WHEN YOUR HEART BREAKS…

IT’S OKAY TO TAKE A BREAK FROM A DIFFICULT RELATIONSHIP.

Love and relationships are often romanticized in movies, books, and fairy tales. They paint a picture of endless passion, eternal happiness, and two souls coming together seamlessly, but reality often tells a different story. All of life has its ups and downs, and sometimes, the downs get pretty hard to navigate. If you find yourself in a relationship that’s constantly draining you, it’s important to know it’s okay to take a break.

Your mental and emotional well-being should always be a priority. Compromising your peace of mind, happiness, or self-worth for the sake of maintaining a difficult relationship can lead to long-term emotional trauma. It’s important to recognize that and take steps to protect yourself.

Distancing oneself from the center of emotional chaos can provide much needed clarity. When you’re in the down and dirty, the thick of things, you may not see the entire picture because it’s been like this for so long. Taking a break allows you to step back and assess your feelings. It can help you decide whether the relationship is salvageable or if it’s time to move on.

A heart shadowed by difficult, dark, and deeply emotional feelings, will put a big gray cloud over everything in your life. Nothing inside or outside the relationship is going to bring you joy when you feel like this. When you’re constantly trying to fix problems in a relationship, you are probably neglecting your own self-worth and self-esteem. It is especially damaging when you can no longer see who you are outside of the relationship. If your boundaries are constantly being crossed and you do nothing about it, well, there goes your own self-respect right down the toilet too.  

You cannot romanticize or sacrifice everything for love. While commitment and compromise are essential components of a relationship, they should never ever come at the cost of your happiness or well-being. Sometimes you have to choose yourself. It’s not a sign of weakness or selfishness, it’s a sign of strength.

It’s okay to take a break, to heal, to grow, and to prioritize yourself. Love is about mutual respect, understanding, and growth, and sometimes, the best way to love someone and yourself, is by taking a step back, rebooting, and then revisiting the relationship to see if it’s worth continuing.

Taking care of oneself is not merely an act of self-indulgence. Prioritizing self-care acts as a rejuvenating force, ensuring we can face life’s challenges with resilience and clarity. If we neglect our own well-being, our capacity to support, love, and engage with the world around us diminishes.

By honoring our own needs and setting boundaries, we affirm our value and set a precedent for how we wish to be treated by others.

crazy or…just stressed

If stress and worry has you feeling like you’ve got your back against a wall and you can’t see any way out, it’s time to stop fighting what you are facing. It’s time to think with a logical mind instead of letting your emotions rule the fight. It’s time to make some sense of things instead letting your imagination go off on some wild witch hunt. Just stop! Take a deep breath and summon your head, heart, and gut to the conference room. Once they get over their power struggle with each other, which can take a minute or two, it’s time to call the meeting to order.

Your head will always see what it wants to see. Your heart will always feel how it wants to feel. And your gut, well, it’s getting pretty fed up with being bullied by both of them and that’s where the feeling of crazy is coming from. Your gut is the nerve center that tries to moderate all the choices you are making, good, bad, and ugly. It will never lead you down the wrong path. Its job is to designate a response in your physiological body that gives you all the clues that you are making a good solid choice or one that temporarily fixes something even though the outcome is going to hurt you somewhere down the line. When you do something that destabilizes your moral compass or your ability to make hard choices because you’re fucking worn out and just want whatever to just go away no matter what it cost’s you, that’s just another way of saying you give up. Something or someone else won and so you are going to stay in your own lane of familiarity whether it makes you feel sadder or more broken.

Everyone is stressed out, overwhelmed, fatigued, and a bit messy these days. We have personal problems we’re trying to deal with. We have world situations that continuously make us nervous and put us on edge. We have so many can i’s, will i’s, and should i’s running through our thoughts, it’s no wonder we sometimes just stop and become paralyzed. Can’t think, can’t breath, can speak, can’t move, can’t can’t can’t. The one thought that will play on repeat in your brain will be, how did i get here, how did everything become so overwhelming? You might not find the answer right away, but until you can focus better, it may be time to rest, take a break from it all for a day or two. In other words, get out of your own head for a bit so you can come back to all of this with a rested mind. Minutiae and outside noise thrives in an uncontrolled conscience and sub-conscience. A well rested mind will shut down that space until you bring everything back to life when you feel more capable of thinking logically instead of just reacting or retreating from everything you’re dealing with.

Maybe it’s time to deescalate all the feelings you are having. Something inside of you is out of balance and until that is corrected or realigned with how you want to feel, you’re going to be married to that crazy feeling. Give yourself a break please. Take a tiny mental vacation. Take a walk. Do some breathe work. Bounce things off a friend, or allow yourself the gift of talking to a professional who might be able to help you alleviate some of the pressure you’ve put on yourself because you can’t find clarity or solutions for yourself.

TO CHANGE OR NOT TO CHANGE

“If you keep sitting at the same table with every bad experience as your dinner guest, you must take full credit for your own indigestion!” – jacqui brown

If you are constantly rehashing your past, turning it over and over in your mind, seeing it upside down or inside out, rattling its cage over and over looking for more tidbits to keep you somewhere in close proximity to all your negative experiences, how on earth do you expect to move on with your life?

You are the gatekeeper of your thoughts and if you can’t control and/or direct it into future thinking, life is going to be bleak. You’ll never lose that feeling that you’re a ‘not’ person: not going to be okay, not ever gonna win, not ever going to find a way out of your misery, etc. It’s like you’ve put yourself in a box and taped it shut so perfectly, there’s no room for oxygen. Without oxygen everything eventually withers and dies.

Why do some people embrace transformation while other resist? I believe that most people want to change when their circumstances aren’t aligning with how they see their life going, but for many, change often means you must broaden your comfort zone so that new actions can be included in a bigger and better plan for your life. That means change and change is a hard nut to swallow for many. Why, you ask? Because humans love the simplicity and accessability of familiarity. Humans are creatures of habit who find security and stability in routines.

When you venture out of your comfort zone, suddenly you’re standing in a place of uncertainty and that can be pretty intimidating. And it can make you jump back to the safety of what you know for sure — your comfort zone. Your fear of the unknown will often outweigh the potential benefits that change may bring even if you feel like shit most of the time.

A person’s mindset and perception greatly influences their openness to change. Those who have come to the conclusion that the only way out is to do something different, view change as opportunity for learning, growth, and self-improvement. They see challenges as stepping stones to success and are more likely to at least embrace the idea of changing. On the flip side of that, people with a fixed mindset (even if they feel thier life sucks) perceive change as a threat, fearing failure, and holding onto the belief that their abilities are fixed and unchangeable.

The presence of strong motivation and clear goals can significantly impact one’s willingness to change. When one has a compelling vision, a dream of better things for their future, they are more likely to proactively seek change as a means to achieve their desired outcomes. On the other hand, a lack of motivation or unclear goals can result in complacency, leading people to resist change, no matter what, and remain stagnant.

External factors also play a significant role in the decision to change. Life events such as a health scare, the loss of a loved one, or a career setback can act as catalysts, prompting individuals to reassess their lives and seek some sort of change. They think more along the lines of ‘it’s now or never’ because they refuse that this is all there is.

Fear is the most powerful emotion that can hinder the idea of change. The fear of failure, rejection, or judgement, can paralyze individuals, making them resistant to stepping out of their perfect little comfort zone. Add to that, change requires effort, determination, and perseverance, which can be daunting for those accustomed to a more passive approach to life.

People have different priorities and values, which can impact their willingness to even consider changing something. If an individual’s current situation aligns closely with their values, they may be less inclined to seek change. However, if their values are at odds with their circumstances, the desire for change may become stronger.

Prioritization of personal growth and development can also influence an individual’s choice to embrace change. Some people grab onto the idea of ‘is that all there is’ because I want more than that in my life. Those are the people who are willing to delve a little deeper inside their mindset, their way of thinking, because whatever is bugging them, holding them back, needs to change, so they start looking outside what makes them comfortable. More often than not, they start to look at little things they can do (even if it’s just baby steps) to get the ball rolling towards fixing something, or moving on, or moving forward into a better place than where they currently are. Those who resist the idea that they can improve their lives with a few changes and actions, are the one’s who will be having the same conversation five or ten years from now.

Seriously, change is an inevitable part of life. Ultimately, whether we choose to change or remain stagnant, it is vital that we respect and support each person’s journey. As they say, to each his own! Every one of us has the opportunity to create a perfect or almost perfect life, so why not dare to chase the dream instead of just wishing it was so!

Wake Up To A Better Day…

If you don’t think you’ll ever be happy, I’m here to tell you, you’re probably right! What you’ve been thinking has already set a trap in your brain that has been cultivating a stream of negativity in all your thinking and you’ve probably been doing that for a long time.

If you walk around daily with that ‘poor me’ mentality, each cell in your body begins to react to that negativity and will respond in kind. You will most likely feel like shit and you’ll most likely look like shit as well.

Here are some questions you should ask yourself to test where your emotions are currently.

(Hint: you might want to write down the answers so you can come back and reread them later.)

Are you tired all the time? Is your mindset stuck on how much your life sucks? Do you blame others for your circumstances? Do you whine about everything? Do you feel jealous of other people’s success? Have you just stopped giving a damn about everything? Do you constantly beat yourself up over every little thing? Does your life feel flat?

Whatever emotions you are feeding your brain with will become the action/response that will dictate how your mind and body reacts towards everything in your life. If your source of emotional nutrition contains nothing but negative thoughts, why would you ever expect to feel different? It’s impossible. It can’t be done! You’ve put a boundary on your poor endorphins. You are constantly suffocating them by your own hands because you’ve given up on trying to feel good. Only you hold the key to the door (your brain) when it comes to fulfilling desires, wants, and needs.

There are so many baby steps you can take to set in motion a different outcome in your day, every day!

Is this you?

*You see people who are successful and you find yourself feeling like ‘why them’, ‘why can’t that be me’? You won’t cheer them on because they are who you want to be but you can’t seem to get there. Your jealousy overwhelms you so you stop believing that it can be you. It just becomes another score on your scar chart. You assume they are just lucky and that’s that. The thing is, did you ever take the time to consider how they actually got there? Do you think they just became ‘that’ without a lot of work, sacrifice, and struggle? No one just becomes something overnight. There is a lot of determination and persistence that goes on to become “that”!

*You get up, get ready for work, and you sit there with your morning brew dreading what lies ahead at your ‘sucky’ job that’s making someone else’s garden thrive while your garden feels like it’s dying. Sound like you? Well, you’ve just set your brain up once again for another epic fail at being happy because you are predetermining that nothing good is going to happen. Same day, different shit, day after day after day.

That very attitude is what is sucking the life out of you. And to that I say, it’s time to pull your head out of your ass and start looking at ways to change that attitude because that’s what’s keeping you exactly where you don’t want to be. You need to start being in control of your life and emotions again. Fate may be fate but, I’m a true believer that fate can be redirected. When you’re ready to start standing at the controls again, and you become aware that there are opportunities out there waiting for you to calm the fuck down so that you can see them, then, and only then, will you start to understand that your mindset is the key I talked about earlier! When you consciously address your addiction to trauma, drama, the blame game, the green-eyed monster, and the poor me mindset, you might be astonished by how much you have been missing out on, all because of the blinders you’ve been wearing.

Simple tweaks can offset the negative path you’re so adept at maneuvering on. What if you took that same scenario only you didn’t consider your job ‘sucky’? Instead of feeling dread, you felt grateful that you even had a job and while you’re doing that job you are learning, earning, paying your rent, and putting food on the table till something new, something better, something you’ve been dreaming about comes along. What if you arrived at work with a smile on your face because you made a conscious choice to get through the whole day without letting anything bother you? That you decided to do your job at 100% so that when you get home at night you know you gave your best. Your brain will recognize that and its reward center will start to turn back on and you will feel a little bit better. If you use this approach in everything you do, soon you will find that boundary gone and your endorphins will begin to allow you to experience pleasure again.

If you stop looking and comparing yourself to others you allow your best to be good enough even if it’s just for now. You cannot be anybody else’s best so doing the best you will take all the pressure off.

None of this happens however, if you don’t change your attitude! Once you figure out how to do that, the world becomes your Oyster!

Wasting Away On Worry

There will come a time in your life that you will realize you have wasted so much time on worry about things that never ever happened! It is best to live life in anticipation of what you can accomplish today in order to reach your goals rather than fret over things that may not ever exist.

Life Lessons

When you come upon an obstacle in life sometimes you have to stand on top of it to get a clearer picture of what surrounds it. That way you see all of your options and form a clearer vision and different perspective that ultimately will help you to overcome it. As that old saying goes, ‘some things are not always as they seem’, which means you may be stuck in old patterns of thought and continuously look in the wrong direction and can only see one way to conquer or eradicate the obstacle.

The moral of the story: Look at all your options carefully before jumping in with both feet! Short term satisfaction never beats long term solutions!

Be You…

Stop losing yourself through comparison! The only way you will feel like you are winning is to keep looking at your goal and taking one little thing off your ‘action list’ every day or every week or every month. That small sense of accomplishment will keep you on track and constantly move you closer to your goal!

Persist…

Stop letting your fears overpower your goals!

Are You Accidental Or Purpose Driven?

Most things are not forever! Circumstances change. You change. Life hands you lemons and you suck up or, if you’re paying attention, it teaches you how to make lemonade!

If you are constantly living your life based on accidental events, anxiety will become your best friend. You teach yourself how to turn your cheek over and over just so you don’t have to change anything! If you are living it driven by purpose, that means you have looked at and understand all the consequences surrounding whatever choices you are making, or will make, as your future unfolds!

You have the power to change the path of your life! Don’t be afraid! Let any fear become the motivator that keeps propelling you forward. Stretch! Grow! Learn! Then, and only then, you will be able to live the life you’ve dreamed of!

If you are living with your past taking up space in your present, you are not truly serving yourself. Your eyes might be looking forward but your poor old spirit is carrying around all that’s come and gone, leaving it weighed down with things you should have learned from but let go of long ago.

You cannot hold both in your mind at the same time and expect to feel light and joyous because, what you’re doing is,  you’re constantly trying to balance two things that are fighting each other. Even when you believe you’ve learned to compartmentalize experiences, conscious versus subconscious, the two will remain at war and you will be feeling pretty exhausted by the constant struggle, and, you will feel this all the time.

So ask yourself these two questions:

1. What benefits come to me by holding onto traumatic experiences?
2. Do I really need to keep punishing myself for past mistakes?

Short answer: Your benefit list will probably be pretty damned short and punishing yourself for something you did in the past only serves to make you conjure up more and more excuses as to how your current life will always suck because, instead of seeing the lesson, you bought into telling yourself it’s a character flaw. That you are inherently this way, thus the circumstances of your life will always remain the same. This is bullshit!  This is you being too lazy to care anymore. You’ve learned to tolerate everything you hate about your life, all because, well, change is hard! Not impossible, just hard!

You can wish all you want that your life will just magically change and become better, but guess what? If you take no steps, no actions…..nothing changes! Period! Yes, you may experience momentary sparks of happiness, but long term, that spark goes out the moment you move away from the source. It like emotional intermittent fasting. Keep your brain happy for one hour then alternate to twenty-three hours of suffering. Keep your brain happy for eight hours then alternate to fourteen hours of suffering, etc! When you keep this emotional dieting going, joy is never going to come into your life.

Remember always that joy and happiness are vastly different. Happiness comes from momentary situations. It only lasts as long as you are in the experience of what brought it on. Joy, on the other hand, comes when it rises from inside, from every pour in your body. It’s a lasting feeling brought on from being at peace with yourself, with your life, and with your circumstances.

Your future is up to you and the actions you take. You can sit semi-comfortable with short-lasting teaser feelings or, you can do a little emotional surgical procedure in your brain and, with a little work, cut out the part that constantly holds you back, that constantly reminds you that:

…you’ve fucked up stuff in your past(and/or are currently still fucking up),

…that constantly reminds you that you are getting what you deserve (because you’ve told yourself this so many times you actually believe it),

…so you can finally find that peace you’ve desperately been searching for.

Sometimes, it’s little changes, and sometimes it’s big ass ones that make the difference in the quality of your life. All you have to do is realize it’s worth the effort!