slayer

Powerful Powerlessness

Sounds crazy right? The last thing I would ever admit to being was powerless over anything. I was strong, resilient, a warrior, I wasn’t powerless, I was….well, I was a mess. Don’t get me wrong, I had overcome a lot just on sheer willpower alone, but that only got me so far because it was only powered by stubbornness, the underlying truth was I felt like a piece of crap, and I was afraid you were going to find out that’s exactly what I was. When I was asked what I was powerless against the first time I thought, nothing, I am in control, well, clearly I was not or I wouldn’t have been on my knees asking for help years ago because my way had stopped working. So, it got me thinking. We are powerless over people, places, and things, we can not control them, we can try, heck knows I did, to the point of exhaustion, but at the end of the day people are going to do what they’re going to do, and life is going to, well roll on, in whichever direction it goes. This falls into acceptance again, but it’s also admitting that we have no power over those things, and once we do, we start to get our power back. See here’s how it works?

If we admit we don’t run the show what we are left with is the facts, and once we have the facts, we have power! We have the power to decide if this is the right situation, person, place for us to be, for us to thrive, for us to grow, be nurtured, challenged, and loved, and if it’s not, well, we probably shouldn’t be there. The more we ask ourselves these questions, and get the facts, then the more powerful we are.

Here’s another one, feelings aren’t facts. Now this can get tricky sometimes, because we “feel” like we should be with someone or somewhere, but, we now have to ask ourselves why, and what are the facts to back that up. It’s like we’re all detectives of our own lives, “just the facts Ma’am,” or Mister if the case may be, but we need to look at the facts, even if we don’t want to, and if we don’t, that’s usually an indication we are somewhere we shouldn’t be, our gut may be giving us a nudge. So, now that we are living in, or aiming to, our authentic selves we have to be careful where we go and what we do, we are precious cargo, we can’t just be throwing ourselves into situations like we used too! No, we deserve to be places and with people who appreciate who we are. Now that might mean that some people will fall away in your life, I’ve had to say goodbye to a few over the years, and it’s not easy, but, if those so-called friends or relationships aren’t supporting the authentic you, they need to go, and who knows, making the changes you are might inspire them to do the same. You’ll be amazed that when you start loving and respecting yourself how other people start to do the same, and if they don’t, well that’s a sign, and, a fact, they need to go. If those people are family, well, it’s not always easy to just say goodbye, but setting boundaries and limiting the types of interactions you’re having with them is step in the self love/authentic you direction. More on boundaries later, but, it’s about knowing the facts and making the best decisions for ourselves.

Someone who has been very instrumental in my road to recovery used to say to me, “when we know the facts we are safe because then you know what you are dealing with and can make the best decision for yourself,” but, at the beginning sometimes it was really scary to ask, it seemed easier to go back to my old ways and just assume or “hope” that things were the way I wanted them to be, or even worse, try to force it into being so, asking will probably not make you feel safe, but trust me, once you start doing it you will see that it is the only way we are safe.

It’s time to take our powerlessness over people, places, and things, and turn it into our power, our power to live authentically and live in the light.

SLAY OF THE DAY: What are you powerless over in your life? Who are the people, places, or things you don’t have all the facts on? What do you think will happen if you do? Is there something stopping you from find out the facts? Get the facts SLAYER, case closed.

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

(Photo Credits: Photographer: Jay Bartlett Make-Up: Samantha Dellinger Jewelry: Hilliard Design)

Weaknesses Become Strengths

Yeah you read that right SLAYERS, those things we consider our weaknesses will become our strengths! Crazy right? Hear me out. All of the things in our lives that challenge us, when we learn to and choose to take the right action, make us stronger and better people. I know, you’re still skeptical, I used to be as well. But let’s first start with this…have you forgiven yourself yet? If you haven’t that’s still on your list of things you need to SLAY, if you have, this concept may not seem so far fetched. I know for myself all of the things I used to hate about myself are the things that made me stronger because I was able to overcome them, or realized they weren’t weaknesses at all, they just made me feel vulnerable, and one way to weed through these things was acceptance, listening non-forgivers?

Acceptance is really the answer to all our frustrations, and that doesn’t mean being a door mat and letting people walk all over us, it means, looking at things for what they are, truly are, with the facts, not our feelings, and then deciding what the next right thing to do is. There are always going to be things that we don’t want to accept, for instance I don’t really want to accept that someone I trusted betrayed me, fraudulently used my name and personal information for his own gain and now I’m paying the consequences of that, but I have to, and I have. Once we know the facts we are safe. We’ve already established that we are not in control of all things, we’re not, or we would have everything we want, and everything would look exactly how we think it should look, and well, we’d probably be on a really awesome vacation right now, but alas, we don’t control all things, but we wouldn’t be SLAYERS if we did, we wouldn’t get stronger, we wouldn’t learn how to accept when things don’t go our way, or when people don’t behave the way or how we expect them too. There are many things we just have to accept.

For me acceptance goes along with my spirituality, if I believe in something greater than myself, something that is looking out for me, it’s easier for me to accept things for what they are, because really, I only have my one perspective, I only know how my actions affect those immediately around me or myself, I have no idea what the bigger picture is or how what I do may affect others out of my immediate circle who are supposed to be affected by something I’m doing. I trust that, if I am connected and paying attention, that I am where I am supposed to be, doing what I’m supposed to be doing, it’s a leap of faith I know, but you have to agree that when we are on the right path and doing things for the right reasons, ie: not for just ourselves, that things seem to go smoother, that people seem to come into our lives who can help and support us, or who are just of like mind, it’s those times, the times our “gut instinct” tells us to do something, that we are one with our purpose, so for me, when things don’t go my way, I try remember that it wasn’t meant for me, or I’m supposed to go through something for myself and quite possibly the other people in involved.

Great example of acceptance. I was stuck on the 405 in Los Angeles, late for a meeting, my frustration and anger were at a boiling point, I was 25 minutes late, I hate being late, when I finally get to my destination I see a fire truck and ambulance parked out front. I found out that a woman had lost control of her SUV and rammed right into a car parked behind the spot where I would have parked, about 25 minutes before I got there, meaning if I had been on time she would have slammed into my car, and quite possibly me getting out of it. I try to remember that story when I get stuck in traffic and say to myself, “you are exactly where you are supposed to be.”

We don’t always know or understand why things happen to us, but finding a way to acceptance saves us a lot of heartaches and is one of the ways that I have found peace, and a way I turned a weakness of trying to control or manipulate situations into a strength. I can now find patience when things are out of my control and trust the process. This can be done for any of those attributes we think are our weaknesses, even just the awareness of them make us stronger, but asking yourself if that attribute really does make you weak, or if it just gives you the illusion of weakness because it makes you human, vulnerable, or soft, if that’s the case, it’s not a weakness at all, but what makes you a loving caring individual, something to be proud of, and the more tools you get in your SLAYER chest, the more you’ll have the courage to wear them like a badge of honor. If they are truly something that is hindering you from living as your authentic self, then the work begins to throw them away, or at least keep them in check, these are old ideas that no longer serve you, and even though they may pop up, even in SLAYDOM, they can be told to take a hike because their services are no longer needed. It’s all part of the process SLAYER, be patient, loving and kind to yourself during your journey, but in the end, if it doesn’t serve you, you don’t need it, throw it away and own your power and strength. SLAY on!

SLAY OF THE DAY: Make a list of the things you have a hard time finding acceptance about. Ask yourself why? Are the reasons selfish or because of fear? What attributes or habits stand in your way of you living as your authentic self? Make a list, ask that those attributes or habits be taken away, light the list on fire and watch the burn away.

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

The ‘P’ Word

Patience. Ugh, I used to hate that word, still do sometimes, but I’ve gotten better about it. It used to be like hearing nails on a chalkboard when someone would say “be patient,” I’d want to smack them. It seemed that I had spent my whole life being patient for one thing or another, but what I had really been doing is trying to force my will on all of the people, places and things in my life. Nothing patient about that, that took a lot of energy, and typically a very aggravating result, things quite often didn’t go the way I would have had them go.

Patience is hard, especially when you feel that you’ve lived your life as an unauthentic version of you, if you feel like you’ve never had a voice, or mattered. For me, that was the root of the problem, finding value in myself, and learning that yes, it was OK to have goals, hopes and dreams, yes, that is encouraged, but what my job was was to do the footwork, the steps that I could take to take me closer to where or what I want, and then let it go. Yeah, I said let it go! Sounds scary right? It did for me at first, I was so used to keeping everything so tightly wound that the thought of stepping back seemed like jumping out of an airplane without a parachute, it didn’t feel safe. What was pointed out to me is that I only had the illusion of feeling safe because that’s what I had become accustomed to doing, trying to force a favorable outcome for myself. Growing up I felt like my world was unstable, unpredictable and unsure, so as a defense for that I started to control every aspect of my life that I could, and even try to control what I couldn’t control, which always added to my frustration, but not trying to control everything seemed too scary.  I continued to do that well into my adulthood because that was what I knew, and thought was working for me, but it wasn’t, it just brought me more pain, heartache and disappointment, but it also gave me validation when things didn’t go my way that I didn’t deserve good things because I wasn’t a good person, a self fulfilling prophecy. As I set out on my journey of self-love and acceptance I was better able to “take my hands off the wheel” as it where and let things happen as they would. I also now have a stronger connection spiritually than I did before, which has helped me to step back and let things unfold. Also after finding forgiveness in myself I was better able to find compassion in others, even people I never thought I could, because I could see how they also struggled with certain things, maybe some of the same things I did, so finding compassion in others also helped me to find patience when it came to certain people in my life.

There are a lot of layers to all of this, and we’ll get to them as we go, but hopefully the door to patience will open just a crack.

I now look at patience as a huge victory for me, and I look at it as something that takes the load solely off my shoulders, I look at it as a positive thing, I can do the work and then move on to something else and let it unfold as it will, if more work needs to be done I can get back to it and then let it go again. This alleviates so much stress and exhaustion in my day, and frees me up to concentrate on other positive things.

Patience, not a swear word anymore.

SLAY OF THE DAY: What in your life tests your patience? Why are you not able to let go? What do you think will happen if you do? Is there someone in your life who tests your patience? Why? Is it possible that what bothers you about them is something you don’t like about yourself? Be honest. How are you doing with your own forgiveness? What, if anything, is holding you back? Love yourself today SLAYER, we all do.

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

Forgiveness: First Steps To Freedom

I know what you’re thinking, screw ’em, all those jerks who hurt me, burned me, betrayed me, I know, I have a long list as well, and we’ll get those people, but what I want to talk about today, and what is most important on your journey to SLAYDOM, is finding forgiveness in yourself. Yeah, you! When I finally had the courage to sit down and talk to someone about the circumstances that finally brought me to my knees, I was asked to write down a list of people who had harmed me, finally I thought, let me show you why I’m here, let me know show you all the horrible people and the horrible things that were done to me to get me to this place, and I feverishly wrote that list. What was asked of me when I was done was, did you write your own name on your list?

My own name?! What? Yes my own name, because I had harmed myself the most, and I believed I deserved it, that I didn’t deserve to have good things and good people in my life because I was a bad person, I was weird, I was different, awkward. I was told in order to heal I needed to first forgive myself. That was a blow. How the hell would I do that?

This was a place in my life, my journey, when I romanticized taking my own life, when my self worth was less than zero, and all of the lies and manipulations and shitty things I had done to move through life without you asking me too many questions or letting you get too close, had caught up to me. I thought I was lower than low, the scum of the earth. I physically could not look at myself in the mirror and say “I love you,” it’s not that I wouldn’t, I could not, trust me, I tried, I couldn’t even look at myself in the mirror, I brushed my teeth looking down into the sink. So, to now be asked to find it in myself to forgive myself, I thought it was impossible. Thankfully it was not.

No matter what we’ve done, or think we’ve done, it can be forgiven. What I learned is, I had to allow room for myself to be human, to be flawed, to learn, I couldn’t expect myself to know things I was never taught, and that I could now make a commitment to learn, to be the person I wanted to be, to hit the reset button and start again. But hitting reset didn’t mean forgetting the past, it meant taking full responsibility for it and learning to do it better. When I was able to look at myself from that perspective I was able to start forgiving myself. It goes back to those tools in our toolbox, if we don’t have the tools we need, we use the ones we have, so we can’t fault ourselves for not using tools that aren’t there. Our job now is to find and use those new tools so we can do it better, and that takes time, and patience, a blog for another day. But if we’re able to acknowledge the places where we’re lacking the tools to do it right, we can start forgiving ourselves for doing it wrong, and forgiveness is the first step to freedom. It may seem really scary, and it is, but that’s exactly where we want to be, because where it feels safe got us here, it’s time to do things differently.

We are always hardest on ourselves, but what if we stopped that, and started to love and nurture ourselves? Acknowledge our flaws and work to fix them, or find a better way, to maybe do the opposite of what our nature tells us to do because it’s what we’ve always done, or what those around us have done. Who do we want to be in the world, our communities, our families and relationships? We can be those people, we just have to work on it, and, start by forgiving ourselves for those things we think are unforgivable.

SLAY OF THE DAY: What’s stopping you for forgiving yourself? What do you think makes you unforgivable? What do you think you can do to start to forgive yourself so you can move forward from here? Building on the blog before, write a fresh gratitude list with five things you LOVE about yourself. Read it out loud before bed and in the morning when you get up. Don’t forget to smile SLAYER.

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

Slayer Say

New blog  will go up Friday morning, until then SLAYERS….SLAY on!

 

State Of Slay Sword

Slayer Love

Thank you all for of your incredible SLAYER love for my first blog.  So many of you have shared beautiful messages, comments and posts with me here and on social media, which is what I was hoping would happen, we would start a dialogue, a fearless exchange of our ideas and thoughts about ourselves, and, ignite a whole lot of healing and strength.

This is just the beginning SLAYERS, let’s gather an army of SLAYERS and continue to love and support each other through this journey of self love and empowerment.

Let’s SLAY on!

New blog goes up Friday morning, until then…how’s that gratitude list?

SLAY with me on social media.

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Gratitude Is The Best Attitude

Hello SLAYERS, yeah, that’s who we are, we are warriors, we are fighters, we are SLAYERS. I didn’t always believe that, and you may not right now, but I believe you are, so for now, use that, take it and put it in your SLAYER chest until you can add some tools of your own. I believe in you, you are worth fighting for, and, you matter.

I never really heard anyone say that to me until I embarked on a journey to find self love, to find like-minded individuals who, like me, had also been broken, empty, and lost. Sometimes the only strength we have is the strength of others who believe we are worth fighting for, and if that is to you I say this, you are worth fighting for!

This is the beginning of a revolution, and it may just be your own, but I’m hoping we can all do this together, and bring along many more with us. There is strength in numbers, there is strength in sharing what we think makes us weak and there is strength in lending a hand to someone who needs it. Together we can do anything, but what my hope is for us, and all of the SLAYERS out there, is that we lift each other up, to reach our full potential and live each day as our authentic selves.

Authentic self, I went through most of my life not knowing who or what that was. I don’t think I wanted to know, because I thought that girl, that woman, wasn’t good enough. I didn’t think you’d like her. I thought she didn’t matter. I was wrong. If you are thinking those things, you are also wrong, you may just have to trust me on this for now, but you are.

Sometimes on your SLAYER path we’re going to be challenged or may be encouraged to do something you don’t want to do, that’s exactly the stuff you should do! If I hadn’t done a whole bunch of stuff that I didn’t want to do I wouldn’t be where I am today, and where I am is a place of self-love, of inner-peace (most days) and of gratitude. It is hard to sit down with ourselves and be honest about who we are or what we’ve done, but, here’s the good news, that’s who we were yesterday, not today. Today we are making a commitment to leave that person behind, to learn from the past, and to move forward shedding the things that no longer serve us, so, there is nothing to be ashamed about, to regret, or to hold us back, we didn’t know better, or maybe we did but we didn’t have the self-love and strength to take the right action, we will learn how, together.

I am really excited to share my journey with all of you in the hopes that it might help yours, and that you might share yours with us to help all of us, see how that works?

Every day we have the choice to make it a good day or bad day, to focus on the positive or the negative, to give back or to take, let’s walk in the light together, be grateful, and share all that is within us to those who are out there.

SLAY OF THE DAY: Write down five non-material things about yourself you are grateful for. Put that paper in your pocket, purse, wallet, when you are feeling anxious, down, or unsure, look at it, and smile.

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