truth

It’s OK To Give Yourself A Break

I’ve been shooting on location, and the days have been long. The other night I got back to my hotel room and had many pages of dialogue to memorize for the next day, with an early morning start time. I sat, conflicted, as I knew I had a blog due to be posted the next morning. I needed to get to bed so I could be ready for work the next day. It would be the first time since launching the blog that I would not have a new blog posted when I typically do. I felt, for a moment, like I had failed. And then I remembered that failing would have been sitting up for an extra hour, when I should be sleeping, and forcing myself to write because that was what was expected instead of taking care of myself. Even as I have learned and practiced self-care, and talk about it’s importance here at State Of Slay™, I still fell victim to my old thinking of having to get something done ahead of my own need to rest. And, even when I made the right decision, to repost a popular blog from the past, I still had an inkling of guilt about not putting out a new blog.

So, last night I got home from set, late, and, had to memorize many pages of dialogue for today, and found myself in the same situation, and so I, last night, I also needed to give myself a break, do my work and get to bed.

A reminder to all you SLAYERS out there, to do the same, to recognize when you need to let go of what you think you have to do and just take care of yourself. Nothing is more important than that. SLAY on!

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

Slay Say

Good morning SLAYER! Are you distracted by the distraction of your distraction? Make sure you’re not trying to use outside things for an inside job.

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

state-of-slay Starve

Slay Say

Good morning SLAYER! Once you choose hope, anything is possible.

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

State Of Slay Healing

 

Slay Say

Good morning SLAYER! Every time you’re able to find the humor in a situation, you win.

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

State Of Slay Laugh

Laughter: A Sign Of Good Health

When I first stepped on this path and made a commitment to get better there wasn’t much to laugh about. I had hit the lowest bottom I ever had, emotionally, physically and spiritually, my life was hanging in the balance and every moment felt very fragile. When I began to look for support, and for others like me, who were struggling to find a new way of living, and those who already had, I was surprised to find how much laughter there was in their recovery. I had not yet found the humor in where I found myself at all, and yet, often I would hear people share their stories or offer comfort to others with a sense of humor and laughter at the places they had come from or things they had once did. That laughter, that sense of humor about where we had come from and where we found ourselves in that moment helped to make things OK, it helped me to realize that the place I found myself was not a death sentence, nor was it a place where I was meant to suffer for the rest of my life and have no fun, the work I had to do was serious, but I didn’t have to take myself so seriously, in fact, to recover, to get better, to find this new way of life, it was going to help tremendously to find some humor in my own situation if I was going to be able to let go and move on.

My Mom, who has had her struggles with health over the years, has always said, “if I’ve lost my sense of humor I’ve lost everything,” even in the moments when she was in the worst pain or discomfort. I remembered that as I set out in this new journey, that I too needed to hold on to my sense of humor as I stepped forward and began to heal. Even in the very serious place I found myself, in terms of needing to come clean and get help for the way I had been living, and to find a way to live with my mental illness, it helped to look for those moments that I could laugh at, and they were harder to find at the start, but they were there. Life is really what we make it, and even in our darkest days we have a choice how we’re going to look at it and deal with it. As painful as much of my early recovery was emotionally, it helped to lighten the load with some laughter where I could, but, I had to be careful. I had built up such a strong wall to protect myself that I had also used my sense of humor to deflect and hide behind. I had to be careful in those early days to not use my laughter to try to escape the truth and brush off the work I was needing to do. The laughter could not be self-deprecating, it couldn’t be an act to hide how I truly felt, and it couldn’t be at someone else’s expense, my laughter had to come from a place of humility, to connected and relation to someone like myself and as an act of healing.

As I got better so did my sense of humor about the road that had brought me to my knees. I realized that my suffering was a result of my disease along with choices I had been making, and many of those choices, looking back, now seem pretty funny, even though I had justified them at the time, but to be able to look back and find the humor from a happier and healthier place, allowed me to put some perspective on how bad things were and how bad many of my choices were. And that laughter helped me to create bonds with others, like myself, who had traveled down similar roads. Our laughter united us and made us stronger.

When we find ourselves on those dark moments of our life it can be difficult to find the humor in our situation, but just finding one thing could make the difference of struggling through another day, or finding the light on an otherwise dark existence, that laughter just may be the key to opening the door and setting yourself free. SLAY on!

SLAY OF THE DAY: Do you take yourself seriously or are you able to find the humor in things? If you’re not able to, why not? If you are, how do you look for the humor in your day-to-day life? How has humor helped you through a difficult time? How has it connected you to people like yourself? And how have those connections helped you on your journey? If you have trouble finding the humor your day, how can you look for those moments to find it and maybe lighten your mood? Can you think of something in your past, that now, looking back, may seem funny to you? Do you see how finding the humor in those moments allows the light to come in? Find those moments SLAYER. Look for the humor in your life, allow yourself to laugh and let yourself heal from those darkest days.

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

Slay Say

Good morning SLAYER! The only thing you can change is yourself, but that can change everything.

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

State Of Slay Attitude

Never, Never Again

There were so many times in my life, before walking this path, that I would say never again. And yet, I would repeat those same behaviors over and over, even the ones I knew were self-destructive and were taking down an even darker road than I was already on. My attitude, always, was, well if I’ve already messed up this little bit I might as go whole hog and hit the “f*ck it button.” There was no middle ground, I was either doing great, or down in the dumps, I gave myself no room for anything in between. Living within those tight parameters I was setting myself up to fail, most of the time, and truthfully that’s where my head wanted me, to constantly be failing so I would increasingly get worse and think there was no way out. But there was.

When I finally fell to my knees and was able ask for help, I was told it takes time to break old habits and to begin a new way of life, and that even if I made mistakes, or failed in my opinion, that was part of the recovery process. That I had to wrap my head around. Failure was part of the process? Well, the truth was, it wasn’t really “failure,” it was all just part of the process, something I had to learn as I fell and got back up again. I also learned that those falls were where I learned the most, so they, for me, were an essential part of the process. I had to find comfortabililty in the gray areas between what I viewed as “right” or “wrong.” Being OK in the gray wasn’t easy at first because the minute I wasn’t perfect at this new way of life and slipped back into old behaviors or patterns, that negative bullshit committee in my head would pipe up and say, “see, you can’t do it!” In fact, they would scream it. And, I had to learn to say, “you’re lying, I can, watch me.”

Change takes time. It takes of trying, over and over again, until it becomes less effort. Until it becomes a part of who you are and not something you have to think about anymore. You are going to fail, or fall, or make mistakes, that’s part of making changes, but the important thing is to not give up, to keep going, to do better next time, or try again. Don’t put those parameters on yourself and say never again, you may do it again, you may do it many times before you stop doing it, and even when you stop doing it, you may do it another time. Allow yourself to have some wiggle room, to be in the gray space in between, where you’re trying your best, and that’s good enough, it is actually more than good enough. It was pointed out to me in my early journey that I had done things the old way much longer than I had the new way, so it wasn’t fair to beat myself for falling back to what I knew or once did, but I always had the chance to do it better the next time. And that’s what I did. It’s been over 13 years now and sometimes I can still fall back, but I know now that when I do it’s just a moment and it’s not who I am today, and maybe I fall back from time to time to remind myself where I don’t want to fall back to, and that’s OK, because today I know the right choices for me and what I need to do to live this life I’ve worked so hard for, a slip from time to time isn’t the end of the world, it’s just part of the process.

Allow yourself to make mistakes, and when you do, never say never again, say, I’ll do better next time, or I’ll try to, or, I did my best today. No one is perfect, and embracing those times we may fall back, and learning to look at them as learning opportunities rather than failures is the mindset that will get us to the place we’re working so hard for, I know, because I got there, and I know you can too. SLAY on!

SLAY OF THE DAY: Do you feel like you’ve failed if you fall back on old behaviors? Do you beat yourself up for it? Do you set strict parameters for yourself that you can’t possibly live within to grow and learn naturally? Why do you think you do this? How do you think you can ease those parameters to let yourself grow and make mistakes as part of your process and journey? What do you think will happen if you do? Let yourself live in the gray area sometimes, let go of the restrictions of right or wrong and let yourself find your way, always striving to do better the next time if you haven’t made the best choice in the moment, let yourself find the right way and not beat yourself up for the mistakes along the way, those mistakes might just be what’s guiding you to the right choice the next time.

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

Slay Talk Live Video

Hello SLAYER! For those of you that couldn’t join us tonight, here’s what you missed…Daphne is exhausted from her first livestream. SLAY on!

Healthy Fear

Until stepping onto this path my life was ruled by fear. Fear ran my life and was the basis of all my decisions. I would never have admitted that, or even identified it as such, but that was the truth. I was in fear of missing out, I was in fear of not getting what I wanted, I was in fear of loosing what I had, I was in fear of not being good enough, I was just in a constant state of fear. In my journey of recovery I’ve managed to lose most of my fear. That has come with living my life in a rigorously honest way and having found my way to self-love love and acceptance. When I’m living in that place, and connecting to a power greater than myself, I am very rarely in fear, but, some types of fear can be healthy.

Healthy fear motivates us, it stops us from procrastinating, or may shorten the length of time we procrastinate, it can help us take the right action, even if there is an easier one that may not be right, it can help us in many ways to do what we need to do when we need to do it. We can use healthy fear to our advantage if it gets us to where we need to be and where we should be.

For me, I have a fear of not being prepared. So I can use my healthy fear around that to make sure I’ve done my homework. Whether that’s in my career or a meeting with the bank or a lawyer, my healthy fear causes me to research, to ask the questions I need to ask, and get the information I need to to feel safe and educated in that area. I have also turned a great fear, a fear that kept me distant from people, or isolated, and turn that into healthy fear by asking the right questions when I meet someone new, whether in business or personally, because I have issues with trust, I know I need to take the initiative to find out about that person or people and once I feel like I know the kind of person or people they are, and what they’re intentions are, I have used my fear in a healthy way, and, once I know the facts, I am safe. Fear for me has always been around feeling safe, so I use my healthy fear today to find that safety, as best I can, in asking questions and doing my homework. And that goes for anything in my life, if I have a fear of something I can choose to turn that fear into healthy fear by taking some action around it and not let paralyze me, or keep me away from people. I have the ability to make change happen and stamp out that fear, or reduce it greatly. I am no long manipulated by it, I address it, tackle it head on and use it to my advantage. Now, that’s not to say sometimes my old foe, fear, doesn’t pop up and stop me in my tracks, it does, but I now can work through that fear, get to the source or root of that fear and begin to work through it, many times that fear is from my past, and not actually a threat in my present life, so it’s recognizing that and getting to work on letting it go.

Fear will always try to keep us in it’s grips, but we have the power to turn our fears around and have it work for us to achieve the goals we want to achieve or to live the life we have imagined for ourselves. It’s all there for the taking, if we choose to take it, and make our fear work for us, letting go of what doesn’t. I recently made the choice to walk through some major fear in my life that was tied to my past, but affecting my life today and my future, and because I set out to let that fear go, because it was no longer valid, something really wonderful is happening in my life because I was able to leave that fear in the past. It’s up to you SLAYER, do you want to be a prisoner to your fear, or leave it behind and go after your dreams? SLAY on!

SLAY OF THE DAY: Do you let fear take over when making decisions or taking action? Does fear stop you from taking action? What has fear gotten in the way of in your past? Do you regret that? What can you do today to let go of that fear? How can you change that fear into healthy fear? What other healthy fears do you have in your life? What can you change into healthy fear? Fear can only rule our lives if we let it, it is up to us to live in our truth, to let go of the past, to investigate and find out the answers we need in order to move on and leave fear behind. You can do it SLAYER, I know you can.

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

Growing Through Something Difficult

I’m all about changing the language I use every day to reflect a positive life and positive communication with myself. For most of my life, my default place was a negative space, I would tell people I was cursed and that’s why things were always going wrong in my life, or things were so dark. The truth is, it was the result of the choices I was making and how I was living my life. It took me hitting a really hard bottom and some serious work after to realize that. But I’ve walked this path of self-love and positivity for many years, and my life today is far beyond what I could have imagined, or even hoped for back in those dark years, and I make a conscious effort to speak in a way that is healing and nurturing to my journey.

I heard someone this week say she was “growing” through a difficult time, instead of saying “going” through a difficult time, something I’ve said many times in my life when I may be walking through a patch that is more challenging, and I’ve always grown through those times, in fact, that’s when I grow the most, but it never occurred to me to change that one word in that statement to reflect what is really going on, and, changing a negative into something positive.

No matter what we are going through, we are meant to go through it, and there’s always a reason for it, typically it’s growth. Those things that come along and challenge us prepare us for what’s coming next, or, may be showing us where in the wrong place and prompting us to make change, but there is growth in that. When we work to change our perspective to see those challenging times as an opportunity to grow we start to look for the growth in what we’re going through, not look at it as something bad that is happening to us we’re just trying to get through. If we are always just trying to “get through” it, we’re not taking away the growth or lesson in it, and, that situation will keep happening until we get it, so, why not “get it” the first time and move on? We can’t control what life is going to throw at us, but we can control how we deal with it and react to it, and by just changing that, and looking for the positive in those situations, we are able to take some control in how things will go from there because if you’re able to get out the situation what you need to that situation will not come back around again, or at least, happen less, because sometimes the universe likes to see if we really did learn what we should have and it throws us a situation similar, or the same, just to check, and if we did grow and learn so that next time should be easier because you are now making better choices.

Changing our language, what we say, and how we speak to ourselves, is the difference of working through something you label as negative, or an opportunity to grow, and wouldn’t we rather have an opportunity over a negative experience? We have the power to change a negative to an opportunity, and that in itself is already a positive. Look for the opportunities in your life to grow rather than just trying to get through a difficult time and see the difference that makes as you “grow” through your next difficult time. SLAY on!

SLAY OF THE DAY: Do you tend to focus on the negative? When something is happening that you’ve labeled negative, do you let it get you down or begrudgingly go through it? If you do look at those experiences as difficult, how do you think they might change if you changed your outlook into one of growth, rather than punishment? Thinking back to your last challenging time, what growth do you think came out of it? And, how do you think you’ve used what you learned after coming through that? How do you think you’ll use it in the future? If that same, or similar, experience were to come again, how could you use what you learned to handle it differently? Life is a journey of learning and growth, it can be an adventure if we choose to look at it that way, and when we do, no matter what comes our way, we can look at it as just another opportunity to grow.

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