Will You Face the Day with Hope or Dread ?

It occurred to me this morning that I am either hopeful or I am hopeless at any given moment. Am I dreading my day or looking forward to it? And in that very answer is the truth of my life’s outlook. My perception of who I am and how I have value to add to the world is the key to which state of being I’m in.

I am holding my breath this morning to find out how I feel.

Our thoughts and feelings are codependent and fickle. We may have a fleeting thought about our “less than” worth and then suddenly our inner child has gone on strike and shuts down. As she feels helpless, hopeless and dreads everything upcoming, our now self feels hopeless and purposeless and depressed. She doesn’t think you are gong to get through this or keep her safe. 

If we receive kudos or a compliment about our work or our hair, suddenly we feel all puffed up and full of hope and love and generosity. Today is suddenly a wonderful day to be alive.

So the trick would seem to be that you need to convince yourself every day that you are amazing. Feeling good and esteeming oneself brings hope. Berating and hating oneself brings dread. It is a choice daily on how you want to feel.

So today I’m refusing to entertain any conversations about body hatred or dusty shelves or weedy gardens and instead, I’m going to continue to work on thinking I’m pretty keen. And work on what I can hand my readership that is of value to their lives. That brings them hope because we need to pass it on.

And If you enjoyed what you read, subscribe, via the subscription box in the sidebar, to my thrice weekly posts via your emailbox. And visit me on Instagram to see my daily pictures, friend me or like my page on Facebook. Or come find me on Twitter or Pinterest too. I am always practicing Intentional Intouchness so chat at me please. I live for conversations.

And, as always, Thanks to you for your visit.

Birds of a Feather Flocking Together

I am sitting back listening to the birds singing their final Fall goodbyes. Accompanied by the crickets, I hear the bird song and then the response echo. Maybe they’re looking for a last fling before they fly off to warmer places? And I am suddenly reminded of the way we all go in search for familiar people. Our flocks are out there waiting for us to find them. We are birds of a feather flocking together in many ways that count.

Hope is there where the flock resides. A place to be seen and heard for just who we are. It feels like family and familiarity and peaceful restoration to be in the same place as like-minded people. And it is definitely worth looking for.

When I entered the online world of social media, all I could feel was fear of vulnerability. I was terrified to be seen by people I always thought I’d never be seen by again. Ex-lovers and past schoolmates would see me as I am now and I thought, I wouldn’t be impressed with me either. But what I came to find was that the truth isn’t at all that dramatic when everyone’s also human. We forgive each other stuff lest we be judged too.

Hope is there where the flock resides.

A place to be seen and heard for just who we are.

Further I found, that when you do find like-minded people, you truly feel seen on the inside without ever laying eyes on one another. You begin to forgive yourself the ridiculous stuff you used to focus on as you begin to see yourself through other people’s eyes. People who don’t even know you see right down to the gems that are your soul. And you have no other choice but to believe them.

Because there’s magic that happens in the world you’d never know unless you’d experienced it. A deeper connection with a collective humanity that defies definition and exists right below the surface of all the noise. And that interconnected web holds us all up even when we can’t see it. And believing in it and a better outcome for us all is a blind faith I dig having.

And If you enjoyed what you read, subscribe, via the subscription box in the sidebar, to my thrice weekly posts via your emailbox. And visit me on Instagram to see my daily pictures, friend me or like my page on Facebook. Or come find me on Twitter or Pinterest too. I am always practicing Intentional Intouchness so chat at me please. I live for conversations.

And, as always, Thanks to you for your visit.

Loving Those Fears Right Out of My Head

Self-development is a very exciting yet solitary process. It comes in spurts, things catch my brain and I instinctively know I need to follow the breadcrumbs to find the answer to “how will this help me to understand myself better”. That is my process and this week I heard a story about self-love and boundaries calling me in.

I have often felt a rawness when in relation to others. And that would be due to my lack of knowing where they stop and I begin. In a recent Instagram post, Elizabeth Gilbert talks about how she’s noticed many people live angry all the time because of their lack of boundaries and feeling encroached on. But, she says, “Not everybody gets to have full access to you.” There’s a different distance for everyone in your life. People who earned more trust get more access. In other words, not everything anyone says to you has to mean anything or affect you.

She says, “When they are held at the correct distance from you, you will stop hating them. Until then, you are just using that person as a weapon to beat yourself up. Put an end to it.”

Problems always truly come down to fear. I say that anyone who’s acting like a jackass, including myself, is probably feeling some fear at that time. I find it hard to put my work out in the world because I am afraid of judgment. My inability to stand proud in my talents and products screams fear blockage. In a recent newsletter,

Australian entrepreneur and Female Rights activist Samantha Nolan-Smith said,”When you clear that fear, you can literally be unstoppable. Other people’s judgments just roll off you because you feel complete and whole in yourself. When you’ve already accepted yourself exactly as you are, their judgment is… just a useful piece of information about that person, but tells you nothing about yourself and doesn’t wound you in any way. I’m calling it visibility liberation.”

There are methods of clearing the fears and they take concerted work. First priority is to admit that you have fears and they are keeping you shackled to where you are. There’s no need to feel ashamed of them or to judge them. In fact, the only way to begin to navigate away from our fears is to be compassionate about why they are there. What sad tales do they derive from that we can forgive ourselves for? It is in the application of empathy and humanity that we’ll no longer be under the grips of these fears that have held us hostage for so long.

In her book A Heart of Gold: Lessons on the Path to Loving Kindness, Jane Reeves says “Compassion is what happens before Self-Love…Compassion is how we begin to untether all the tangled parts…Compassion is how we train for self-love.”

So how do I incorporate more self-compassion into my days? What practice can I adopt and embrace to begin this valuable fear relinquishing process? I suspect at least meditation could be truly helpful. This is where I am because I refuse to let my self-esteem languish in the “not enough” zone. That is an insult to everyone who loves me and all the efforts I’ve ever made.

I want to relinquish these shackles and risk and write things that will be of benefit to the world. I want to feel excited as I deliver every new idea in a way that serves me and those I care for. I want to get the heck out of my way. And I know the only way to do this is to work on loving those fears right out of my head.

And If you enjoyed what you read, subscribe, via the subscription box in the sidebar, to my thrice weekly posts via your emailbox. And visit me on Instagram to see my daily pictures, friend me or like my page on Facebook. Or come find me on Twitter or Pinterest too. I am always practicing Intentional Intouchness so chat at me please. I live for conversations.

And, as always, Thanks to you for your visit.

Knowing Myself Will Connect Me To You

It continuously occurs to me that the better I know myself, the better I can understand my value to the world and to you whoever you might be. When I connect with me I can connect with you. And becoming myself is one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do.

I envy those people (all except the narcissists) for knowing what they are and the strengths that they bring to what they do in their lives. What a gift to have such confidence in what you are, your strengths, your gifts, and your purpose. No, not everyone has this.

Some, like me, grew up with hazy mirrors reflecting back their self-worth. Or no mirrors. And it can be very difficult to build something when you don’t have a recipe or a plan for it. Why would you even try or know where to begin?

Becoming myself is one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do.

We had a little old cat who was skittish and had never been petted. Until one day I snuck a pet in. And she liked it. A lot. It took her 15 years to find out how great affection was. And then she was a pet junkie. How do you know something even exists unless you have felt it? Same with self-esteem. 

Building self-esteem is like building something from air sometimes. You take it on faith that you need to build self-esteem and that it will work if you keep working it but it’s an act of faith. Without the faith you’re worth it,  you’re not. See? Your actions prove your value but your value isn’t there yet. What I have noticed recently is that the surer I feel about myself, the easier it is to speak with others. I come from a place of knowing and this brings me ease. And I am all about the ease.

I don’t doubt my need for self-esteem building so that I may understand my weight and purpose in this world. Knowing and fulfilling my value to my fellow humans is one of the most important tasks/jobs I will ever have. And so I fight ever onward in the invisible storm of developing myself.

And If you enjoyed what you read, subscribe, via the subscription box in the sidebar, to my thrice weekly posts via your emailbox. And visit me on Instagram to see my daily pictures, friend me or like my page on Facebook. Or come find me on Twitter or Pinterest too. I am always practicing Intentional Intouchness so chat at me please. I live for conversations.

And, as always, Thanks to you for your visit.

Action Brings Courage

In a recent perusal of my favorite inspirational bloggers and speakers, I rediscovered and owned that my chosen method to accommodate my fears is to procrastinate. Ah yes. However,when I do this, I end up feeling ashamed that I am not getting on with making my purpose a reality and a shame storm repeats itself. More reading brought me this simple nugget of wisdom: Action brings Courage. 

Take any action towards the perceived goal and suddenly, it all feels better. The antidote to hopelessness and unworthiness is action. It immediately resets everything. The action says that you are not in fact stuck but in motion! And you feel suddenly relieved of the previous definition you had of you being lazy and unworthy.

The trick is to figure out how it is that you can keep yourself choosing this action which propels you a bit further and a bit further. I find talking about it gets me going. Handing over my intentions to other people becomes a form of accountability. They heard me say it so I now probably should do something about it. The idea of an action list with steps broken down and actually scheduled into your calendar is also a very crafty to outwit yourself.

But in the end, I suppose you should make double-decker sure that the thing you think you want is actually for you and not for someone else. And then just have compassion for yourself for putting it off. And start again. That is the current story of several different areas of my life which I will be sharing soon.

And If you enjoyed what you read, subscribe, via the subscription box in the sidebar, to my thrice weekly posts via your emailbox. And visit me on Instagram to see my daily pictures, friend me or like my page on Facebook. Or come find me on Twitter orPinterest too. I am always practicing Intentional Intouchness so chat at me please. I live for conversations.

And, as always, Thanks to you for your visit.