Some Days You Need A Little Perspective!

So.........I have been waiting for this day for quite a while.  Not because it is anything exciting and fun, but because I kind of dreaded it's arrival, even though I know it has to be done.

You see, tomorrow I have to go into the hospital to have a not-so-pleasant procedure done, and today I have to prepare for it.  This prep involves me ONLY consuming clear fluids all day. Now I like my food, and the thought of only having fluids, kinda wrecked my day even before it started.  In trying to be positive and looking for the 'bright side', I thought, at least I can have some strawberry or raspberry or maybe even grape jello........THAT will make this bearable.  Yeah well, when I went to the pharmacy yesterday to pick up the meds that I needed to 'help' in the prep, he told me that I was not allowed to have anything that would have a red or purple dye in it, as that could effect my procedure. WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT??? The only thing that was going to get me through this torture and now that was taken away!!!

So I trudged (and that is the best way to describe it at that moment) to the grocery store to look for my other choices in jello.  Nothing red or purple left me with orange, lime and lemon.......all good flavours in their own rite, but NOT in the jello world (that is unless another certain clear fluid is added, and I didn't think that would be allowed, although it would have helped GREATLY with my mood!). I stood there and stared lustfully at the red and purple packages and begrudgingly took the citrus options, then moped my way home.

Because I knew that I most likely wouldn't be feeling that great with this prep, I had planned for a quiet day at home to myself, but now all I can think about is the chicken that I have in the fridge, or the jar of peanut butter in the cupboard.  Have you ever noticed how many fricken food commercials there are on television??? My newsfeed on Facebook is full of amazing recipes and pictures of what people had for lunch,  or statuses about what they are looking forward to at dinner, and forget about me signing into my Pinterest account!!! FML!!! I am walking around here like a caged wild cat! Hmmmmm........here kitty kitty kitty...........NO NO NO........that's just the hunger talking!!!

As I sat here this morning, forcing down the first bowl of jello, that just was NOT hitting the spot, thinking about how I usually have my gigantic cup of sweet tea (with cream) to start my day, I saw this picture that a friend posted on Facebook...........and then I felt ashamed!

Ok........so I am being 'inconvenienced' for a couple of days and can't eat and drink what I would like, but there are more people than I can possibly even imagine that would kill to be in my position.

I have a pretty decent roof over my head, a warm bed to sleep in, food (when I can eat it) in my fridge and the means to get more when I need to, and my inconvenience is due to the fact that I have access to healthcare and doctors to take care of me, where others have no idea what that would be like. Sure I am feeling rather crappy at the moment, but I still have more health than a LOT of people, and my feeling of crappiness (is that word?) will pass, but many other peoples will not. There are a lot of people that would think that my dreaded bowl of jello is a delicacy. So instead of sitting here and feeling sorry for myself and what I can't have today, I have decided to re-focus my thoughts on all the great things that I have the fortune of having in my life. One of the biggest..........having clean water to drink......what a delicacy THAT would be for a lot of people in this world!

It's easy to be grateful when everything is going rosy and you're feeling on top of the world, but as I found out today, it means a lot more when you can still be grateful when you feel like crap. So the next time I get the urge to complain about how 'bad' I may be feeling, or how 'inconvenienced' I am about whatever, I need to pull out this picture.........I may even have to print it out and post it up just as that 'gentle' reminder on those days when gratitude is a challenge. 

Do you take stock everyday of things that you are grateful for?  I do, I have a journal that I write in every night before I go to sleep and tonight, I think there will be a few more things added to the list. 

To Change or Not To Change

Have you ever had a friend that is constantly asking you for advice, but then never does anything with that advice, and then when you call them out on that fact, all of a sudden there is something wrong with your advice? Huh? *shakes head*, well it can't be all that bad if you keep coming back!

Anyways, I spent many many MANY years being the person that people would come to, to tell all their problems to. Honestly, I didn't mind that, but the problem was that I would get too emotionally involved with THEIR problems, which would end up with me feeling like crap. The toll of taking on everyone else's issues left me emotionally and mentally exhausted with nothing left to deal with the things that I had to in my own life.

That became abundantly clear when my world came crashing down on me 1.5 years ago. I had neglected my  emotional, mental and physical needs for so long, that when the time came that I needed them the most, there was NOTHING for me to pull from, resulting in my body completely shutting down. I spent some time doing the 'what did I do to deserve this?', but this is not a constructive exercise, all it did was make me feel worse as I continued to dwell on the events that occurred and kept me in the past. Finally, I woke up one morning and literally said f*&k that!! Something needs to change and the something was ME! Did I wake up that morning knowing exactly what I had to do to do that? NO! This has been a long journey of self discovery and it continues. I'm learning SO much along the way, not only about myself, but how people in general deal with the crap in their lives. Being more aware of how we, as a human race, deal with emotional crap, has made it so much easier for me to understand the actions of the people around me.  The problem is, even though it is clear as day for me what is going on in someone's life, if they are not open and ready to have change in their life, I can talk until I am blue, but they just won't get it! So the person that used to just sit there and sympathize with and take on all the problems that were going on in someone else's world is GONE. She knows better now.  I will empathize with what someone is going through, as I have mostly likely experienced it myself, but I will NOT sit there and participate in their pity party and enable them in that behaviour. You don't do anyone ANY favours to do so!

So, if you are going to ask me for advice, you had better be prepared for a non-sugar coated answer. I will give you the straight facts, and give you suggestions as to what you should do to move forward, but if you are just going to sit there and not make ANY effort and have NO commitment to trying to take charge of your life, expect that I will close that door.  My time and energy are TOO valuable to me now to have other people suck it out of me. Sound harsh? Maybe it is, but I am #1 on my priority list now. Instead of just being the constant shoulder to cry on, now i will listen and then I will CHALLENGE you to take responsibility for your life and for the things going on in it. That's what I did to start this process for myself.

One thing that this friend said to me, was that my advice was too cut and dry and that life just isn't that way. Well............yeah IT IS! If there is something going on in your life that you don't like, you either do something to change it, or you don't. If you don't, then in my opinion, you have no right to b*&ch about your life. It is YOUR life, YOU are in charge! Don't be living your life for other people. That just gives you an out for when you need someone to blame. Your only job in this world is to make yourself happy. So if you're not.........whose fault is that? You can't expect to change your whole life all at once, but do one step at a time, and eventually you will look back and be shocked about how many steps you have taken! BUT the point is.......you have to take that FIRST STEP, and then the next and then the next, but you have to want it for yourself and truly be done with living the life of a victim.

Whether a person makes the choice to change the course of their life makes no difference to me, that is THEIR choice. THEY are the ones that have to live up to THEIR own expectations.  I do NOT set any expectations for anyone but MYSELF, and it is only ME that I have to answer to in that regard.  The sad thing is, there are a LOT of people out there that have set very low expectations for themselves and their lives and they need to own that fact!

So, do you want to be known as the person that whines and wallows in all the problems of your life, or do you want to be known as the person that has gone through hell and came out a stronger, more positive, resilient person? The choice is YOURS!

Hello everyone,

Yes, I know........it has been some time since I wrote anything here. I have had so many things going on all at once, that of course, this took a place on the back burner, but it was NEVER far from my mind.  I knew when I first started writing this blog that it wasn't going to be something I do every day.  I wanted to only post about things that really struck a chord with me.  Something did just that this week.

This picture really hit me this week.

I can honestly say that I am the happiest RIGHT NOW than I have been in years!  I am happy with who I am, where I am going, what I want to achieve and most importantly, the people that I have surrounded myself with.......but am I so happy that I would want to stay in this exact spot for the next 10 years? HELL NO!  I have a LOT of growing and changing to do!  Even though I am at an age where some people start to think that 'this is as good as it gets', I refuse to buy into that.  My life is about to take on it's newest chapter and even though the thought of that is scary, it is also very exciting.  It is NEVER TOO LATE to go after what you really want in life, to make those dreams happen.  I am just saddened by the amount of people that I see that have truly given up. Somewhere along the line all those dreams and goals that they had, got beaten out of them, they started believing that they would never achieve them, that they were too far out of reach. Not too long ago, I was one of them.  The fear of change held me back in so many ways, but 8 months ago when I finally got to the point where enough was enough, I started this journey of change.  Most of the change has and continues to be within. It hasn't been easy, and I am FAR from being done.  I have lost some friends along the way, as some people don't like to see people change and are threatened by it, but you know what, that's fine. People come and go from our lives, usually to teach us something in the process. In doing so,  I have had some of the MOST amazing new people come into my life as a result.  I have discovered that when you truly open yourself up to receiving the blessings that the universe has to offer, they just come flooding in. In the past 3 months alone, I have had so many wonderful things happen and come into my life.  I no longer worry about my future, I look forward to what I am going to make out of it.  I have had people say to me, 'I don't know how you do it, how can you be so happy and optimistic when there is all this crap going on in the world around us?' Simply put, I don't dwell on it.  That is NOT because I am naive, I know what is going on out there, but whether I focus on it or not, all that is going on in the world is still going to happen, so I choose to put my energy into more positive things, things that I can control.

Shortly after seeing this picture, I saw a post about this video.  A man had made a video of himself when he was a child, asking himself questions in the future.  Being a film maker, he cut in together with video of himself in the present to make it look like his child self was interviewing the adult self.  It is very entertaining!

I thought it was an amazing idea, and wished I had done something like that.  Then I got to thinking in conjunction with the picture I posted, what if I made a video now asking myself questions about how my life is 10 years from now? This got me very excited.  If I thought about how my life was 10 years ago, I could give some generalities, but could I really see the progress that I have made...........not really.  So, I have now made up a list of questions that I will ask myself in my video.  I am going to talk about how certain areas in my life are right now and ask if the changes that I wanted to happen actually did.

I honestly cannot wait for 10 years from now, to be able to watch my video and truly see how far I have come and celebrate the successes that I have achieved. :)

The Art of Listening

I saw this picture posted today and it reminded me of one of the lessons from the seminar that I attended last fall.

Listening is truly an art, but it is a skill, in my opinion, that has been terribly lost in todays society. The Chinese symbol for "listen" is made up of many other words, because to truly listen requires more than just hearing! Coincidentally, I 'listened' to a teleseminar tonight on this subject, and wanted to get all these thought out of my head and down in print.

Now, I am the first to admit that this is an area that is still a work in progress.  Like anything I have ever mentioned here, it takes practice to get good at it, but the awareness of what we are doing is a BIG step!

Essentially there are 3 ways to listen, the first 2 are the ways the majority of us do it, and they do NOT work! We usually agree or disagree with whatever is being said, and in doing that we are validating our need to either be right or to not be wrong.  When you listen in that way, no new information ever comes in.  There is no room for new facts, therefore you stay the same.

The 3rd way involves just BEING with the person that is talking.  Allow yourself to be OPEN to what is being said, suspend judgements, just BE with the information and pay attention to your reactions to it. What comes to mind, how do you feel about the info? Allow yourself to accept the new information.  Let yourself go Hmmmmmmmm.

If you find yourself blaming or making the info wrong while you are 'listening' to it, then what happens is you're judging the info and you are actually no longer listening!  You are disconnecting and closing yourself off.  At this point you need to ask yourself, what is it about what's being said that is causing you to do this? Usually, it's those needs of being right or not being wrong.

One of the most basic human needs is to understand and be understood. To accomplish this, we REALLY need to be truly listening not only to whom ever we are with, but to ourselves as well!

So how do we know if the person we are talking to is actually listening? It's all in the body language! If they are listening in one of the first 2 ways, you can tell that their minds are somewhere else, they lean or move away, walking around. There is very little verbal recognition with no emotional connection.  You get the 'yup, uh huh's'.  If they are listening in the 3rd way and are truly in the moment with you, you will have strong eye contact, they will lean in closer to you, you will see emotional reactions in their faces and in their responses.

There are going to be times when you are talking with someone, that they are going to say something that you strongly disagree with or makes you angry. This is where the practice part REALLY comes in handy! If you are disagreeing strongly, you just have to keep reminding yourself that there is no need to change their opinion, they are entitled to it, and you're not always going to agree.  Just hear their viewpoint and try to see where they are coming from, but just agree to disagree.

The ones that make you angry or are very abrasive with their opinions are actually easier to handle.  Instead of letting them get under your skin, just surrender yourself to let them be right (even though you don't really think that way). These types of people are fueled by your reaction and what to engage you in a heated argument, but when you just say 'you're right' and walk away, that completely takes the wind out of their sails and actually mildly annoys them! lol.........this would be considered 'taking the high road'!

I think one of the hardest parts of listening is to NOT interrupt the person that is talking.  Do not jump in with your thoughts on the situation or your opinions of what they should have done.  Let the person finish what they have to say, and then respond. When you feel the need to interrupt, stop yourself and ask yourself what is the need for your interruptions? Do you need clarification, more info or is your need to be heard more important than listening to the other person? Just BE WITH that person, put your needs aside!

Listening is significant in our needs in understanding and being understood.  In society, with all the distractions that we have with our iPods, Smart phones and numerous other electronic devices, we don't allow ourselves to BE with the people that we are with or even with ourselves.  More of us (and this is what I am really working on right now) need to start making changes to get into alignment with who and what we are intended to be.

Respect yourself and those around you by actively participating in the Art of Listening!

Some wonderful food for thought!!!

I just found this blog post and had to pass it on.  This is a woman after my own heart!!  I couldn't have said it better.........so, enjoy some food for thought! :)

http://elizabethpatch.com/2011/05/stop-complaining-about-your-body.html#.T5n-_y_hVQI.facebook

Your Feelings are YOUR Responsibility!

Today I want to revisit why I started this blog.  I had gone through an event (well actually a long series of events that had a big culmination) that shook every part of my world.  I had never felt so low in all my life.  At that point in time, I wasn't sure if I was going to come out of that situation alive or not.  Somewhere along the line something switched on and said ENOUGH!  So I started searching for answers, for something to pull myself up out of the dark place that I was in, as I did NOT like where I was and I had to do whatever it took to change it.

Last fall, a friend who knew everything that I was going through suggested a weekend seminar that dealt with a persons emotional programming, why we do what we do, etc.  At first I was like, yeah whatever, but I went anyways with a HUGE amount of skepticism, but I was willing to hear what they said.  Wow, was that a life changer!  I learned way more about myself than I ever thought possible.  You would think that you would know yourself better than anyone, but the reality is, YOU DON'T!

One thing that I took away from there, that is sometimes hard to wrap your head around, is that no one can make you feel anything.  YOU are responsible for YOUR feelings, not anyone else!  It is so easy to say that he/she hurt me, or he/she made me sad or angry. For those of you that have read some of this blog, you'll know what I am going to say.  BLAME GAME!  That's the victim's role. In every event that happens in your life, you are RESPONSIBLE for your feelings.  Responsible means having the ability to choose a response, and being accountable for your choices.  Nothing has meaning except the meaning that YOU give it.  So when you feel hurt, angry or sad, it is because the 'story' that you had made up in your head about a situation is being challenged.   I think this is the hardest for women to grasp, as we are hardwired to be emotional creatures, but emotions can be controlled when we have the awareness as to why we are feeling a certain feeling. Am I perfect at doing this? Hell no! I still have my down days, but I have the awareness now to kick myself in the butt, to look at why I am feeling that way, I am learning to shut down that nasty little voice in my head that likes to hold me back.  It takes practice, and I look forward to the day that I don't have to work so hard at controlling my emotions and responses to situations. 

Now, in saying all this, I must say that if you are looking for change in the way I was but you are in a partnership, you have other things to worry about.  If you are going to do any sort of self improvement type work, you really have to have a conversation with your partner about how you are feeling and why you want/need things to change. Ultimately, it is best if they support you in your choice and go with you!  When they don't share in your desire to change, it can make things difficult, and it will cause a LOT of emotion to rise for them. I have experienced this in my past.  

Many moons ago when I was married, I was a quiet, shy, introverted person.  When I was in my late 20's, I started to change (a lot of people need to realize that a woman doesn't fully mature personally until they are in their late 20's, this is why I suggest that women do NOT get married until then!).  I started to become more outgoing, more outspoken, I felt like I was finally becoming who I was suppose to be.  Problem is, that wasn't the woman that my partner married and that scared him.  He didn't understand the change in me, and I couldn't explain it to him.  So that resulted in some behaviours coming out in him that were not so good, and they drove a wedge between us, which eventually (among other reasons) led to our divorce. The point being, when one person changes in a relationship, and the other person isn't on the same page, they feel threatened and they are scared, as you are upsetting the story/belief that they had made up in their head as to what your relationship was, in other words, you're rocking the boat! This causes them to lash out and lots of blame, as they do not understand the emotions that are going on inside them, and they are not willing to take responsibility for them.

So, like I said in my first ever post, what I write on here is MY experiences and what I have learned, you can take something from them or not, that is YOUR choice.  I am not here to make you believe or feel anything, I am here to maybe provide you with some awareness, to take a moment to actually look at your life and let you know that you can change it, IF you are willing to do whatever it takes to do it. If something I say angers you or causes some sort of feeling to well up within you, you need to look at why.  I am NOT making you feel this way, YOU ARE.......so figure out the reason behind it. 

Don't blame your feelings on someone else! 

Happy Earth Day!!

Happy Earth day everyone!!!  Hope you get a chance to get outside and enjoy all the beauty and wonder that our wonderful planet has to offer! 


I am just going to leave you with 2 thoughts that I came across recently that really spoke to me. The first is a quote that was posted on a page that I follow:


"We have two choices when we wake up in the morning: either we go back to sleep and dream, or we wake up and chase that dream. We often spend way too much time wondering why we’re not good enough, and discrediting ourselves, instead of giving ourselves credit. We waste too much time with our heads down and hearts closed, never giving ourselves a chance to look up from the ground to see that the sun is shining bright, and that today is another perfect opportunity to pursue our dreams."

Such beautiful and VERY important words that we need to remind ourselves everyday!   NEVER give up on your dreams!! I'm certainly not!! 

The second is this: 

I don't know about you, but I'm tired of living the status quo in mediocrity......I want MORE!  So be brave enough to go against the grain, be a trend setter, BE A LEADER!