Category: Life

Ever look back and say, “WTF?”  As time passes, we don’t realize how much we deal with or are going through as we are going through it.  Coming out on the other side after having been through so much seems like just another day, when in fact, it is post completion of an obstacle course of trials and tribulations that require intensive mental and emotional gymnastics to conquer with very little time (if any) to process it all.

What better time than now, to look back and say, “Wow, I’m still here.  Thank you, God?”  Life’s kinks, twists, and turns require a perseverance, resilience, and strength that many of us do not realize we have.  Even after it’s over and the dust settles, it may seem surreal.  It may seem like it wasn’t you; but lo and behold, it was you amidst the vulnerability, uncertainty, and fear.  Despite the adversity, you overcame.  You are here now.  That is something to feel good about. Way to go, you tough cookie, you!

In relationships, arguments and fall outs are inevitable. People we love may not be likable all the time. Seeing that love is a verb and sometimes requires action that include but are not limited to: compromise, understanding, patience, communication, and forgiveness … the latter can be either what nourishes relationship vitality, the lethal blow that severs the relationship, or twisting knife that perpetuates a toxic dynamic.

Unforgiveness is interesting because it is often misconstrued as a character trait. It can also be misconstrued as being strong. In actuality, unforgiveness is the worm at the core of the soul. It is an emotional parasite that syphons our life force. It is parasitic in nature because it takes a lot of energy to maintain while it purloins precious time that can never be recovered.

How does unforgiveness manifest? How does it grab a hold of us? This excerpt so eloquently sums it up: “many people who have been hurt feel insignificant and powerless; therefore, they try to get their need for significance met by withholding forgiveness. Unforgiveness gives them a sense of power and superiority. If you were ever betrayed by a friend, for a time you may have felt powerless to stop the pain.” – June Hunt

Time does heal, if you allow it; but the tricky thing about unforgiveness is that it requires us to relive the trauma that caused it. It creates a negative feedback loop that we subscribe to and if gone unaddressed, it can lead to bitterness. Bitterness, over time, becomes the norm and can be quite oppressive hindering the ability to thrive in life. While it may seem as though it is harder to forgive and let go, on the contrary, it takes more energy to hang on to the transgression because holding on to the transgression requires fuel. It requires the long painful trip down memory lane and reignition of that initial hurt.

How do we STOP the pain?

Forgiving, much like love, is a verb. The pain must first be addressed irregardless of having received an apology. Making peace with the past, and recognizing that what transpired is in the rearview, and choosing to move forward and focus on today is paramount. It is a personal choice to choose the here and now and rebuke what happened because nothing can change the past. It is a personal choice to choose to take control of the here and the now and seek to bind up the emotional wounds. In making these decisions, we empower ourselves to be able to look at the situation through the scope of our current selves ; With what we know now versus what we knew then, the perspective will be quite distinct from our former selves – and that is a start!

2020 has been quite the wild card of epic proportions.  This year forced every single one of us outside our comfort zone.  Many of us had to learn to adapt in situations that were completely out of our hands.  We had to have faith.  We had to trust the process. 

Lots of blood, sweat, and tears were shed.   We had to keep moving forward despite the tremendous amount of anxiety and fear.  We may not be completely out of the woods, but we are, in fact, still here.  It was raw: going back to the basics, and being reminded of what we have and what matters most to us in this world; feeling more connected than ever despite having to remain 6 feet apart.  

2020 forced us to take a long hard look at our lives as we know it and ask ourselves if we like what we see.  The shutdown made it so that many of us had nothing to do but answer the question.  And here were are with 64 days left.  That is 1602 hours, to be exact.

I just want to say to you, friends:

You are doing extremely well persevering through uncertainty, adversity, challenges and sometimes dark moments. You are extremely strong and I’m thankful for you. Whatever lies ahead, you will get through it just the same way you got here!

Being hurt by a loved one or someone we care about is inevitable. When we feel slighted or emotional about a situation, we come from a place of hurt. We defend our feelings and indignation without being able to see the situation at hand and how we arrived to this point. It becomes difficult to acknowledge the side of the party that hurt us and the part we may have played in the situation because, by acknowledging the other side, we feel somehow it may devalue our pain some how. This is not true.

If we truly care about someone who hurt us, it is important to take the time to try to understand how the situation came to pass. Trying to understand the situation and how it came to pass does not necessarily mean taking full responsibility for what happened. It is identifying the key components that contributed to the outcome.

Taking responsibility for our contribution to the situation can open a dialogue that can possibly facilitate and understanding where as the conflict can not only be resolved but wounds can heal with the knowledge that all parties will make a concerted effort not to repeat the situation. Of course, it’s easier said that done, but getting familiar with removing these planks from our own eyes, help cement the relationships that we value most.

We all have our own planks obstructing our ability to see clearly in many situations when it comes to how we interact with others and our relationship dynamics, but with cause and effect, we must realize that before we address how someone behaves toward us, or how they have hurt us, we must examine ourselves. If we still cannot quite understand others’ point of view, then we must put our pride aside and be brave enough to address it with that person – not others. Go straight to the source, and be open enough to listen and receive what the other party has to say regardless of whether we may agree. If we ask someone why they had done something, we must hear them out and not devalue their thoughts and feelings by trying to defend our pain.

Taking responsibility requires the abandonment of our pride, excuses, and need to be right. Nothing loving, positive and fruitful can come from the planks of pride, excuses, and the need to be right.

Thank you for stopping by.

in·tro·spec·tion/ˌintrəˈspekSH(ə)n/ Learn to pronounce nounnoun: introspection; plural noun: introspections

1. the examination or observation of one’s own mental and emotional processes. “quiet introspection can be extremely valuable”

The road least traveled is the road into our hearts and minds. Perhaps just as frightening as public speaking, it’s often avoided until we cannot anymore; by that time, we are usually in our twilight years taking inventory of our lives and the impact and purpose that we had throughout or, it could be onset by the death of someone significant that had a huge impact on our identity.

The road can be rocky because along it may be things that we chose not to think about or we may find wounds that had not completely healed. Revisiting these experiences or emotions seem scary because the possibility of having to feel how we felt way back when could be likely. Because of this, we go on in our daily lives living it and ignoring the path. Truth is, when we do this, these experiences and unhealed wounds influence and bleed into our daily lives and relationships. We do things subconsciously to pivot away from feeling or experiencing these things. Many times, how we pivot away is what causes disruption and conflict in our lives. The more we try to avoid pain, disruption, and conflict, the more we bring it about.

The journey of introspection is the most important journey in life.

Whatever it is that we are ignoring or hiding from finds a sneaky way of veering its hideous head in multiple aspects of our lives. This concept isn’t new, but definitely provokes thought; especially if you are interested in growing and evolving. When I think about the path of introspection, I think it is a way to find your whole self. It’s an introduction to aspects of ourselves that need some attention/integration into who we are now. The answers of why we do the things we do are found there. It’s what navigates us through life and the sea of emotions, reactions, and distractions that come with life.

The best thing about the path of introspection, is that we will find a beacon of light and a new understanding of ourselves, where we are, our place in this world and where we want to be or go. Things begin to unfold for us in ways that had not happened before. Gaining understanding of who we are and what we want out of life is a crucial part of the trajectory of our live. As much as it scares us, it is the most valuable journey we will ever take.

Take the path of introspection as many times as you need. Get to know yourself and heal yourself. Purge what’s no longer needed and merge what’s necessary to empower you and make you the best you that you can be.

We have all heard the platitude, “youth is wasted on the young.” At certain point in our life, if we are blessed enough to cross the threshold of 35 years old, the unstated norms begin to seep into our subconscious that we are, in fact, old; this is despite how we may feel.  Or that by society’s standards, we are at the half way mark to retiring.

Ageism

A few years ago, I was in a doctor’s office with a good friend of mine discussing the things I wanted accomplished by the time I was 30 years old when you are “unofficially old” but are almost put out to pasture (at least) by the advertising industry’s target market standards.  A woman couldn’t help but overhear our conversation and said to us, “if you have already begun to think of yourself as old, what will you think of yourself when you are in your 80’s like me?”  What she said to us was profound.  It is impossible to avert the ways in which society begins to subtly and overtly shape our perspective on age – which is like the a boogie man pursuing you and gaining on you.  Our looks, relevance, usefulness and capabilities will be called into question (in that exact order). Therein, lies a different “ism” we will experience at some point in our lives, should we get to live long.  This “ism” will span all the ways we can categorize ourselves.  Much like illness, aging is indiscriminate.  And like death and taxes, aging is inevitable and we will have to deal with it in some regard.  So why not start now?

Blessing or Curse?

Examining how we feel about aging is a good idea because it is important to develop our own perspective on a phase of life that we will eventually experience.  When we were children, we thought about when we “grow up” but most of us as adults, do not give enough thought about when we “grow old” … retirement maybe something a lot of us think about and put money away toward that rite of passage, but we don’t really think about how we will fill out our day or what our roles and purposes will be.  Why is this important? Having a role and purpose is crucial to filling out your day and we all need a reason to get up in the morning.  Start the conversation with yourself and contemplate what that might look like for you.  If you would like to have that conversation with me or if you are interested in exploring life mapping options, feel free to reach out.

Be Well.

It feels like our society is grounded as we address the COVID-19 pandemic.  Many of us must self quarantine at this time.  All the things that fill out our day causing us to be “too busy” are suspended at the moment.  Whilst this has never before occurred – at least not in my 4.1 decade life span, it’s hard to commit to any one emotion at any given time.  Many of us are experiencing fear and anxiety as we recognize this is beyond our control.

What Can We Do?

Aside from following directions of self quarantining – staying home and practicing preventive measures like washing hands and clothes etc., we can really take advantage of this sabbatical by doing the things that we complained we never had time to do.  Rather than firing up that Fire Stick or binge watching Netflix the entire time, we can choose to make memories with out loved one by spending real quality time with them.  We can check in and catch up on what has been going on in each other’s lives.  We can spring clean or read a book or two. Try to learn something new – a recipe or perhaps a language.  YouTube has so many free tutorials.  Take advantage!

Or, maybe, just maybe we can rest and relax … take naps and enjoy our surroundings.  These are very simple every day luxuries most of us are not afforded normally. A nice hot bath or a long foot soak can do wonders for well being.

Being Grounded

Something positive can come out of all this.  Although we are being socially distant, we don’t have to be emotionally distant.  Although we cannot go to our favorite places, it doesn’t mean that we cannot go places in our minds with a great book or have fun at home with the people we love.  Grounding society can ground us, if we let it.  Every now and again it’s good to take stock of who and what really matters to you.  What matters gives you purpose – the reason why you run the rat race to begin with.  We can get caught up in it, it’s easy to lose sight of why we are are doing it in the first place.  We have an opportunity to ground ourselves – don’t waste it.  Be Well.

Bad habits are the termites in our success.  Bad habits can essentially weaken, or ultimately destroy our progress, success and generally rob us of peace, happiness and fulfillment.  None of this is truly profound.  We are all well aware of this.  Yet, we continue on engaging in certain bad habits that essentially lead us away from our goals.

BONDAGE

Bad habits are bondage.  We are enslaved to them despite being conscious of the negative or fruitless impact they have on us.  It could be a relationship we know we should end.  It could be smoking, binge drinking, or worse.  It could be excessive spending, eating, or staying up way too late.  Whatever it is in our personal lives, we are fully aware that this behavior is simply not going to get us anywhere, positive at least.  In order to change anything, it is imperative to change the way we think about it.  When a bad habit influences the general outcome of our lives in a negative and damaging way, and we continue to engage in it – it is essentially not just a bad habit, but bondage.  We are no longer freely making a decision, but are being self-destructive against our better judgment despite being well aware of the outcome; despite the pain and damage it causes every time, we are compelled to repeat this self- destructive pattern.

CHECKLIST

It can be easier to justify a bad habit when it isn’t overtly socially unacceptable like cigarette smoking, illicit drugs, or an abusive relationship; in which case, perhaps doing a quick mental check list can help you discern whether this bad habit is bondage. 

• Every time I do it, how does the outcome make me feel?
• How does it affect my life and those around me?
• Does it set me back in any way?
• Am I ashamed of it?
• Do I gain anything positive?

We all struggle in one area or another with a bad habit or two.  As we get older and shoulder more responsibilities and have to contribute more in interpersonal relationships, these bad habits can get in the way of areas in our lives being successful and healthy.  Are there any bad habits you struggle with?