Menu: Lamb’s Bread/Breath + Pink Lemonade + Green Goddess
Eats: Taco Bell + Southern Girl Desserts (yummmmm)
8:45 Hey guys, thanks for coming back! I get supremely gleeful when people donate their time to read my musings. #WarmNFuzzy
Today has been an interesting day. I awoke with a sunny disposition that would rival any of our best SoCal sunny days, but somewhere during the course of the day, a funk began to settle in. By the early evening, I had a serious case of the Mondays.
Next thing I knew, I was second-guessing all of my progress and just being a general b*tch to myself. The good news is I made sure to not negatively impact someone else’s day. The bad news is my bad mood felt more like a setback!
Yeah, I said it. I had a setback and guess what: I’M HUMAN and so are you! We are all entitled to make mistakes or be in a bitchy mood. That’s apart of the experience and those moments are necessary in order to appreciate the other side of the coin. In other words: appreciate the sh*t just as much as the glitter.
So, how did I get myself out of that funk? I had help from my mentor. Yup, remember step 3 from my last blog post (click ➡ here ⬅ in case you missed it)? Well, I am all about putting my own advice to use, so I leaned pretty hard on my mentor/boyfriend, Dean.
And just to keep the theme of following step 3 going, Dean did an exercise with me that his mentor did with him! Love it!! Anyway, the task was to create a table comprised of three columns and 15 rows. Above each column, I wrote the headers Skills, Behaviors, and Need to Learn. See my example below.
| SKILLS | BEHAVIORS | NEED TO LEARN |
| Writing | ||
| Networking |
I’m sure you can see where this is going. I filled out the chart under each header and *spoiler alert* it was really hard for me to come up with my skills! Keep in mind that “skills” can be pretty much anything. I had difficulty identifying my skills because I would judge the skill as irrelevant. In doing so, I inadvertently learned a lesson about my confidence and the areas for improvement there. #Twofer! Ultimately, writing and networking were added to the list.
The next column I filled out was the “behaviors” section. Here is where I listed my actual behaviors. If you are doing this exercise, please keep your mind open, just like I advised above. Don’t think of things as “good” or “bad.” Here’s an example of my second column. And yes, I really did write “laziness” down. Part of the growth journey is being honest with myself, even when the truth isn’t favorable.
| SKILLS | BEHAVIORS | NEED TO LEARN |
| Writing | Chatting on social media | |
| Networking | Laziness |
By now, you know what I did next. Yep, filled out the last column. This section was the easiest one for me to complete. There is a TON of information I need to learn so I literally just picked the most important 15!
| SKILLS | BEHAVIORS | NEED TO LEARN |
| Writing | Chatting on social media | Stronger parenting skills |
| Networking | Laziness | Time management |
By this point in the exercise, my crappy mood was beginning to dissipate. Of course it didn’t hurt that I toked a bit on some that good-good Lamb’s Bread concoction to speed the process along. hehe! Next, Dean told me to write down all the behaviors I didn’t want on a separate space of my paper. For this example, there’s only one undesirable behavior and that’s “laziness.” What? Social media is my bread and butter. No way I can stop being a virtual social butterfly! 😇
For the last step of this exercise, I decided to put my own twist on it. I picked one item from each column and formed an affirmation. That affirmation will be the focus of the day for me tomorrow. Here’s how my affirmation came out: “I am an active writer who gets her tasks completed.” I swapped out “laziness” for “active” because lazy is NOT something I want to be!From there, it’s all about putting my affirmation to work for me. I decided to make a daily task list to help me with my time management and productivity. So, we shall see how it goes tomorrow! I am really excited and I am in a much better space mentally, emotionally, and spiritually than I was at the beginning of the activity. And for sh*ts and giggles, I decided to turn it into a blog post. How’s that for productive? 😋
I wrote the above post on 12/4/17, but am behind with posting it; however, I wanted to give a summary of how the day went based on my activity.
I woke up with a plan and I stuck to it. I told myself that I was going to put my affirmation into practice and I did. That singular thought set my entire day into a positive direction, but if I’m keepin’ it real, what I did wasn’t a profound act of humanity. It’s something millions, even billions of people do every single day, but for some of us, getting ourselves on the right path is a lot harder for one reason or another.
For me, one of those reasons is I’m a sexual assault survivor. Living with a secret like that would make anyone veer off the road a bit, but the good news is that I decided 6 years ago that my life was going to be different. The best news is that it IS different and my light is finally shining! Corny, but so ridiculously true and I love it!
Each moment that passes brings with it a chance to break the cycle. I finally snatched my chance. I broke my cycle and I will continue breaking it over and over and over again until I finally am Higher Self. It’s only up from here, with my trusty side kick, Mary Jane, of course. 😉 😤 Needless to say, the minor setback I had on Monday, became a great teaching moment for me. It’s safe to say I had a MAJOR come-up! #Winning!
Til next time, friends.
Hardy Har
