On The Days It Feels Like You’ll Never Move Forward, Just Remember How Far You’ve Come

Posted on by diannegaraf

On the days when it feels like you will never get through this season, this period, this transition — please remember all of the mountains you have scaled before. Please remember all of the nights you spent convinced that the anxiety wouldn’t leave, that you’d never move beyond where you were in that very moment.

Whether you realized it or not, the time passed. Without you having to even try, joy emerged from your days. One day, something small brought you a little ease, and then a little more. You waited. You realized that everything was going to be okay, even if it doesn’t always feel okay. You let the waves crash, and then you let them recede.

Whether you realized it or not, you found courage. You did things you once did not believe you could do, even if those things were just finding the will to wake up and face each day. You felt worse than you were capable of feeling, you suffered loss that you couldn’t have conceived prior. You were awakened to reality, which is sometimes cold, and sometimes hard, and sometimes brutally unfair.

But also, unimaginably sweet. Because while you were mourning what you thought would be, you also found softness. You discovered how important it is to love the people nearest to you, and how invaluable they are. You began to appreciate what you didn’t see before. You began to know that you were enough, because you decided what was enough.

Whether you realized it or not, you became resilient. You explored the perimeters of what your heart could hold, and how much it could process. You discovered that your strength is limitless, you just don’t know what if it’s never been tested before.

And over time, what was once impossible became easy.

The life you have today is a mere dream of the past. The things you do right now were once the things you only could have ever prayed to have. The people in your life are the ones you gazed out the window for years and wondered if they would ever arrive, if someone would ever show up that made you feel so deeply understood.

You do not have to have everything in order to make the best of anything, because the truth is that goodness is something we extract from life, something we savor, something we choose to see. It’s not always something we can achieve, or find.

So when the day comes that it feels most like you will never move beyond where you are right now, please remember how far you have walked, and through what. Please remember all of the times you were stuck and were sure you would never get out from under the crushing weight of your own disappointment and defeat. Please remember all of the times you were truly heartbroken, truly let down.

Then remember all of the nights you dreamed of being where you are right now. The days you spent working and planning and hoping that it would all work out. In one way or another, a path was made where it did not exist before. The opportunities showed up. The doors creaked open. You met the people who you’d spend years of your life with, people who were once strangers.

You discovered things about yourself you did not yet know. You learned what it takes to feel safe, and not. You learned what you enjoy, and what you don’t. You learned what you value, and what you don’t. You learned, because you discovered, the honest truth of who you are and who you’re going to be.

You found yourself, not because you were searching, but because you were cornered. When discomfort in life peaks, we are left to look around and wonder why. Through that reflection, we discover all the pieces that are out of place, and then we find the courage to put them back together.

You will move the pieces in front of you today.

You will arrive to the horizon you’re gazing at in due time.

Instead of fearing that the road will fall out from under you, return to what life has shown you: that things can be scary, but that a way is always made. That even if you don’t believe you’re worthy, you’re always given enough. That even if you don’t believe you’re lovable, you’re always loved. That even if you don’t think there’s a way forward, there always is.

When it feels most like nothing will ever give and the mountain ahead of you won’t ever be scaled, remember how you crossed every one that’s behind you: one step, one hour, one moment, one glimmer of hope at a time.

By : Brianna Weist

Trauma Is Not Your Fault, But Healing Is Your Responsibility

Posted on by diannegaraf

What happened to you was not your fault.

It was not something you asked for, it was not something you deserved.

What happened to you was not fair.

You were merely collateral damage on someone else’s warpath, an innocent bystander who got wrecked out of proximity.

We are all traumatized by life, some of us from egregious wrongdoings, others by unprocessed pain and sidelined emotions. No matter the source, we are all handed a play of cards, and sometimes, they are not a winning hand.

Yet what we cannot forget is that even when we are not at fault, healing in the aftermath will always fall on us — and instead of being burdened by this, we can actually learn to see it as a rare gift.

Healing is our responsibility because if it isn’t, an unfair circumstance becomes an unlived life.

Healing is our responsibility because unprocessed pain gets transferred to everyone around us, and we are not going to allow what someone else did to us to become what we do to those we love.

Healing is our responsibility because we have this one life, this single shot to do something important.

Healing is our responsibility because if we want our lives to be different, sitting and waiting for someone else to make them so will not actually change them. It will only make us dependent and bitter.

Healing is our responsibility because we have the power to heal ourselves, even if we have previously been led to believe we don’t.

Healing is our responsibility because we are uncomfortable, and discomfort almost always signals a place in life in which we are slated to rise up and transform.

Healing is our responsibility because every great person you deeply admire began with every odd against them, and learned their inner power was no match for the worst of what life could offer.

Healing is our responsibility because “healing” is actually not returning to how and who we were before, it is becoming someone we have never been — someone stronger, someone wiser, someone kinder.

When we heal, we step into the people we have always wanted to be. We are not only able to metabolize the pain, we are able to affect real change in our lives, in our families, and in our communities. We are able to pursue our dreams more freely. We are able to handle whatever life throws at us, because we are self-efficient and assured. We are more willing to dare, risk, and dream of broader horizons, ones we never thought we’d reach.

The thing is that when someone else does something wrong and it affects us, we often sit around waiting for them to take the pain away, as though they could come along and undo what has been done.

We fail to realize that in that hurt are the most important lessons of our lives, the fertile breeding ground upon which we can start to build everything we really want.

We are not meant to get through life unscathed.

We are not meant to get to the finish line unscarred, clean and bored.

Life hurts us all in different ways, but it is how we respond — and who we become — that determines whether a trauma becomes a tragedy, or the beginning of the story of how the victim became the hero.

By : Brianna Wiest

The Truth About Changing Your Life Is That It Is Often Means Doing Less, Not More

Posted on by diannegaraf

The beginning of a self-transformation requires action, but the end of it requires something deeper, something harder, something you’ve probably never realized before.

While doing more will almost always generate results, there’s an untapped, life-changing magic in doing less.

Sometimes, your problems don’t come from what you’re not doing, they come from what you can’t stop doing.

To really change your life, you probably need to consume less. You probably need to learn to use what you have, to take a breath and stop yourself every time you think you need that one new perfect thing that will magically transform you into a new person.

You probably need to spend less. You probably need to reevaluate your patterns and behaviors and refocus on your long-term goals, prioritizing your future comfort over your immediate gratification.

You probably need to engage less, both with people who are not mentally mature and people whom do not have any intention of having a civil discourse with you. This is not because you can’t speak freely, but because having an exchange with someone whose intent is to fight you rather than connect with you will always be a losing situation.

You probably need to change less. When we start out on our healing journey, it’s about uprooting, replanting, and sprouting. But if you’re unhealed beneath the surface, you won’t be able to lay roots without wanting to rip them out again. Healing, you will find, is not about how many times you can start over, it is whether to not you can bloom.

You probably need to care less. When your mind is consumed with trying to master and perfect every single little thing in your life, you get overwhelmed and give up. Instead, you have to focus on the few things that are actually requiring your attention, and then build from there.

You probably need to do less. Not because you shouldn’t be productive, but because you only have so much energy in a day, and when you spend it on things you don’t really care much about, you find yourself constantly exhausted, drained and at your wit’s end.

You probably need to have fewer expectations. Often, we conflate that with having high standards, but they aren’t the same thing. Unrealistic expectations will slowly wreck you, because they require that you achieve perfection immediately. When your expectation is that you should be a natural-born master of whatever you try to do, it becomes really hard to show up and do the work consistently, which is what you actually have to do to achieve mastery.

You probably need to not try so hard. When you try to force people to like you, it usually has the opposite effect. When you try to convince yourself you’re attractive, you usually seem less so. When you are trying to force every outcome in your life, there’s usually a reason they aren’t coming together on their own.

You probably need to give fewer excuses. Not because you’re going to be unkind to yourself, but because the kindest thing you can possibly do is stop avoiding the honest truth about what’s wrong. You cannot keep trying to positive-self-talk your way into thinking you love your life when you do not. When we’re ready to make fewer justifications, it means we’re also ready to make greater change.

The truth about doing less is that it’s going to bring you into stillness. It is going to require you to face that discomfort you’ve been running from head-on.

The truth is that when we first realize we need to change our lives, it is easy to get swept away in the escape fantasy of it all. Everything has to go, and nothing can stay. There’s an addictive quality to starting over, and if you’re not careful, you can confuse it for actually healing.

Truly getting better is learning to be okay where you are, wherever you are. It is actually metabolizing that discomfort for once, listening to it, letting it show you where you are deeply misaligned.

It is to become grounded, to make positive decisions for the long-term, to start breaking those destructive habits that have been fueled by the pain you haven’t quite had a name for all these years.

It is to no longer be controlled by your feelings, but by your ambitions, by your dreams for the future.

When you go about changing your life, sometimes, the most radical shift of all is to do absolutely nothing — and wait for the sun to rise.

 

By : Brianna Weist

Posted on by diannegaraf

Dear you,

I know that you’ve been hurt for long time. You keep running, you feel scared then you avoid your true feeling.

But like in the labyrinth, you stuck in there with the sadness, frustated.

I am sorry

for all your pain, all your sadness for years.

I am sorry

I pushed you away without said anything

I was young and scared.

You know what? You were too good to be true. I thought.

and now I realized that wherever I go then I’m looking someone like you. Poor me, you’re still the best. no one can be you. so here I am, I fucked up too.

No. I know that I am not worth enough to hold your hands again.

I just wanna tell you I’m sorry for everything.

Please happy, be trully happy.

I will always full of the regrets for the rest of my life if you still keep screaming and crying inside like that.

I remember that you said to me to enjoy my life. and I wish that too.

Please, no more fake happiness again. please be happy there. You’ve so many people who love and care about you. I’m so grateful for that.

Please be happy there. No more regrets again.,,

If You Feel Unsure About The Future, You Don’t Need More Inspiration, You Need Better Principles

Posted on by diannegaraf

The good things that happen to us in life are like a magnifier. They show us where we still need to grow. True love shows us to ourselves. Money shows us to ourselves. Dream jobs show us to ourselves. The good, the bad, the desperately-needs-to-change-right-now.

What is a principle?

The point of having principles is that it shifts you from short-term survival to long-term thriving.

Why is inspiration ineffective here?

How do I start developing my own principles?

By : Brianna Weist

102 Ways To Not Let Irrational Thoughts Ruin Your Life Next Year

Posted on by diannegaraf

1. Learn to differentiate what’s actually happening from what you’re currently thinking about.

2. Learn the difference between honesty and truth. The way you honestly feel can be different from how you truthfully feel – the former is usually temporary, the latter is deeper, and consistent.

3. Stop trying to navigate the path while the forest is dark. You’ll most want to try to make changes to your life when you’re consumed by emotion, but that’s the worst time to do so. Do not make decisions when you’re upset. Let yourself come back down to neutral first.

4. Fire can burn your house down, or it can cook you dinner each night and keep you warm in the winter. Your mind is the same way.

5. Recognize that anxiety stems from shame. It is the idea that who you are or what you are doing is “not right,” therefore eliciting a rush of energy designed to help you “fix” or change it. You’re suffering because there’s nothing you can fix to make that urgent, panicked feeling go away. It’s a mismanaged perception of who and how you are.

6. Remedy your tunnel vision by writing your narrative on a piece of paper. Start with: “My name is…” and then go on to list where you live, what work you do, what you’ve accomplished, who you spend time with, what you’re working on, what you’re proud of.

7. Realize that thoughts are illusions, but powerful ones. Take inventory of all the things you’ve thought and worried about that have turned out not to be real. Think of all the time you wasted preparing for outcomes that would never manifest, and problems that were only in your head.

8. Practice negative visualization. Create tangible solutions for your intangible fears. Show yourself that you won’t actually die if you lose a job or a boyfriend. Make a list of the things you worry about most, imagine the worst outcome, then make a plan for exactly how you would deal with it if that came to pass.

9. Stop being so cerebral. Do things with your hands. Cook, clean, go outside.

10. Evolve past one-dimensional thinking. People who worry a lot are usually very firm in their convictions of what is and isn’t. They fail to see complexity, opportunity, the majority of the iceberg that is the reality they don’t know and can’t see.

11. Practice healthy discomfort. Learn to lean into your stress, not resist it.

12. Change your objective. The goal is not to feel “good” all the time, it’s to be able to express a healthy range of emotion without suppressing or suffering.

13. Ask yourself the following questions when a thought upsets you: “Is this true? Can I absolutely know this is true?” Most of the time, the answer will be “no” to one or both.

14. Do more. If you have time to be regularly consumed by irrational, spiraling thoughts, you need more to focus on, more to work toward, more to suffer for. Make sure you’re living more than you’re thinking about living.

15. Accept the fact that everyone, everywhere, has weird, incorrect, disturbing thoughts that have no bearing on reality. You are not a freak. You are (probably) not sick. You just have to learn to not be intimidated by your own mind.

16. Freaking out is not usually what happens when something in your life actually needs to change. Depression, anger, resistance, sadness… that’s what happens when something isn’t right. Stop gauging how bad things are by how much you panic, and start by gauging what your emotional homeostasis is. That’s how you know what’s really wrong or right – what you consistently do and how you regularly feel.

17. When you are spiraling, be able to say out loud: “I am having a panic attack. I am having irrational thoughts.” Doing so is the first step toward bringing yourself back to reality.

18. Identify your comfort zones, and step back into them now and again. Moving past the place that you’re used to is a gradual process – going too quickly is a recipe for a breakdown.

19. Prove yourself wrong. Show yourself that your thoughts have no basis in truth. Go to the doctor and confirm that you aren’t dying of some incurable disease. Ask someone how they feel about you if you don’t know. Do not live in the grey area when answers are available.

20. Do not always trust yourself. Give yourself space to be wrong. Open yourself up to the idea that you don’t know what you don’t know. If your feelings are informed by irrational thoughts, they can very well be incorrect.

21. Trust what gives you peace. Even if the idea of an intimate relationship or a career the field of your dreams scares you initially, if it’s what you really want, it will also give you a feeling of “yes.” Trust your “yes” feelings.

22. Take the instances in which you’re most uncomfortable to mean that it’s time you expand yourself. You need to learn to think differently, see differently, do differently. You need to open yourself. If you don’t, you’ll be stuck in the cocoon phase forever.

23. Fall in love with the unknown, for the fact that it will almost always bring you things better than you could have imagined – things that are worse than you could have imagined are almost always products of your own thinking or perception of what they mean about you or your future.

24. Practice radical acceptance. Learn to tell the parts of your story you’d rather shove under the rug. You’re allowed to say: “I don’t love my body. I feel a little stuck right now. I am not happy in my relationship. I am in debt” without it being a condemning statement.

25. Realize that there are three layers of you: your identity, your shame, and your true self. Your identity is your outermost layer, it’s the idea that you think other people have of you. Your shame is what’s shielding you from expressing your true self, which is at your core. It is from your shame circle that irrational thoughts breed and thrive. Work on closing the gap between who the world thinks you are and who you know you are. Your mental health will change significantly.

26. Learn deep breathing exercises. This sounds kind of annoying if you’ve tried it and it hasn’t worked before, but it’s actually one of the most effective non-prescription solutions to a freak out.

27. Expand your perceptions. If you’re uncomfortable, you’re being pushed to think beyond what you’ve known. You’re being called to see yourself in a new way. Open yourself to possibilities you normally wouldn’t consider, or layers of yourself you’ve yet to see.

28. Practice rational thinking, and often. You shouldn’t trust your mind to think healthfully on autopilot. You have to train it.

29. Part of that training will include knowing what to do when something irrational pops up – which is to evaluate it objectively, determine if it serves you, and laugh about it if not.

30. Irrational thoughts are sometimes products of intense, rational fears you’ve yet to fully acknowledge or deal with. When you’re in a stable state of mind, sit down and be honest with yourself about what those are.

31. Differentiate the fine line between what you can and can’t control. You can, for example, control how much effort you put into your work. You cannot control how other people respond to it. You can control what you wear each day. You cannot control how good other people think you look.

32. Stop pretending you know what other people are thinking.

33. Stop pretending you know what the future holds, indefinitely.

34. Understand that your sense of self is entirely a mental thing, and it’s the foundation of your sanity. If you believe you’re the kind of person who can bear pain or loss, you will be the kind of person who can bear pain or loss. If you believe you’re worthy of love, you will experience love when it comes.

35. Work on re-defining your sense of self by things that aren’t material or shallow. Instead of thinking you are someone who is attractive and successful, learn to think of yourself as someone who is resilient, hungry for new experiences, capable of deeply loving others, and so on.

36. Learn to see each day from the perspective of your older self.

37. Think about who you were two years ago, or even five. Try to remember a random day in your life during those times. Notice how your focus immediately turns toward what you had to be grateful for. Learn to do that with today.

38. Sometimes, the best way to get over anything is just to work on forgetting about it. Not everything requires analysis.

39. The best way to forget is to fill your life with new, better things. Things you may not have expected, things you didn’t know you didn’t know about, things you never imagined you’d like.

40. Accept that irrational thoughts, much like anxiety, or sadness, or anything else, will always be a part of your life. They aren’t going anywhere. Experiencing them isn’t a sign that you’ve back-tracked or that you’re off-path or that something’s desperately wrong, per say.

41. Recognize that there’s a correlation between worry and creativity. It’s the most basic aspect of human evolution – the more we fear something, the more creative we are in creating solutions to adapt to the alternative. See your fears as catalysts for bettering your life, not as you being condemned to suffering.

42. Remember that you can choose what you think about, and even when it feels like you can’t, it’s because again, you’re choosing to believe that.

43. “Choose not to be harmed—and you won’t feel harmed. Don’t feel harmed — and you haven’t been.” – Marcus Aurelius

44. Go outside and look at the stars and drink a glass of wine.

45. Try bullet journaling. When you go back and re-read it, you’ll begin to see what your patterns are, particularly your self-sabotaging ones.

46. Meditate and imagine speaking with your oldest, wisest, most optimal future self. What you’re doing is tapping deep into your subconscious. Let your choices be guided by the person you hope to become.

47. Laugh.

48. When you ask other people for advice on whatever you’re worrying about, first ask yourself what you hope they’ll say. That’s what you want to tell yourself.

49. Talk to other people and ask them to tell you about the silly things they worry irrationally about. You’re in good company.

50. Work on developing your mental strength. Train your mind like you would your body. Work on focusing, thinking, imagining. This is the single best thing you can possibly do for your life.

51. Say thank you for the fact that you care enough about yourself to even feel panicked about something in the first place.

52. Remind yourself that what you fear is the shadow side to what you love. The more fear, the more love. Learn to start seeing what’s right as much as you worry about what’s not.

53. Give yourself permission to feel okay. This is why we love when other people love us. Nobody else can actually transmute the sensation of love – we crave it from others because it lets us flip the mental switch that gives us permission to be happy, proud, excited, or content. The trick, the whole work of “loving ourselves,” is just learning to do it on our own.

54. Keep your spaces clean and clear.

55. Recite mantras or prayers or motivational speeches in the mirror, if you must. Anything that focuses your mind on something positive and hopeful.

56. Consume your mind with things that interest you – aside from your own problems.

57. If you cannot do this, it means you don’t know yourself well enough yet. That’s okay. The point is that you realize this now, and begin learning.

58. Practice happiness. External events don’t create meaning or fulfillment or contentment, how we think about them does. If you’re operating on a scarcity mindset, you’ll always be unhappy, no matter what you have or get.

59. Do something unexpected. Book a trip, date someone wrong for you, get a tattoo, start looking for a new job in a field you didn’t think you’d enjoy. Show yourself that you don’t know what you don’t know about your life, or yourself. Not completely. Not yet.

60. Practice radical acceptance. Choose to love your home, and your body, and your work, even if you don’t like it all the time. Choose to build your life from a place of gratitude and vision, rather than running from your own fears.

61. Be mindful of who you surround yourself with. Your most constant company will account for a lot of how you turn out over the coming years. Pay attention.

62. Spend time on your own, especially when you feel like you don’t want to. You are your first and last friend – you are with you until the end. If you don’t want to be with you, how can you expect anyone else to, either?

63. Re-write your “success” narrative. Sometimes success is getting enough sleep. Sometimes it’s doing what you know is right despite the fact that everyone else in your life is looking down on it. Sometimes it’s just getting through the day, or the month. Lower your expectations.

64. Write out your fears in explicit detail.

65. Listen to scary podcasts or watch horror movies. Expose yourself to things that are actually terrifying. (This will either make it better or worse, but hey, give it a try.)

66. Dream bigger. If you feel as though you’re constantly running through the same issues in your mind, you’ve yet to visualize a future that is greater than your present. When you have something more important to work toward – or someone to be better for – the obsession with little, made up problems will quickly dissolve.

67. Don’t confuse a broken dream with a broken future.

68. Don’t confuse a broken heart for a broken life.

69. Create a routine you love, one that involves enough sleep and down time, and a realistic degree of “stuff you know you should do” vs. “stuff you actually want to do.”

70. Validate yourself. Choose to believe that the life you have is more than enough.

71. Take an evening (or a few) to meditate on your past. Think of all the pain and sadness you shoved away. Let yourself feel those things. When you let them surface, they won’t control you anymore.

72. Choose to do things because you want joy more than you choose to do them because you want to avoid pain.

73. Take an honest look at your life and evaluate how much you’ve constructed as a means to avoid pain, and decide whether or not those fears are even valid in the first place. Do you hold a lesser view of yourself so nobody else’s opinion can hurt you? Do you choose relationships where you’re unwanted so you don’t have to open up to the vulnerability of love?

74. Make plans to build the life you want, not because you hate the one you have, but because you’re in love with the person you know you want to become.

75. Be discerning about what you accept as truth, who you give your energy to, what you do when you procrastinate, and what you surround yourself with at home.

76. Connect with people. Connect with people. Connect with people.

77. Create vision boards. Or just use Pinterest more. Seeing the life you want is the first step to creating it.

78. Remember that you’re not upset about what you lost – you’re upset about what you never really had the chance to have in the first place. You’ll regret what you didn’t do, not what you’ve done.

79. Dedicate your time to helping someone else. Volunteer at a homeless shelter, donate your belongings, work with kids after school. Make your life about more than just your own wants.

80. Redefine “happiness” not as something you experience when you get what you want, but something you feel when you have something meaningful to work toward each day.

81. Focus on getting better, but let go of the end goal. You get better, not perfect.

82. Let yourself be loved as the person you are. You’ll quickly see how the main person judging you is you.

83. Stop judging other people. See everyone with dignity, with a story, with reasons for why they are how they are and why they do what they do. The more you accept other people, the more you’ll accept yourself, and vice versa.

84. Channel your over-active imagination into something creative. Write an insane novel. Write a short horror story. Make up songs and record them on your phone, just for yourself.

85. Or do what every wise person does, and use your over-active imagination to imagine the best possible outcomes rather than the worst, and then imagine how you can work toward getting there.

86. Let go of the idea that anything is “given” or “taken” from you. You create. You choose.

87. Ask for help when you actually need help. If you don’t learn to do this, you will end up exacerbating a million other non-issues and seeking attention for those, because you don’t actually have what you need, which is support in the moments that really matter.

88. Stop thinking that being sad or broken makes you unlovable, or “bad.” Your honest moments don’t destroy relationships, they bond (as long as you’re being genuine).

89. Thinking that there are starving kids on the other side of the world will not alleviate your pain, so stop trying to compare.

90. That said: there’s a lot worse you could be going through, and if you think back on your life, you can probably remember instances in which you still were.

91. Read books that interest you, and read them often. Hearing a new voice in your mind will teach you how to think differently.

92. Take a nap. Seriously, wrap yourself in a blanket and go to sleep for 20 minutes. It’s like hitting the “refresh” button on your brain.

93. Recognize that fear is an indicator that something is powerful and worthwhile. The deeper the fear, the deeper the love.

94. “The obstacle is the way.”

95. Let what you dislike about your present be a guiding light toward what you want to love about your future.

96. Challenge yourself to think of possibilities you never imagined before, as often as you can. Let your mind explore itself and grow.

97. Nobody is thinking about you the way you are thinking about you. They’re all thinking about themselves.

98. Recognize that when you’re lost, you’re also free. When you have to start over, you get to pick better. If you don’t like yourself, you have a chance to fall in love with yourself. Don’t stand in front of the road sign forever, map a new path.

99. “This too shall pass.”

100. Fucking try. Honestly, seriously, try. Put your everything into the work you have. Be kind to people when they don’t deserve it. You’ll have a lot less energy to worry with when you’re funneling it into things that are really worthwhile.

101. Learn how to relax. Work on learning how to happily do nothing.

102. Trust that things get better as time goes on. Not because time heals, but because you grow. You discover that you’re capable. You realize that your fourth breakup doesn’t hurt even nearly as bad as your first did. This isn’t because life is easier, it’s because you’re smarter.

By : Brianna Weist

Reminder: Today Is New

Posted on by diannegaraf

How many times have you woken up and immediately allowed yesterday’s pain to filter into your mind? How many mornings have you rolled over, groaned, and hit snooze for the fifth time in an attempt to stop the day from beginning? How many nights have you fallen asleep wishing for something to change, for something to be different, for your soul not to ache anymore?

How long have you let the same heaviness weigh down your heart?

I want you to close your eyes, take a deep breath, and tell yourself this: Today is new. Repeat that. Let those three words soak into your pores, through your skin, into each and every cell.

Right now, you have a choice. Right now, you have an opportunity. Right now, you have a chance to let what has burdened you in the past slip slowly off your shoulders and to the ground. Right now, you are welcomed to start over, to start again, to start your day with a confident, hopeful mindset.

Right now, you have the ability to change—not what has happened to you, but where you go from here.

This is your reminder that today is new. That today is not yesterday. That these next twenty-four hours do not have to drip with the fear, or anxiety, or loneliness, or exhaustion of the past. No, it’s not easy to just shut off your mind. No, it’s not logical, or even healthy to pretend that what you’re going through simply does not exist.

But there is no reason to cling to all that is breaking you, hoping for some sort of release. You don’t have to forget that you are hurting or neglect your pain—but you don’t need to spiral yourself down, either. Today you can choose to see light, rather than darkness. Today you can give yourself hope instead of closed doors.

Open your eyes and breathe deeply. Let the air fill your lungs, let your ribcage expand, let the sounds of morning fill your ears, your heart, your soul. Look around you. Is there something to be thankful for? Is your heart beating, your eyes seeing, your limbs still nimble and strong? If not, is there light coming through the windowpane? Is there a picture on the wall, a book on the shelf, some reminder of the people who care for you, the beautiful life you’ve lived?

Can you find something to focus on—something that brings a little hope, something that is a reminder of a place you used to be, the person you’ve been? Can you look yourself in the mirror, find one thing to praise, to celebrate, to smile at, even if your face is tired? Can you remind your reflection that who you are is not defined by this human body? That the most beautiful thing about you is what is unseen?

Stand up. Move around. Shake your fingers, your arms, your toes. Find something comfortable to wear. Quiet the voices that tell you you aren’t good enough. Silence the nagging in the back of your mind that something is missing, that a piece of you won’t ever be found.

Tell yourself you’re doing alright. You’re taking little steps. You’re standing and moving and breathing and sometimes that in itself is more than enough.

Tell yourself today does not have to be a repeat of what was. That there are three different zones—past, present, future—and sometimes the most important thing is to be in the present, to live in the now. So try to live right here.

Think of your next choice—Is it breakfast? Coffee? A long commute? A walk to the store? A run to the bus stop? A short drive to your child’s school? A lazy trip to the computer in your next room? What do you have to do today? Is it emails? Is it meetings? Is it something concrete that you can focus on your attention towards, and let everything painful slip away?

Can you choose to be present, let what is not yours to keep fade and find a home elsewhere? Can you be here, today? And love your heart enough to slowly let it heal?

Because today is not yesterday, not two days ago, not last week, last month, last year. Today is untouched. Today is unblemished. Today is open and free, ready for your feet to walk upon, your hands to touch.

Today is yours for the taking, yours to decide the direction, the decisions, the places you will go. Today is healing. Today is new. So why don’t you stand up, step forward, and start again.

By Marisa Donnelly

Life-Guide, self-improvement

Quote | Posted on by diannegaraf

Learn to be happy here, now, today. If you do not learn how to be happy in the present, no job, no partner, no success, no trip, no money, nothing that you are working for will be as enjoyable as you think. You cannot save up your happiness to be released when you think you deserve it. You either have it now, or you have it never.

 

Brianna Weist

10 Things You Need To Change If You Want To Have A Radically Different Life 10 Years From Now

Posted on by diannegaraf

If you want to have a better day tomorrow, identify what brings you pleasure.

If you want to have a better year next year, identify what brings you pride.

If you want to have a better life in 10 years, identify what’s keeping you gridlocked in the habits you think bring you pleasure and pride.

1. Identify your root motivations.

If you dislike someone, yet can’t seem to stop hanging out with them, there is a reason. If you want to lose weight, yet feel the need to keep overeating, there is a reason. If you want a relationship badly, but can’t seem to put yourself out there and find someone, there is a reason.

The human psyche is self-preserving. Everything that we are doing we are doing because we think it is benefiting us in some way. If there’s some habit you can’t get past, or some reality that you desperately want to change, you first have to figure out why you are here in the first place. There is some core wound or belief or experience that is scaring you into repeating the behavior.

You are not a victim of your chronic problems, you are in love with your chronic problems because you think they serve you in some way, so you keep re-creating situations in which you can experience them. Figure out what need they are feeding, and learn to fill it another way.

2. Ignore your problems. Focus on their solutions.

“Ignore your problems” sounds at face value like potentially the worst advice in the world (and by the way, at face value, it is) but it’s also the only advice that will actually work in the long-term.

When you are constantly struggling with your problems, thinking about what you want and wish you had, you are repeatedly putting yourself back in the state of “not having.” If you want more money, you are making yourself feel as though you don’t have it. If you want a relationship, you are making yourself feel as though you’re unloved. What creates change is not the ability to dissect problems, but to create solutions and put all of your energy toward them.

Healing is just getting over your fears. Getting over your fears is acting in spite of them.

Change is rebuilding the city, not sitting in the ruins.

3. Stop consuming toxic crap.

You know that saying “you are what you eat?” It’s more like “you are what you consume,” and it goes so far beyond just what you’re putting in your mouth.

Everything you put around you is conditioning you. The people you spend time with, the things you read, the place you work, the habits you sustain, and yes, of course, what you eat and drink. You are molding yourself into the person you will become with each of these actions, every single day.

If your fate is your character, then your habits are your destiny.

Stop eating unhealthy foods and expecting to feel good. Stop sitting around your house scrolling on your phone and expecting to be productive and accomplished. Stop hanging out with negative, draining people and expecting to feel positive and fulfilled. Stop drinking yourself into an oblivion every weekend and wondering why you’re stuck in life. It’s not a mystery. Pretending it is keeps you in denial.

4. Stop waiting until you “feel like it.”

A lot of people will say that they feel like they need to “take some time and heal” before they get back out and start living their lives again. This is true if your intention is to take some time to yourself to reflect.

However, it is also a way that people avoid doing what they want and need to do. Do you know how you “heal” yourself? You start behaving differently. You start thinking differently. That is how you eradicate the life that you no longer want to live – by building a new one. Waiting around until you feel better is literally sitting in your leftover crap and wondering why it’s not getting cleaned up.

Stop waiting until every wound is healed before you get back up and start again. It is the doing that changes you, not idling.

5. Do tactile things.

Making sure you do tactile things isn’t a fun little suggestion for your Saturday afternoon, it’s how you make sure you’re differentiating actually creating a life you want and creating the image of a life you want. If you want a better life in 10 years, make sure you’re not just making one that looks good online. It needs to feel good IRL.

Make enough time each day to do something other than type and scroll. Read a book (a print copy). Go outside. Build or craft something. Cook. Do anything that requires you to experience a range of sensations. It’s not that any one of these things will magically transform you (though, of course, they can). It’s that staying connected to your real life keeps you aware of how things feel, not just how they look.

6. Stop being “busy.”

Busy is lazy. Busy means you don’t know how to manage your time. “Crazy busy” is the most boring and self-important thing you can say to people when they ask how you’re doing.

People either make themselves super busy, or pretend to be super busy, and they do both for the same reason: avoidance. They are either trying to avoid themselves, or avoid other people. Both are weak. Both lead to nothing.

Schedule your hours mindfully. Work better, but less. Leave hours open for people you care about. Leave hours open for yourself. Create a life that overwhelms you with peace, not mindless chatter. There is no merit in being “busy.” It says nothing about your status in life other than that you are worried you don’t have any.

7. Make daily decisions for your long-term goals, not short-term desires.

Most people live within a few hours long mental bandwidth. This is to say, they make choices based on their immediate desires, fears and ideas.

When you choose what you want for lunch, you think: “What am I in the mood for?” not “What will give me energy and make me feel good not only now, but in a few hours, and in a few days, and in a few years?” It is so easy for fleeting feelings to override logic, but we pay for it in the end. We assume we’ll “get healthy one day,” or “start saving one day,” and then one day comes and we realize that all of the little daily habits we have compiled have created the opposite of what we said we wanted.

We forget that “someday” is today, and the future is created right now.

8. Choose goals with your mortality in mind.

If you don’t know what to choose or what to do, zoom out of your current situation and imagine looking back at your life after you’re dead. Hell, imagine looking at your life even just 10 years from now. What would you wish you had done today? Would you be happy that you wasted so many hours shopping for clothes, watching TV, wondering what you should do with your life? Will you be happy that your greatest accomplishment was your appearance, or being someone who intimidates others?

Or will you wish that you had let go and done something meaningful – something you felt called to? Will you be happy that you wrote music, that you spent time outdoors, that you told the people you love that you love them, that you had long, lingering meals with them, and supported them, and shared, and looked at your demons and dissolved them by choosing otherwise?

9. Stop wasting your time evaluating the lives of people you dislike or disagree with.

Okay, we get it. You don’t understand why so-and-so did what they did. You disagree with their behavior. You would have done better. You did do better. You won’t show them empathy. You dislike them as a whole.

… And?

You are also subject to naive realism, which is that reality is self-evident to you based on your own perspective and experience. You don’t see the full picture because you can’t. You don’t know that had you been in someone else’s exact situation you wouldn’t have behaved similarly. In fact, your disdain toward them seems to imply that you feel afraid that you could, and maybe would have.

But all you have done here is illustrate the depth of your ego. All you have done here is make judgements about people’s lives that do not serve you or move you forward, they just make you a hater. And people do this all of the time. Gossip is a sustaining social life force a lot of the time.

Focus more on studying the lives of people you admire and want to emulate – lives that humble you – rather than lives that inflate your worst traits and make you want to position yourself to play god and tell someone (who isn’t that person) what’s right from wrong.

10. Wake up and ask yourself every day: “What can I do today that will change my life forever?”

Every single day, you have the potential to change your life forever.

Every day is an opportunity, a portal, to do something that will have an irrevocable impact on your life.

So many of us waste that on doing something that pacifies fear.

Ask yourself this every day, and then start making a list of what you could possibly do in the coming hours that would change everything, always. The answers will surprise you.

By : Brianna Weist

Forgive Yourself For The Times You Let Yourself Down

Posted on by diannegaraf

Forgive yourself for the times you weren’t the person you needed to be.

Forgive yourself for the times you disappointed those you love because you weren’t there for them or you didn’t take the path they wanted you to take or you didn’t listen to their advice. Forgive yourself for the lessons you chose to learn your own way. For the path you had to create for yourself. For taking a chance without getting everyone’s approval. This is how you build character. This is how you set yourself apart from others. This is how you become your own unique individual.

Forgive yourself for all the words you didn’t say.

Whether because you were scared or confused or afraid of looking weak. Forgive yourself for the moments of silence that lingered when you could have said something. Forgive yourself for not being able to save yourself or others from certain situations because you didn’t have the courage to speak up. This is how you learn to use your voice. This is how you learn the power of words. This is how you learn that silence won’t save you.

Forgive yourself for the times you failed to achieve a certain goal.

Forgive yourself for not being rich or married or famous or skinny by a certain age. Forgive yourself for thinking things were easier than they actually are. Forgive yourself for not knowing any better. You cannot always make things happen at a certain time. This is how you learn patience. This is how you learn the importance of faith. This is how you learn the art of waiting.

Forgive yourself for the times you forgot your own worth.

When you stayed in a relationship you shouldn’t have been in, when you gave a person a fourth chance to break your heart, when you let people get away with treating you like you were not important, when you believed the lies people told you about yourself and the times you let others dictate your value and your self-worth. This is how you learn who you really are. This is how you learn to love yourself. This is how you learn that you’re important and you are enough even if no one sees it. This is how you learn to live without anyone’s validation. 

By : Rania Naim