Posts tagged with “wisdom”
Train Your Mind: Overcoming Negative Thoughts Is Half the Battle
“Believe you can and you’re halfway there.” ~Theodore Roosevelt
I could not find the bottom of the pool.
The task seemed simple enough: Wearing no more than twenty pounds worth of gear, swim to the bottom of an eight-foot pool, remove your gear, and swim back up.
My feet combed for something—anything—solid beneath me, to no avail. A shock of fear struck through my veins, clouding my head. Panic. I reached a point of sheer, utter, uncontrollable panic.
Panic is an interesting beast. It is designed to trigger the flight-or-fight mechanism in the human body; it is for survival …
Why I Was Addicted to Attention, Lies, and Drama
I’ve done a lot of things for attention that I’m not proud of. I’ve created drama. I’ve bragged. I’ve exaggerated. I’ve hurt people. I’ve hurt myself. I’ve lied and lied and lied.
No one wants to be labeled as an “attention seeker.” When people say, “She’s just doing it for attention,” they don’t mean it as a compliment. I knew this. And I knew that people said these things about me.
And still, I couldn’t stop.
I spend a lot of time around animals, especially cats. It’s easy to see which ones have experienced starvation. They have constant anxiety about …
How Creativity Heals Us and Why It’s a Gift to the World
“Creativity is the way I share my soul with the world.” ~Brené Brown
I wrote a poem today for the woman I love(d).
Just a few weeks ago, I fully believed she was the one I’d be with forever. Love forever. My heart was open so deep and wide to her. We talked about marriage and living together in the woods, making art, and being a family.
Then things got tough. We talked, we tried, we read books, jetted our intention out into the universe. But we just couldn’t keep it together.
There was so much pain. But also …
Making the Hurt Visible: How I Stopped Hating the Man and Learned to Listen to Myself
“Ignoring isn’t the same as ignorance, you have to work at it.” ~Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale
We’ve just passed the year anniversary of an event that has greatly changed our country. The shock of the election results last year sent waves of powerful emotions rippling through our nation.
Personally, I felt the effects as intense and immediate grief. It was as though I had just lost my dearest companion.
I had days of shock, despair, feelings of intense cold with physical shaking and episodes of vomiting and nausea, followed by weeks of sleepless nights, spontaneous sweating, nightmares …
Leave the Past in the Past: What Matters Most Is Who You Are Now
“Focus on what matters and let go of what doesn’t.” ~Unknown
When I was in rehab for alcohol addiction, one of the most difficult things for any of us to overcome was the fact that we thought we were beyond redemption.
Why? Because during the depths of our addiction, we had done some things we weren’t too proud of. Unhealthy behaviors that included drinking while driving, calling in sick when we weren’t because we were too hung over to go to work, or neglecting our children for the lure of spending the evening with a bottle of wine instead. …
Seeing Rejection As Redirection: What We Gain When We Lose
“Every time I thought I was being rejected from something good, I was actually being re-directed to something better.” ~Steve Maraboli
Rejection hurts. Whether it is from family, friends, co-workers, or a new company, when we experience rejection it hits us right in the heart—the control center to our emotions.
We may wonder, what is wrong with me? We might begin pulling ourselves apart with self-criticism. However, rejection also has a way of teaching us, redirecting us, and ultimately making our lives better.
I have learned to look at rejection differently these past couple of years. Actually, many of …
We All Make Mistakes, So Let’s Try to Remember the Good
Julius Caesar has long been my favorite work of William Shakespeare. I am drawn to the political intrigue, the betrayal, the powerful words of Marc Antony.
One line from the play has always remained lodged in my mind:
“The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones.”
The line often pops into my head when I feel unjustly persecuted or blamed. Shakespeare understood hundreds of years ago that human nature causes us to feel self-centered and unjustly targeted.
While I recognize I am not now nor was I ever a perfect mother, I …
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