steps

Slay Say

Good morning SLAYER! The story of your darkness may bring someone light.

New blog goes up Tuesday, until then… SLAY on!
You May Be The Hope

Slay Say

Good morning SLAYER! It takes time to get familiar with new thoughts and situations, don’t let it stop you from changing.

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

State Of Slay Little Steps

Slay Say

Good morning SLAYER! When you stop doing nothing and just start to do something, it starts to change everything.

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

State Of Slay Steps

Waking Up And Nothing Has Changed, But Everything Is Different

I have had a number of these moments in my life. And I’m grateful for all of them.

We see things when we’re ready to, or when we’re ready to take action, or capable of taking the right action, or, sometimes when we find ourselves at a crossroads and realize what road we are meant to take, and we realize that we are no longer able to stay were we are. Nothing has changed in that moment of realization, but everything has changed. We see things differently. We see things clearly. And even though it can be a harsh awakening, it is the key to our freedom, or a new chapter in our life. There’s an excitement to it. There can be fear, as we embark on a new journey to perhaps unfamiliar places, and we may have to take action in unfamiliar ways, but we’re ready for them, and they’re ready for us.

It’s easy to live where we are and put blinders on to the rest of the world. To narrow our field of vision, to somehow make where we are OK, to ignore the signs we shouldn’t be there, or to continue to tell ourselves the lies we need to to keep ourselves there. But we know the truth. Deep down. That’s why our light grows dim, we know we are not being true to ourselves and our light can’t shine when we’re not living in our truth.

Sometimes it takes a big jolt to get us to see. Or sometimes it comes as a person, a message, a kind heart. But when it comes it lets the light in, it blows the dust off of those places we’ve let sit stagnant, and maybe stopped visiting for fear of the truth. But once we see we can’t ignore it. Everything changes, and to stay would be too painful, too costly, so we take the action we can, even if it’s small, just a step, we take it, and once we do we start to live in our truth, the light comes in, and we begin to live again. Or, maybe for the first time.

For me, the first time it happened it was when I started to live, truly, in my truth, I had lived most of my life presenting myself to the world the way I thought you wanted me to be, and as a result, I never really connected to anyone, or let anyone really see the real me. In fact, I didn’t actually know the real me because I was too busy being who I thought you wanted me to be. But when my eyes finally opened to the reality of my life and that I held the key to finding a better one, as frightened as I was about the unknown of the future, I had found my power in my actions, and as I took more action, my power got stronger, as did I. And that was the beginning of the person who is now typing this blog.

The last time it happened was not that long ago. My eyes were opened to a life that filled my heart with joy, and does, a life that allows me to be who I truly am, that celebrates that, and allows me to learn and grow in the safety of it’s authenticity. In that moment of realization, nothing had changed, but everything had, as I could no longer stay where I was knowing what I knew, and feeling what I felt, that knowledge and those feelings were so strong they propelled me forward to the place I am meant to be, a place of true love, a place of support, a place that is home. I am grateful that I had had those moments before, and because I had taken action and found positive results, I didn’t hesitate when it happened again, I trusted that I was being shown this for a reason and that I had to take a leap of faith to find out why.

When you wake up and find that everything looks different, even if you’re in the same place, take note of that, and take action to get yourself out of the place you are and in the place you are mean to be. SLAY on!

SLAY OF THE DAY: Have you ever felt like you woke up and everything looked different? Write down an example. What was the result of that? Did you make some changes? What changes did you make? Where there changes you didn’t make? What was the result? What stopped you from making them? Is it too late to make those changes today? Do it SLAYER, make any changes necessary to live as your best you, and, to live your best life. You have it in you, and if you forget, we’re right here to remind you as we live ours.

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

Slay Say

Good morning SLAYER! If you always do what you’ve done, you’ll always get what you always got.

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

State Of Slay Stay

If It’s Happening To You You Must Need It

I used to think that life was just something that was happening to me. Now, after being on this path for many years, I realize that life is something that is happening for me. And what I mean by that is that what life gives me is what I need. What I need to be a better person. What I need to move forward. What I need to learn, to grow, to give me the opportunities to reach my full potential, and to help me make better choices so I don’t keep making the same mistakes.

I find that when I don’t make the right decisions, or take the right actions, life has a way of giving me those same situations over and over until I do. When I was living in my disease and mentally sick, I would often think, why does this keep happening to me, I was always the victim, never looking at the actions I had taken to get me back to that same place. I didn’t realize that I had the power to stop myself from getting there time and time again. All I had to do was learn and make better decisions and I wouldn’t keep finding myself in those same places. The opportunity to make a better choice came to me yesterday morning. I had handled something poorly a few days prior, and was upset at myself for how I let a frustrating situation affect me, and ruin something else I enjoy because I couldn’t let go of the frustrating situation. I thought about it after, how I could have handled it better, and lo and behold that same frustrating situation popped up again, around the same event, I could feel the frustration bubble up from my belly, and I took a deep breath and stayed calm. Ultimately it situation was worked out, it didn’t go as smoothly as I would have liked, but it got done, and, I handled it with much more grace than I had a few days before. When I thought about it later, I smiled, because I realized that things didn’t go smoothly yesterday morning so I would have the opportunity to do it better than I had, and when something like that pops up again, I can think back to yesterday morning and remember what the right action is to take, and how much better it felt to not let it get the best of me.

When I look back at my life when I lived in the darkness, I am grateful for it. I am grateful that I survived, because I shouldn’t have, and I am grateful for all of those things that didn’t go my way, or didn’t go well, or just didn’t go, because I have since learned from them. I look at them all as lessons, as information and chances to do better today, to know what I don’t want or need, and to know that I have the power of choice today.  I have more knowledge and I have enough self-love to make the right decisions and choices for me, so when things happen that I may find frustrating or aggravating, I now know that that is happening for a reason, that I likely need to work on this part of my life, or fine-tune what I’ve already worked on so that as I move forward I’ve done the work I need to bring me to where I need to be going. Life builds on itself, and if we try to skip the steps or ignore them, we don’t get to move forward and just leave those lessons behind, we stay stuck where we are while life goes on without us.

Look for those lessons in your life. Look to make a situation you might find frustrating into an opportunity to do better, or make different choices, and maybe look at the times in your life that you may have been given this opportunity before and the choices you made around that opportunity. There may just be room for improvement SLAYER, and, that may just be why you find yourself in that space once again. How can you make better choices today so that you don’t have to make the same mistakes again tomorrow? SLAY on!

SLAY OF THE DAY: Do you see patterns in your life where you’ve always done certain things one way and the same people, places and things keep coming up as a result? Write down those patterns in your life and what you’ve done about them in the past. What can you do today that may be better choices for you? Do you look at life as something that is happening to you, or do you see the opportunities it provides to teach and challenge you for what may lie ahead? Write down when life gave you an opportunity to do something better. Did you make the improvement? How did that feel? That’s all those events are in our lives. Those little lessons that pop up to challenge us, look at them as your chance to do better for yourself and you may just find they stop popping up, because you’ve moved past the place you were and are on to the place you’re supposed to be.

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

Are You Afraid Of The Solution?

We can get so used to living in our own darkness that we let fear keep us from a solution. Our brain tells us that we can’t get better, our fear backs that up with unhelpful thoughts that are based on old information and stories that don’t have to be, or may not be, our present, but if we let them dictate our lives, they will continue to hold us back, and they’ll keep telling us those same old stories and those same old fears will keep us from getting well. We have the power each day to make better choices for ourselves, to take positive steps that will walk us into the light, to give us tools to live a life we deserve, and one that can be our “new normal.” It’s incredible how much pain many of us endure, at our own hands, because it’s what we’ve come to know, and even though we may not be happy there, we stay, because it’s the normal we do know, the thought of stepping out of that normal into something healthier, brighter, and better may be so scary we’d rather stay in the dark and continue to suffer there, even though there may be solutions all around us, and, people to help us get there. We are the only ones standing in our own way of recovery, or a better way of life. And as hard is it may be to believe for someone looking in at us, we might even be hanging on to that part of our life, not wanting to let go and set ourselves free. We may identify with it so much that the thought of it no longer being a part of our lives may leave us wondering who we would be without it. Who we would be, and could be, is our authentic selves. The people we were meant to be, who we aspire to be, who we can be. We can have all of the things we would like, it is going to take work, likely a lot of it, but there is no better person to invest in than yourself. Change can be scary, but look at it like you are giving yourself a software update, you are still you, but with some upgraded features to make you run more smoothly, more secure, and maybe with some new apps, or bells and whistles to make your life run easier.

All sounds good right? So what holds us back. Our friend fear. I talk a lot about find out the facts, well, fears aren’t facts, they are feelings, and feelings aren’t always accurate information, feelings can have all kinds of things attached to them that we’re not even aware of, things from our past, things that haven’t even every happened. When we live in fear we are not living in the present moment, we are living in the past or the future, when we live in the present moment, and are always looking at the facts we have, what we know to be true for sure, we are safe, we can make sound decisions, and we can start to let go of those fears that haunt us. Our brains like things to stay the same, they like to know what’s coming next, or what the outcome will be, and when things are changing fear likes to jump in and tell us it’s protecting us, but it’s really holding us back. It’s when we walk through those fears that they start to lose their power over us, and when we practice walking through those fears, our brain stops telling us to be afraid because it now has proof that when we’ve made changes everything is still OK, in fact, it’s probably more than OK and is better, so it stops trying to, well, stop us. The trick is to walk forward even if you’re in fear and trust that if you’re doing something that is for your greater good, that it’s going to be OK, and if it’s not, then you’ve learned a valuable lesson to be used for the next time, but even that is good, it’s learning, it’s growth.

I know for myself when I started to get better it felt very uncomfortable, I felt uncomfortable in my own skin because I was used to wearing the skin that I had been wearing for years and years, and even that skin didn’t feel good, I knew what that skin felt like, it was familiar to me, and when I started to make changes in my life, that skin no longer felt good, but neither did the new skin, it felt foreign, but I was told from many who had walked this path before me that it would feel uncomfortable at first, but to keep wearing it because one day it would feel great, it was just my brain trying to pull me back to the place I had been. I learned to get comfortable in the uncomfortable, and now I know when I’m there it’s because I’m changing, and, that’s a good thing. In fact, when I get too comfortable I know that’s the time to challenge myself again, that I’ve gotten lazy, so now that comfortable place I used to sit in is no longer desirable because I want to continue to grow and continue to challenge myself.

I know you can do this, I did, and I doubted I could many times when I began this journey, but I just kept putting on foot in front of the other, and I surrounded myself with like-minded people to support me on my journey. Walk through your fear, let go of the past, and step into who you are meant to be.

SLAY OF THE DAY: Do you let your past dictate your present? How do you do this? Why do you do this? How do you think it hurts you? What step can you take today to overcome this? Do you think you let the comfort of staying where you are keep you from moving forward? Why do you think you do this? What fears keep you from moving forward? What are these fears based on? How can you overcome them? SLAYER, I know you have it in you to become your best self, but you have to work to move forward each day, and on those days when you fall back, and you will, you have to get right back up again and keep trudging forward, as someone who has walked before you, I promise, the more steps you take, the easier the journey becomes. SLAY on.

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

Slayer Say

Good morning SLAYER!  It can be scary to begin, to make changes in your life, and start a new path, but the willingness to try is your key to freedom, just the act of being willing opens the door to a whole new world, and your willingness will help you take each step as you walk towards the life and goals you dream of.

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

State Of Slay Willingness