Try to Focus on All That You Are
Yes, I Am Afraid to Fly, But I Won’t Let My Fear Control Me
“Feel the fear and do it anyway.” ~Susan Jeffers
Let’s do a thought exercise together.
I have flown, I don’t know two or four times a year since I was eighteen and a few times before that, and I am now almost thirty-seven. On the low end that puts me around forty times. On the high ends that is, what seventy-five times in my life? Let’s split the difference and say I have flown fifty-five times because I have never kept track of things like that.
Also, I have jumped out of planes before. Yep, it was beautiful, and seriously …
Trust Your Intuition: If It Feels Like a No, It’s a No
“You will never follow your own inner voice until you clear up the doubts in your mind.” ~Roy T. Bennett
One evening my husband and I decided that we, along with our daughter, would go together to a neighboring town about thirty minutes away the following morning. He had an errand to run, and I was going to take our daughter to a nearby playground.
The morning arrived, and as I thought about it, I had a wave of feeling/thought that said, “I don’t really want to go,” or maybe it was more like, “I’d rather just stay around here …
Freeing Your Truest Self When You’re Anxious to Please
“Stress, depression, and anxiety are caused when we are living to please others.” ~Paulo Coehlo
I came from a broken and very poor family. My father left the house during my teenage years, and it was just my mother, little brother, and I remaining.
Like most single parents going through the hardships of singlehandedly caring for two children, my mother was often anxious about my well-being. And she overcompensated for her anxiety by being overbearing.
I unfortunately inherited this anxiety.
For the longest time, it was a daily battle for me.
You know the feeling.
Your muscles tense up, you …
Our Shame Does Not Have to Silence Us Unless We Let It
“Empathy’s the antidote to shame. The two most powerful words when we’re in struggle: me too.” ~ Brené Brown
There is so much power in giving yourself a voice, in choosing to use that voice for truth, in giving life to the secrets, judgment, and shame you keep hidden away. “Me too” can change someone’s life.
I learned this firsthand almost a decade ago. It changed my life, and it’s changed countless others around me.
I gave my shame a voice, and she was loud, strong, and bold. She brought light to a secret others would have preferred I kept. …
When You Keep Giving Up on New Habits That Are Good for You
“If you have a bad day, remember that tomorrow is a wonderful gift and a new chance to try again.” ~Bryant McGill
As I crawled back into bed after hitting the snooze button, my eyes heavy with sleep, I told myself, “You gave up once more” and rolled over back to sleep, annoyed with myself.
Two months earlier, inspired by the book The Miracle Morning, by Hal Erold, I had taken the habit of getting up early (around 5am) every day to meditate for fifteen minutes, write for thirty minutes, and exercise for thirty minutes.
When I started the …
Why Social Media and My Addictive Personality Don’t Mesh
Twitter didn’t give me the flu or bronchitis, but it made me sick. Unhealthy. Ill-feeling. And it could have been any social media platform that did it, I just happened to have chosen Twitter.
For years I avoided creating any sort of social media account. I complained to companies the old-fashioned way: calling or emailing customer service. I didn’t need to know what people I wasn’t in touch with in real life were doing.
As someone who was married and not dating, there simply wasn’t the requirement to be on any kind of social media. With two kids, I spent …
How Failure Holds the Key to a Meaningful, Successful Life
“Perfectionism doesn’t believe in practice shots.” ~Julia Cameron
Within each of us lurks a perfectionist. And perfectionists set themselves up for a lot of pain in life.
How so? I’ll come to that.
First let me describe how our first child took her first step. She was less than ten months old. A very bright girl, who wanted nothing less than my approval at all times.
On one occasion, a few months previous to that, she was crawling on the carpet and picked up some small thing. As she started to put it in her mouth, I called out loudly …
Why “Focus on the Bright Side” Isn’t Helpful Advice
There are so many memes and quotes out there that say, “Be positive, not negative. Focus on the bright side.” I’ve never been very good at ignoring the negatives and focusing on the positives.
Call me a critical, over-analytical over-thinker if you want, but at no point in my journey of self-love and self-discovery have I learned to ignore all my flaws, all my mistakes, all my regrets. At no point in my journey of compassion have I learned to ignore all the times that someone has hurt me or all the destruction caused by abuse. That never felt right …
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