I’m Working on It

I’m one of those super annoying perpetually positive people and if you’re not, I think that’s something you should work on. There’s not one good reason you can give me why you shouldn’t at least attempt to put a positive spin on everything in your life. When something negative pops into my mind I like to challenge it by following it up with “well at least…”. It’s incredibly helpful in refocusing your mind and energy toward the positive, because you attract the energy you put out into the universe. My husband and I might be nearly three kids deep in my in laws’ basement right now, but at least we’re not stuck in a house in ghetto that was too small and too expensive with a hole in the living room that went right to the basement. At least we’re living somewhere safe where we can continue to save to finally get into a decent place for our family. It’s easy shit like that, stuff you might generally get down on yourself for, flip it! What might be the good in your situation. I can’t STAND a person that insists on staying at a low vibration and who feels the need to try and bring everyone else down to their level. What’s your fucking problem, bro? Your life is beautiful, but you refuse to acknowledge the beauty in any way and insist on wasting your life being angry at the circumstances you created for yourself. I was in a treatment group with a guy like this and every time I walked in the room it was like i immediately walked into a rain cloud. This guy would say shit like “oh I just moved into my own apartment, but it’s a shithole and I don’t even have a shower curtain” or “I don’t even belong in this class, it was my old roommate that got caught with drugs not me” or “my bike got stolen and now I have to walk everywhere” BRO YOURE BLESSED AND YOU DONT EVEN SEE IT! Congrats on your new place, I’m sorry you don’t have a shower curtain, but it could be worse I swear! I’ve been living at the Bishop Dudley for the last 6 months and it’s not so bad at least I get a bed and shower but I’d kill for your place! Even if the drugs weren’t yours maybe that’s a sign that you shouldn’t hang out with people that would put you in that kind of a situation, at least now you can meet more positive friends in group with us. Yo, I’m sorry your bike got stolen, I don’t have a bike either, but I’ll walk to class with you! Like come on my dude, if you can at all see yourself in the person I’m describing KNOCK IT OFF! You’re life doesn’t suck, your attitude sucks. Once you change your thinking pattern I promise you’re gonna see more positive changes in your life! I spent a long time being negative and angry. You know where that got me? Into a deeper darker abyss of negativity. It wasn’t until I started trying to find the light the light in my situation and realized that I was in control of literally everything that my life started changing for the better. If you think your life sucks right now, stop it. The first step to improving your life is improving your attitude towards it, once your mindset is on point and you’re open to where the universe is trying to guide you you’ll finally see that everything that seemed impossible is totally possible and we’ll worth the work to start living the life you deserve. Life is too short to spend it being a negative Nelly, release the butterflies and rainbows that want to escape your ass, you’ll thank me later!

When I wake up in the morning, after my workout and before coffee, I like to meditate. This is how I like to get my mind and vibration to the right level for my day. When I meditate I put in my earplugs and sit in the dark with my eyes closed and I focus and what I regret from the previous day and what were my victories from the previous day. Focusing on my regrets let’s me know what I’d like to do different today to avoid that feeling and then I don’t wallow in it and then focusing on my victories let’s me take pride in myself and what I accomplished the previous day that I plan on bringing into today. Having regrets is perfectly healthy and totally normal. What’s not healthy is letting those regrets consume you day after day but doing nothing to remedy them. If you regret something you did or said make mental note of that, focus on that negative feeling and let that fuel you to be better instead of trapping you in the past. On the flip side there’s no victory too small to celebrate. We have a tendency to think victories worth celebrating have to be huge, but it’s the little victories that add up to the big ones. Maybe you didn’t eat any sweets at all yesterday and adhered to your diet. Maybe you saved and extra $50 from your paycheck. Maybe you didn’t snap on your kids when they broke a picture after playing ball in the house when you asked them not to a million times. Every little win is still a win and if you keep compiling them each day eventually you’re going to have reached your major victory! And from there you adjust your focus and set a new goal and keep track of your wins until you reach that. That’s how we grow! Learn from the past, succeed today, plan for tomorrow, and repeat!

Please for the love of god read that over and over again. There is no better way to disappoint yourself than by placing another human being on a pedestal. We are all human beings, no matter how fucking great someone else might seem they’re human and that means they’re going to make mistakes and they’re going to end up disappointing us at some point. There’s no better way to set both of you up for failure. It may make you be better to strive for something someone else has and it may make that other person do better knowing that there’s eyes on them, but that is temporary. Once that person doesn’t live up to by our expectations, you’re going to be hurt because you placed your happiness in the hands of another person and that person is going to fuck up by not reaching your expectations either because it’s not what they wanted or because they simply fucked up. I’ve seen people in NA with 20 years sober relapse, spiritual leaders get arrested, fines gurus break their routine. Shit happens. We cannot place our expectations and our happiness on outside sources because we have no control over them. The only thing we can control is ourselves. And even then we are only human and we must be gentle on ourselves too. I don’t put much attention on my sober date simply because too many people let that date hold way too much power, it’s just a date. If you fuck up (which I hope you don’t) just get back up don’t throw it all away. That’s like throwing the entire Xbox out because you couldn’t beat the boss on one game and being mad at your sponsor for relapsing is like failing to beat the level so you ask your friend who you know has already beat it once to help and then beating the hell out of them when they can’t do it for you. Sounds ridiculous right? You know what you do when you fail? You make a mark of your new record, get back up and try to set an even better one. Always strive to be better and don’t expect other people to be better for you. Look up to people admire how they’ve gotten to where they are and learn from them. Never put another person above yourself. Even Achilles had a weakness. There’s no such thing as perfect, which is actually kind of a blessing because you can always look forward to something better just as long as you get up and go for it.

My baby is sick….she’s been up since about 230 crying and talking and flopping around. It’s now 4 and she’s been sleeping for about 30 minutes and I took that time to meditate. Its been a long time since I’ve given any thought to the people I’ve lost to their addictions, but this morning I heard your voice and I feel I need to share. I’m not even sure how to begin this, because there’s so many thoughts. I’ve lost so many people to their addictions; so many are in prison and even more are dead and buried, so many in fact I’ve grown numb to phrase “hey ____ died..”. What a terrible thing to say, how in the world do you become numb to the fact that most the people you grew up with are dead and you’re not even 30 yet? I’ll tell you, because that was just a normal part of the life I had been living. I used to listen to a song where the last line was “we live fast and die pretty”. I used to live my life based entirely on that phrase, I knew I wasn’t invincible, but I wasn’t worried about dying either. I sit here and I think about how broken I was, how broken we all must have been, to just expect to wake up to another death notification just waiting for it to be our own. It makes me cry now to look at my kids and even try to imagine them going through that hell. I remember sitting in my own house alone in the winter with no electricity except for an extension cord running from the neighbors house to a space heater in my living room. I remember sitting there cold, alone, bleeding and thinking “this isn’t the life I imagined”. We lived fast but there was no dying pretty. It was a slow and painful and ugly death. I was so full of self loathing and hate for the world and everyone in it. I wanted out, but I thought death was the only option. I didn’t realize that I held the power to change everything about my life. I wallowed in self pity for years just waiting for something good to happen to me. It took me years and years to realize that good things were happening all around me but I chose to ignore them because they weren’t the things I was looking for. My heart breaks for all of you that have gone without knowing what a better life is like, who left without knowing true hope or genuine happiness. I just hope you’ve found peace on the other side. To anyone still suffering just know you aren’t alone, you are so loved, and there is hope. A better life is waiting for all of us we just have to get up and go get it. I know I’m far from perfect and I’ve got a lot more work to do, but I’ve come a long fucking way and I couldn’t have done it alone. To everyone that has stood with me throughout this journey, thank you for never giving up.

To start here I want to say if someone apologizes to you there’s a massive difference between “it’s okay” and “I forgive you”. I don’t think “it’s okay” is ever an appropriate response an apology and reason being is if something is worth apologizing for then it definitely wasn’t nor will it be “okay”. Telling someone who is apologizing to you that it’s okay essentially justifies the behavior being apologized for. Instead tell the person you forgive them, what they did was not okay but you can move past it and appreciate the apology as acknowledgment of their wrong doing. You don’t even have to forgive them. If someone has apologized and you haven’t yet reached forgiveness, that’s fine you’re not under any obligation to forgive them instead just thank them, acknowledge them and work toward forgiveness. I suggest working toward releasing all resentments, as forgiveness frees you not the other party. Holding resentments is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die. The only person suffering from this resentment is you, it may bother the other party slightly for a period of time but they’ll forget about it. You are inducing suffering in yourself alone by holding these resentments. Holding onto this negative thought or feeling is just going to lower your own vibration. Every time you think of that resentment it brings your mind instantly to a negative space and that accomplishes nothing other than ruining your own mood. What good does that do? It doesn’t make you feel better, it doesn’t make them feel worse. Let it go. Move on. It seems easier said than done, but it really is that simple. No longer give that thought control over you, know that you are no longer in that situation, you no longer need to hold onto that which brings you pain. Forgiveness makes you stronger. This applies to yourself as well. Don’t forget to forgive yourself for your own wrong doings. You are human, we all make mistakes. Realize where you went wrong, learn from it, and be better. Love yourself, love your fellow man.

Read the title again and really try to understand what I mean by that. Life happens for you not to you and once you start to realize that you’re going to start seeing amazing changes happen in your life. Nothing in life just happens to you. I used to be one of those people who thought “oh, why do these shitty things keep happening to me? Poor poor me!” Well, because that’s the wrong fucking attitude, that’s why. Nothing in life just happens to you by chance, your life is entirely of your own creation. Good and bad things are going to happen, but it’s what you learn from them that defines how your life is going. Instead of thinking “poor me” try “what can I learn from this?” Or “what is the universe trying to tell me?”. If your life seems like a living hell I guarantee it’s of your own design. Now that’s probably going to make some people upset and that’s fine just know when you’re ready to change you’ll understand that. I spent most my life in a drug induced stupor wondering why in the fuck my life sucked. Well my life sucked because I was making it suck, plain and simple. I was vibrating at the lowest frequency and I attracted exactly what I was putting out there. I used drugs to hide from my past and numb my present because I wasn’t ready to deal with any of it. Numbing my present caused me to make choices that kept me where I was at instead of learning how to move forward. I’m ready to move forward and I can look at my life now and see where I’ve fucked up just like reading a history book. History can’t repeat itself if I see where the mistakes were made and learn how to avoid them. When a challenging situation arises try to take a breath and a step back and look at it from an outside perspective, because your first reaction is going to be raw guttural emotion. Instead of decreasing your vibration to the level of what is happening try to think about why exactly is this happening? Why is this person insulting my character loudly and belligerently? How I react will define my character. This tantrum defines their character not mine. Maybe this person is hurting and stuck in a rut of self pity and is lashing out because instead of trying to relieve their own pain they are trying to sink others into pain with them. Decide that’s not how I want to be and send them love and healing because that’s no way to live. Have love for yourself and your fellow man. Have patience and kindness where you are met with anger and hate. Treat others with the respect and love that they are so desperately missing and hope that one day they find themselves in-spite of their circumstances and that they one day get to experience all the love and happiness they deserve. Don’t be angered instead know where you come from, where you’ve been, and see that in them. Know that’s not how you want to be, offer your fellow man a hand up and pray for healing because no one truly deserves to live such a sad existence.

Wyatt says this phrase all the time and I love it but I don’t think enough people understand the meaning behind it. Sorry is for sorry people. An apology without action is just words, meaningless. I can apologize to the moon and back and mean it but do nothing to learn or grow from my mistake and then go on to do it again because I didn’t learn from the experience. Many of us know “sorry people” and some of us are “sorry people”, but knowing is the first step to change if you want it to be. This doesn’t mean don’t apologize when you’re wrong or if an apology is owed. It means owning you’re mistake, acknowledging it, and taking the necessary steps to avoid doing the same thing again. I’m sorry I did blank and that it made you feel blank next time I will blank. Fill it in, but don’t apologize just to appease the other party, if you don’t feel what you did was wrong or if you feel what you did or said was misinterpreted take a breath and explain why you did what you did or what you meant by it. I’m sorry I don’t think I got my message across right, what I meant was blank. Fill it in. You are wholly responsible for your own thoughts, feelings, and actions. However you cannot control how other people choose to react. Look at your situation objectively, if you think you could’ve handled it better apologize and give it another go; but if you think you nailed it and the other party wasn’t receptive, move on. Don’t dwell on what has been or what could’ve been instead focus on how we positively move forward from here. The true mark of maturity it being able to acknowledge when you’re wrong and grow from it.

Yesterday I talked about fears holding us back from our true potential and I said I was going to think about what my fears are and what exactly they’re holding me back from. Well, first and and foremost I fear being abandoned by those I love, which in turn leads me to pushing people away before they have a chance to leave. My head goes “I’ll make them leave on my terms before they have a chance to break my heart and leave me by surprise”. That’s not healthy, I know that. Fears lead us to engage in a lot of unhealthy behaviors and actions, knowing is the first step to changing. Secondly, I fear being a bad parent and having my kids grow up feeling as broken and as alone as I did. I know I’ve already made quite a few mistakes when it comes to the kids and I probably overcompensate now by spoiling them when I can. I fear both failure and success. Meaning that I feel I set my goals too high and instead of failing to reach them organically and learning and growing from that I set myself up for failure and sit and wallow in that. I fear judgement and disappointing those I love, which kind of couples with my previous fear. Growing up everyone had dreams and aspirations for me, thing s they knew or thought they knew I was capable of but things I either didn’t want to do or didn’t think I could live up to. I’ve lit my whole world on fire many a time out of fear. “You can’t expect greatness from me anymore if I’ve never shown you anything but disaster”. What a sad existence is that? But that’s how so many of us live; in a constant state of extinguishing fires of our own design just to occupy our time and wondering why we’re stuck in this vicious cycle of going nowhere fast. Since I was little all I wanted to do was help people. I always say I’ve been cursed (blessed) with a face (aura) that draws people in and prompts them to tell me ridiculously intimate things about themselves within 30 seconds of meeting them. It drives my husband nuts because anywhere we go I spend 45 minutes stuck in what seems like an uncomfortable conversation with the cashier about how much he hates his mom. This happens everywhere, it always has. I have a gift for listening, understanding and making people feel heard. I love to write and speak, I love the feeling of captivating people and feeling like my experiences have meaning. I have done and been through a lot and if I can share that with others so they can avoid the abyss I’m trying to climb out of that would fill me with nothing but pure joy on the deepest level. Watching people suffer unnecessarily breaks me, and watching people suffer unnecessarily at their own hand because of their own self doubt rips me to shreds. I’m here today to say that if I can find the light so can you and I’d love to hold your hand through it if you need me to.

Wyatt has defined trauma in a way that I love: anything you didn’t have the mental or emotional capacity to deal with. As a child literally anything could be defined as traumatizing. Although some peoples’ trauma may be more severe than your own that’s no reason to diminish your own experience, trauma is trauma regardless. Most people have childhood trauma, now that being said we’re all adults now and we need to process through that trauma in order to heal. You can only use your own trauma as a crutch for so long before people start to realize you have no desire to heal. Working through trauma is painful, growing in general is painful; it’s not supposed to be easy or comfortable but if you ever want something better you have to do something different. Something I heard in a podcast that Wyatt listens to really resonated with me: depression is just a magnification of the past and you’re not going that way. I loved this, if your constantly focusing on what happened, what should’ve, could’ve, or would’ve you aren’t focusing on what still can be. Focus on the past but only enough to positively impact where you’re heading. If you did something you aren’t proud of yesterday learn from that and do better tomorrow. Something shitty happened in your childhood make the connection of how that made you into the amazingly strong and resilient person you are today and use your experience to give someone else strength and hope. Break the cycle and be the light you needed in your darkest time.

We are our own biggest critics and worst enemies. If we’d get out of our heads and just go for it there’s no limit to what we could do. Don’t negotiate with yourself, set a rule and follow it, even if it’s small and seems silly. My fiancée gets up every morning at 4 to do whatever the hell it is he does that early, but I follow and I get up at 5, every morning like clockwork even if I don’t want to. I’m 8 months pregnant with a 10 month old daughter and no matter how exhausted I am I or how I feel I get my happy ass up and do my morning routine which consists of: 1. I do a 10 minute ridiculous looking intense workout 2. Follow up the work out with 10 minutes of yoga 3. I brush my teeth 4. I go get my coffee and make the baby a bottle 5. I read my daily meditation and self help book 6. If they haven’t woken up on their own yet I go wake up my son for school and get him ready and wake up his sister for her breakfast 7. I do the dishes and eat a bowl of Cheerios. I do this same routine every morning and I feel great, some mornings I try to make excuses as to why I should sleep in or skip a step but doing so leaves me feeling exhausted and unaccomplished. Now if my big ass can get up every morning and do the same routine you can set some rules for yourself. I promise it will help. Keeping your word to yourself is just as important as keeping your word in any other relationship.