There can be a lot of internal conflict and grief about what you SHOULD be doing and what you actually are doing. Where you SHOULD be in life, and where you are. If you are someone who wants to have it all but barely has some, you might secretly harbor thoughts that “because you are the way you are”, things can’t happen for you the way they fall cinematically into place for - say - Madonna (which, by the way, is only your perception from the outside looking in).
But consider this.
Have you ever considered the possibility that a good lot of the way you behave, the things you can or cannot do, your success, the amount of people who know who you are, your level of happiness all depended on your sense of identity?
Think of it like this. You think of yourself as an upstanding citizen. To maintain that identity, you pay your taxes (…right?), you work or go to school or are “in between” instead of announcing “I am decidedly doing nothing with myself for the rest of my life”, you don’t walk around punching people in the face for sport, and you maintain some semblance of social decency. Suppose you didn’t think of yourself as an upstanding citizen but rather a common criminal at heart. You throw your hands up because at least you’re real, and you proclaim “This is ME. This is who I am. That’s just the way it is.” And with that, your standards of living are somewhat different. In line with the criminal mindset, stealing is just a way of life, you don’t worry about upsetting Uncle Sam, you live with society’s perception of you without losing any sleep about how to change it anymore, and yes - you’ll punch a face or two because you’re bad like that.
Continue reading ‘Who Are You Really: The Definition and Redifinition of You’
There is a special kind of connection available to couples everywhere. *Ahem* Available being the operative word. After all, we’re saturated with scary divorce stats, horror stories and bad experiences. We’ve all witnessed more than our share of the reprehensible behavior between couples. What’s a good prime time drama without a decent backstab between lovers? And often, girls/guys nights out are flooded with ‘empowering’ acts of thumbs down to the opposite sex for anything outside of self gratification. So it makes perfect sense that a good lot of us hold an attitude of what we think is self preservation and build a nice wall around ourselves with black and white stills of horrors from the past hung up as infallible reminders. This is where the tucking real emotions away begins. Facades of perfection to stave singleness away. If you’ve ever been with someone and had to endure a fight where the methods of attack were using not-so-delightful bits of your past as arsenal, well, you know better than gifting anyone new a history about yourself.
In one sense, you are successful with this method. You’ve got yourself decent partnership with a nice enough person and you don’t have to show up to dinner parties alone. You experience superficial passions and what you don’t get from him, a decent soap should be able to provide. The important thing is you’re not alone and…well.. this is what it’s supposed to be anyway right? The exhilarating highs between couples you read about seem to be exclusive to new relationships, torrid affairs, and high school.
Continue reading ‘Stripped: Vulnerability In Love’
Perhaps you’re at a point in your life where things aren’t swell but aren’t horrible either. A middle plane, with your daily comings and goings steady like a mill and well, not so exciting.The exciting stuff is coming. You know - when you make that deal, when you finish school, when you lose 50 lbs…when you find the right man..
And so you wait.
And wait.
You’ll be happy one day - it just has to happen.
So you wait some more.
And what you aren’t realizing is while you’re waiting for that good thing to happen so that you can start your fabulous new life, the life you have is passing by. Days you can’t reclaim and that were loaded with the potential to make you feel good about being alive.
Maybe you’ll be super lucky and that day comes quickly for you. So you’d be exempt of wasting your days, skipping in glee.
Those odds are there for the taking so yeah - maybe you’ll be lucky - so you’ll wait.
Would you bet your life on those odds?
Continue reading ‘Waiting to Live’
I don’t believe that anyone sits around masterminding ways to prevent themselves from succeeding in life. Who does that? Usually what happens is girl (or boy, hi - welcome to InMyHeels.com!) sees something she wants, girl chases it ’til she gets it. Easy enough right?
Well, not so much.
Self sabotage, simple defined, are things that you do that prevent you from achieving a certain level of success. It’s a sneaky little bugger; it can come in various forms and you may not even realize it for a very long time. The problem here is without investigating the real culprit behind your lack of improvement, you are most likely to find yourself stuck in a rut. You probably eventually figure you have to live with your own unhappiness and try to find ways how to - remaining complacent in your own dissatisfaction. Taking that despair up a notch would be a lot of anger towards life, yourself, and those who seem to be doing much better - wondering why you can’t do it too.
Continue reading ‘Overcoming Self Sabotage’
What People Do Is a Reflection of THEM. Not You.
Life has a nice twist to it when you grab that concept and make it your own. Sometimes you run into someone who clearly doesn’t like you because you breathe funny. Maybe your curl bends the wrong way - who knows? The fact of the matter is someone’s disapproval can wreak havoc on your self esteem simply because you can’t understand what the problem is. (Wait- what?? You…don’t LIKE me?!?… How is this possible??) Truly bizarre don’t you think? ;)
The animosity you may experience from a random stranger or even someone you know is not a reflection of you. If someone feels the need to insult you or downplay your value, they are projecting an inherent thought process in their own minds upon you based on their own beliefs. As I will get into in the next section Know Your Values- Know Yourself, you need to be able to define your own beliefs and your own thought process. Alot of the humiliation or hurt that can come from someone’s words can actually come from deep down, you agreeing with them somehow. Ouch.
Continue reading ‘Uninhibited: 10 Ways to Set Yourself Free (Part 2)’
