Category Archives: self improved

Here’s your stick…..draw your line

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The sand lays in wait. Millions of grains stretch for miles and the beach seems to be swallowed by the horizon line.  But you boldly step forward, take that stick (or your finger) and draw your line.

Personal limits are a must-have.  By setting boundaries, by drawing that line in the sand, we take a giant step towards preserving our integrity.  The line we draw becomes an invisible wall of defiance and gives us the strength to truly stand behind what we believe in and allows us to have the courage to defend that wall.

Knowing where you stand is more than half the battle.  Many people can aimlessly wander through life with no true convictions.  They are easily swayed and can become lost in the crowd, without ever truly engaging their basic human right to have an opinion.  But allowing ourselves to have that opinion can define who we are, to the core of our being, with no outside influence and no second-guessing.  We can create a line that we won’t cross to avoid being swallowed in the maelstrom of millions of other ideals that don’t represent our own.

It’s perfectly okay to have boundaries.  Our opinions are like doorways to our mind.  We can leave those doors wide open and allow others to come in and hear those opinions, or those doors can remain closed to safeguard our thoughts without really having to defend that line.

Have an opinion and be willing to stand behind it.  Here’s your stick – feel free to draw your line.

Forget the door – look for the window

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I am a big fan of old musicals and one of my favorites is The Sound of Music.  There is a line in that show that has always resonated within me – “Wherever God closes a door, somewhere he opens a window”.

So many times we become obsessed with that closed door.  We torture ourselves to find the reason the door closed in the first place without even thinking that another portal may have opened for us to venture into.  We spend countless minutes and hours wondering what would have happened had that door remained open when the opportunity for a new adventure sits in plain sight with unlimited access.

Having that door close is not an ending.  Although the task of finding another threshold is daunting, we need to grasp the possibility that an alternate passageway is available to us, and we need to seize the opportunity to climb through that window. We need to view that window as a new beginning.

Doors close for a reason.  And that reason exists as much as the reason for that window to open.  Life is presented to us as a menu of choices.  You can choose to bang on that closed door until your knuckles bleed, but you can also decide that perhaps the open window is far more inviting once you realize its potential.

Moving beyond that closed door may be difficult, but if you give that open window a chance, you may find that the space beyond those broadening panes of glass may provide more of a panorama than that door ever could.  Embrace the possibility of change.  Those inviting window panes may hold the key to something you never thought possible.

See your world from a different perspective.  Sometimes we need to see our existence beyond the confines to which we have become accustomed and allow ourselves a completely different view.

We accept the love we think we deserve

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I love when I have a post idea in my head when I’m drifting off to sleep and it is there, anxiously waiting to burst from my fingertips onto the page the next morning.  Here is the result of my musing and somewhat dream-filled night.

I  watched Oprah on a fairly regular basis.  I, like most women, will admit that wholeheartedly and proudly.  She would delve into a lot of topics that simply resonated with people but they were perhaps too afraid to broach the subject without some cajoling.

Oprah used to talk about the “a-ha moment”.   The moment when the outside world ceased to invade our conscious thought and the epiphany that presented itself was so overwhelming that it struck a giant chord deep within us.  I had my a-ha moment last night watching Anderson Cooper.  Members of the cast of the new movie “The Perks of being a Wallflower” were being interviewed and, at one point during the conversation, one of those cast members mentioned the line his character spoke in the film.  ‘We accept the love we think we deserve.’    That line struck me as so profound and dripping in rich meaning, that it truly made me stop everything I was doing to ponder how that sentence affected me.

For many of us, love comes with terms and conditions.  That is the  way we first experienced love and that is what we have come to accept.  But those terms and conditions, like any contract, can be revoked, altered and enhanced to change the experiences we have in our lives.  We do not need to settle for anything less than the love we crave and the love we truly deserve, not just what we have come to expect.  We are the makers of our own destiny and only we can know if we are being loved the way we truly want to be loved.

(image courtesy of Google)

Even Yoda gets it – there is no try, only do.  If I really think about it the subject line of this post, a very powerful sentence, had been hiding in the recesses of my brain for some time and I left a marriage that was not fulfilling my need to be loved the way I deserve to be loved.  I finally put myself first, for perhaps the first time in my life, and revoked that contract.   I have since rewritten my parameters on how I deserve to be loved, and nothing is going to sway that decision.  There are no exceptions to the rules.  There is no room for discussion.  And the fundamental principle is simple – love me not because you can live with me, but because you can’t live without me.  (Trite, but true)

Each of us is deserving of an all-encompassing love – one that sometimes seems to stifle us because the emotion is so overwhelming, but we could not possibly live our lives without.  It may be your spouse, your children, your friends or your family but regardless of where that feeling comes from, know that you truly deserve to be loved on your terms and not just theirs.   Don’t just accept what is offered – if you think you are worthy of more, demand more.

Self pity

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We all have those moments where life’s proverbial bullies gang up on us and we shrivel into a ball and feel sorry for ourselves. We become so overwhelmed with negative things that our mechanism for coping pops a few springs and lays useless at our feet.  But self pity is like a rocking chair…..it gives you something to do, but it really gets you nowhere.

Still, sometimes it is difficult to pull ourselves out of that funk and move into a more positive realm.  Self pity can be all-encompassing.  Once we let it into our mind, it takes root and wraps itself deeply into the soil of our emotions.  When something comes along to crush our spirit, every bad thing that follows seems to compound that helpless feeling and we begin to lose our buoyancy in a churning sea of despair.

We tend to be pessimistic and convince ourselves that more bad karma will follow, when instead we should be sending out positive thoughts to get back that affirming energy.  We need to rethink the whole picture and realize that the small obstacles that have presented themselves do not define the rest of our lives. Our emotions become exaggerated and self-indulgent, and we tend to ignore the rest of the world still revolving around us.

We need to make a pact with ourselves to not indulge in that obsessive behaviour.  Gratitude and self-pity are bitter enemies.  If we take time from our “pity party” to think about all the things we should be grateful for, eventually the affirmations of all the good in our lives will counter-balance the scales.

Every negative occurrence in our lives can be seen as an opportunity to learn from that experience.  Instead of wallowing in a mire of self-pity, step back for a moment and realize that the positive things in your life far outweigh the negative aspects.  Put an end to that pity party, get a good night’s sleep, and start the next day with a new outlook.  You’ll be amazed what a new attitude will bring.

Denial

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Denial – as the old saying goes – “It’s not just a river in Egypt”.

Denial is the most powerful weapon we have in our arsenal.  The uncanny ability to reject the truth so vehemently and insist that there is an alternate reality is the biggest defence mechanism we have.  Despite any overwhelming evidence to the contrary, we convince ourselves that the situation at hand is not as bad as others keep trying to convince us it is.

The fact of the matter is that, no matter how uncomfortable the circumstance, we are able to distort that truth and see the world through those proverbial rose-colored glasses. 　Or we are able to bury our heads in the sand, hoping that when we pull ourselves out of that pit that the world around us has forgotten about the truth that we tried so hard to dissolve.

Denial gives us the ability to not cope with reality and to learn nothing from the lesson we are faced with.  We minimize the importance of the glaring truth that is staring us in the face, and we sculpt the verity in our lives to suit our purpose.

Eventually the ticking time bomb of reality will eviscerate the comforting tomb of denial. 　The truth always has a way of emerging, and whether we like it or not, we will have to face the music that was always playing in the background.

Dealing with an uncomfortable situation will be just that, uncomfortable.  But the sooner we stand up to the problem, the easier it will be to find a resolution.  Denying the facts will only get you so far.  Ultimately reality will win and the effort we put into our denial will be fruitless. See things for how they really are – diffuse that ticking time bomb, live honestly and pull your head out of the sand.  Reality is not as bad as you may make it out to be, but you will never know until you confront it.

Life’s tough – get a helmet

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It always seems like the easy answer – when life gets hard we crawl into a small, safe spot and wait for the trouble to abate.  We play “turtle” and pull our heads into our protective shell and only poke our nose out to see if the potential threat has dissipated.

But we don’t realize that, while we are playing the role of that turtle, we are missing a significant portion of our lives and potentially a great lesson or two that could be learned if we face that trouble head on.  Nobody who was ever honest with us would have told us that life was easy.  It is those significantly difficult times that teach us the most about how to deal with tough situations, but more than that, it teaches us a lot about our own character.

We build our strength from the tough lessons we endure and we create that hard tortoise shell by deflecting negativity and warding off malicious situations.  Sure that shell is there to protect us, but not to completely shield us from the life that manifests itself before us.

Life is tough.  We need to strap on that helmet and go into the fight fully prepared for what is waiting to rear its ugly head.  No real dilemma was ever solved by just wishing it away.  Strap on the head gear and tackle life head on – your offensive line may be much tougher than you give it credit for!

Strive for excellence, not perfection

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We all seek perfection – it is the pot of gold at the end of the proverbial rainbow.  But perfection is an elusive goal.  Realistically, if we take a step back and truly ascertain what we are trying to achieve, the end result would be excellence.  Perfection may present itself on test scores, but the culmination of our efforts in life will never be the absolute perfection that we seek.

There will always be one missing piece in the puzzle of life that impedes us from reaching that desired goal of true perfection.  If we analyse the bigger picture, we can still see what that portrait was meant to convey, and it may be the closest we get to the precision we sought in the first place.

Perfection is subjective.  What may seem perfect to you may have glaring inadequacies to another set of eyes.  On the other end of that spectrum, what others see as true beauty, you may find to be marred with flaws.  I used to bake wedding cakes.  I would spend tedious hours icing and decorating, only to chastise my own work because it could have been better.  But the bride and groom were always ecstatic when they walked into the room and rested their eyes on the fruits of my labour.  Completely subjective.

We need to be focused on being the best we can be and not get lost in the absurdity of being perfect.  It’s not going to happen.  There are too many outside influences ready to impede our progress and make us feel like we missed the mark.  But the benchmark of  success can only come from our personal definition.

I know I will never be perfect – at anything.  But I will continue to strive for excellence in everything I do.  I would be doing myself a grave disservice if I aspired to be anything less.