not allowing us to engage with others and be our best selves. Look at your behaviors and patterns for what they are, not what you want them to be, and be willing to let the ones go that are holding you back from where you are meant to be. SLAY on!

SLAY OF THE DAY: Do you recognize behaviors or patterns in your life that would be labeled as a character defect? What are they? Do you hold on to them knowing you should let them go? Why? What stops you from letting them go? Do you romanticize them? How does this hurt you? How have they prevented you from receiving what you would like in your life? What can you do to change that? Write down the character defects or flaws you see in yourself, not to beat yourself up, to use a tool to change, and next to each one write the positive attribute to the negative, then you have a path to removing the negative and focusing on the positive. It takes work and a willingness to change, but it’s worth it when you begin to make better choices that reflect the light within you.

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