surprise

If You Wake Up Bored It’s Your Fault

When I was living in the dark, I would often say I was bored. I would say it like life owed it to me to entertain me. But without putting in any effort myself, I continued to live in a repetitious pattern that only had me spiral down deeper into despair. Life didn’t owe me anything, I owed it to myself to get out there and engage with life.

When I began my journey in recovery, I realized that I had never really thought about, or asked myself, what I truly liked, and most of my life I had just done what I thought I should do, or what I thought looked good from the outside. I had to start with a clean slate. That, at first, seemed daunting, but once I began to look at it as something exciting, something to discover, it turned into something fun I could explore. I started my journey with ‘the year of yes,’ as I called it, I would do my best to say yes to anything, as long as it was healthy for me, that I hadn’t tried before, and it opened the door to new friendships and experiences with newfound friends I found on this same path. Again, a little scary for me coming from a place of isolation but isolating only left me lonely and alone with my disease, so I acknowledged how I felt but off I went on this new adventure! The deal I made with myself was that I only had to try new a thing once, if I didn’t like it, I didn’t have to do it again, but in just saying yes, my world opened up and so did my friend circle. Saying yes never had me bored, because even if I found myself in a situation I wasn’t fond of I was learning from that situation, and, I would challenge myself to look for something positive that I could take from that situation. If I had said yes reluctantly, I would ask the universe to surprise me, and I was, many times, surprised by what I found in those situations I had already condemned in my mind before they had already begun. When I was willing to have an open mind and dive into life, life did give back, two or three-fold, and, I discovered a lot about who I was and what I liked. Saying yes eventually led me to write this blog, something I never thought would have been possible sitting alone in the dark, and, saying yes eventually led me to share my life with someone who teaches me more about myself and what I love every day. Saying yes is the key to boredom.

It is our job to remedy our boredom, it is no one else’s, nor is it owed to us. Like with most things, it is our job to take action, and if we’re able to make that task fun for ourselves, and adventure as I did, we set ourselves up to break free from the walls we had previously built for ourselves and allow new people, places and things in. Still sounds scary? There is some trust that comes into play with this way of life, trust that when we let the universe know what we are doing, what our intentions are and that we are willing to grow that it will present us with opportunities to do just that. I still, 14 years later, continue to say yes to life and my life keeps getting bigger as a result. I never wake up today and think about being bored, there’s far too much to do and see to make time for boredom.

Get out there and engage with life. Each day we have endless possibilities and choices, what if you started saying yes instead of saying I’m bored? SLAY on!

SLAY OF THE DAY: Do you often say that you are bored or have in the past? If you still do, why do you think you are feeling that way? Are you open to new experiences in your life? If you complained of boredom in the past, what changed? What do you do today that keeps boredom at bay? Can you be doing more? Do you keep yourself open to new ideas and situations? If not, why not? What has saying yes brought to your life that you would have otherwise not gotten? Can you be saying yes more than you are? What can you say yes to today? Change and new things can be scary, but staying stuck where we are and not reaching our true potential is much scarier than that.

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

Slay Say

Good morning SLAYER! The one thing you’ve got that no one else has is you. Your voice. Your Mind.  Your story.

SLAY on!

state-of-slay Living Breathing Novel

Maybe It’ll Turn Out Better Than Expected

Before walking this past I was a pessimist  in optimist clothing. I would hope for the best, and talk about it, and even want it, but never believed it would happen, or that I even deserved it. I never expected the best, I would walk into situations or new projects with flimsy hope it would be but never really expecting it actually work out that way. Much of that was not believing I was worthy of good, but also not doing all the footwork to set up a good or better outcome. In a way, it was as self-fulfilling prophecy, I wouldn’t put in the work and then when things didn’t go well it was proof to me that I wasn’t deserving of better.

When I began my journey in recovery, I was told, even if I didn’t believe something, to do the work and then act ‘as if.’ I felt like I had been doing that, but I had been missing the ‘doing the work’ part, I was just wanting things and acting ‘as if’ they were going to magically happen. My negative mind told me that this new approach wasn’t going to work, but my negative mind also wanted me to stay sick, so, off I went, doing the work that was suggested to start my life on a positive path. When I set out on something new and my mind wanted to tell me the result would be negative, I did the work anyway and acted ‘as if.’ It took a while to trust that I really didn’t have anything to lose by trying this new method, but I did it anyway because it seemed better than the alternative, which was what I already knew and had experienced every day. And, as I trusted and kept putting one foot in front of the other, many steps I made in fear, or in a state of utter uncomfortableness, I was surprised to find more and more that things would turn out better than I had expected. I appreciated each and every time they did, and always felt a sense of gratitude. Many times, when I was stuck in a negative space, I would suit up and show up anyway and would set out to act ‘as if,’ as I begrudgingly stepped forward I would ask the universe to surprise me, and many times I was surprised. I realized that I could change my negative thinking and expectations and that by doing so, many times, things did turn out better than I expected, and each time it did, I would focus on making that place my base and foundation to operate from as I moved forward, and as I did that I began to anticipate good things as I moved forward from there.

There are still times when my thoughts will fall back to negative thinking, and I have to remind myself to leave room for the possibility that things will turn out better than expected, also leaving a space open for hope and to be surprised, something that lends itself to positive thinking and with remaining teachable. I don’t know everything, and even though experience may lend it itself to one response, perhaps my growth and the timing of this particular moment can open new doors. This is a much better place to live my life than always expecting the worst, because in my experience, what we expect is often what we get.

Give yourself permission to allow things to turn out better than expected, to know you deserve good things and when you do the work and put out positive energy you leave room to be surprised by the result, or what is found in the process. Always leave some room for some magic. SLAY on!

SLAY OF THE DAY: Do you expect good things or focus on the negative? If you focus on the negative, do you find that you get a negative result? Do you think you deserve a negative result? Why is that? Have you ever been surprised with a result you weren’t expecting? What was that? How was that different than what you typically expect? How can you open yourself up to expecting a better result? What if you practiced ‘as if’ and tried to act as if you were open to a better result? We have more power than we think, but what we think gives our thoughts and energy power, why not ignite that power with positivity and watch that positive power power light up your life!

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