I love myself enough to be honest about my shortcomings. I take responsibility for my choices. This is how growth occurs. I love myself, therefore I strive to be the most free and actualized version of myself I can be. I genuinely express my authentic self to the world. This is freedom. You do not have to be perfect in order to be loved. Self love doesn't mean you've reached perfection and you see yourself as un-flawed. Self love is loving yourself in spite of the flaws. I've learned that I've tied my self worth into whether or not I am serving someone else. At times, I don't feel valuable unless I'm doing something for someone. Over time, I internalized the belief, "I add value to the lives of others by serving them. If I make sure their needs are met, they will love me." While it is perfectly fine to want to serve the ones you love and to be giving and helpful, you should still realize that this is not the ONLY value you have. It is not the only reason you were created and why you are loved. I had to learn to let people love me for who I am, not just what I can do for them. So who am I? I am a powerful being, bursting with light and creativity. The love I have for myself pours out toward others in everything I do.
self love affirmations...
It is important to remember that when speaking to yourself and about yourself, the words you choose really matter. This is what makes speaking positive affirmations over your life such a powerful practice. When speaking positively to yourself and about yourself, you are teaching yourself who you are. You are telling yourself what you want to embody. You are training yourself on how to view you. Our world is only the perception we have of it. So, how you choose to perceive yourself will become real.
Say affirmations like you mean them. Say them until you believe them. Say them until they shape your reality. Repeat as necessary. xoxo Bree Cherie
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If I can imagine negative outcomes and stressful scenarios, than surely I can imagine positive ones right? Absolutely. It takes practice and it takes patience with yourself, but you can train yourself to focus on the positive aspects of your life. And yes, no matter how dismal things may seem at any given moment, there are always positives. They are hiding in plain sight. You just have to look for them. My mom used to always tell me, "you find what you search for." Meaning, whatever it is that you set your intentions of discovering will appear. Everything in life exists simultaneously. Where there is good there is bad. So, if you are intent on finding something bad, you will because it's there. But the good is there also. How you experience life is largely up to what you choose to place your attention on. If you seek out positivity and joy you'll find it. What you look for in life, you will actually begin to see more of. Have you ever experienced meeting someone for the first time who you hadn't previously been aware of, and then suddenly you feel like you start seeing them everywhere? Seeking out positivity is sort of like that. It's like that person that has been there all along ( in your neighborhood, at your school, at your job) , that for one reason or another you hadn't noticed or paid attention to. Once, you become familiar with what positivity looks like, you begin to see it everywhere you go. What ever it is that you pay attention to, is what you are subconsciously training your brain to notice more of. With this in mind, we can then choose to search for the positive things we would like to see. Gratitude journaling is one practical way that we can begin to train our brains to lean toward positivity. When you seek out things every day to be grateful for, you will start to find them. When you notice how much you already have, more things will come. Gratitude journaling helps shift your awareness. It makes you stop and pay attention to the things, the people, the places, and the feelings in your life that fill your spirit with content. Sometimes simply noticing the beauty around you is the thanks that it deserves. Acknowledgement can be the biggest thank you. Recognition can be validation. It's like the character Shug Avery says in Alice Walker's The Color Purple, "I think it pisses God off when you walk by the color purple in a field and don't notice it." Acknowledge the beauty in your life. Recognize the every day miracles you are surrounded by.
When you seek out love, kindness, joy, and hope you will find them everywhere you turn. Even in the most seemingly dismal of times, there is still light. It's like being out in the wilderness on a dark night. Should you choose to lift your gaze and shift your perspective, you'll notice that the darkest skies are where the stars shine brightest. I am no stranger to anxiety. I have felt "anxious" since before I even knew there was a word for having constant racing thoughts, nervous feelings of worry and stress over every day activities, paranoia, and trepidation over having to interact socially. These are not the only ways anxiety can manifest in an individual, and as someone who would most likely be described as having "generalized anxiety" by a professional, I've seen it show up in other ways as well. But, at this point in my life I've reached a conclusion that anxiety is not going anywhere. And since it's not going to just disappear, I may as well learn to manage it. I've found a few ways to deal with anxiety that help me regain control of how I experience life. Something I've been keeping in mind that helps me keep anxiety in check is, Everything is energy. Those three words are so simple yet so true and apply to literally EVERYTHING, including this anxiety I feel. In physics, the law of conservation of energy states "that energy can neither be created nor destroyed; rather, it can only be transformed from one form to another." So, that means this energy that is present in my mind and my body, this feeling of stress, worry, and fear that we call anxiety, this energy cannot be destroyed, but it can absolutely be transformed. It can be used for a purpose that helps me rather than harms me. And I have the power to use this energy to my benefit. I am now choosing to transform this feeling of anxiety into something useful; something freeing. Rather than let my mind be consumed with chatter and worry, I pause and ask myself an important question. "Is this thought rational?" When dealing with anxiety, this is an important question to reflect on. Oftentimes, the things we are worrying about are projections of what we think might happen. "What if this other thing also happens... and if this person is thinking this... and what if they say that"....and so on. Once I isolate the thought the anxiety is stemming from, I then perform an autopsy on it. That's right, I take it apart and examine it from the inside out. I look at the thought from all angles. Usually, by taking this second to examine my thought process I can very quickly realize where my thinking drifted from reality and where I started to create a story in my head of possibilities. In addition to identifying irrational thoughts, I do what I call "changing the title" of what I am feeling. Often, what we tell ourselves about what we are experiencing physiologically (for instance, having sweaty palms and an accelerated heart rate) is what makes the experience a pleasant or unpleasant one. If my palms are sweaty and my heart is racing because I'm about to go onstage and sing, I can interpret that as fear, or I can take that same energy I am feeling, simply change the title, and call it excitement. I can rename this energy I feel coursing through my body and re-purpose it, changing the experience from a stressful one to an exhilarating and enjoyable one. Another way to transform the feeling of anxiety, into something more useful is to follow Eminem's lead and just lose yourself. In that classic scene in "8 Mile" when his "palms are sweaty, knees weak, arms are heavy..." (I'm sure you know the rest) he has to get out of his head and into the physical space he is in. He has to be fully present in the moment. In order to snap myself out of a state of anxiety, I like to get completely out of my head and into my body. To achieve this, I'll do some sort of physical activity that requires me to focus on what I'm doing, and to focus on my breathing, rather than my thoughts. My favorite activities that force me to focus on my breath are yoga and singing. I had a choir teacher who once told us that if you're feeling down, if you're feeling sick, or even if you have a headache, to sing and it will help you feel better. He was right; it really does help for several reasons, but one reason singing helps in these instances is the breath work it requires. When you sing, you have to control your breathing and use it strategically to hit each note and hold each phrase. Controlling your breath regulates your heart rate and calms your body. Another way to control your breath, and in turn calm your body is to do simple breathing exercises. As soon as I feel myself starting to get worked up, I use this breathing exercise,
When you are controlling your breathing, you are training your body on how to react to certain feelings, you are regulating your heart beat, and calming your mind in the process. So basically, if you're feeling anxious keep in mind that energy can be transformed. You can decide how to interpret what you're feeling and use it for your well-being. Investigate whether you're even thinking rationally or not. Take what you are feeling and re-frame it in your mind so that it serves you for your greatest good. Change the title of the experience, turning fear of the unknown into excitement for new possibilities. Do something useful, productive, or creative with that feeling. Get out of your head and into your body, channeling that energy into something invigorating rather than debilitating. xo Bree Cherie
For a while, it was hard for me to imagine myself doing anything worthwhile because I just couldn't see how someone "like me" could accomplish those things. But now I'm literally learning how to dream again. It's actually very hard to expand your mind once again after you've shut yourself off. But I'm trying my best to allow myself to dream BIG. I don't have to limit myself to my mistakes from the past. I have to learn from my mistakes, and use those lessons to propel myself forward, further than I've ever been. In my previous blog post, I shared about a time in my life where I felt lost and broken. I've been putting myself back together and practicing having a positive mindset, rather than leading with fear. I want to give some practical tips on exactly how I've been "learning to dream." daydream practice...
It's important to be able to see yourself doing the things you want so that you actually feel they are possible. If you don't think something is a possibility for you, you won't even try. Also, when the time comes to act on your dreams you won't be as nervous to get out there and do it. If you've rehearsed it in your head plenty of times, it almost feels like you've already done it. Just like an athlete or a stage performer, visualizing your plan of action helps you know exactly what moves you want to make. You will feel more confident and prepared when the pressure is on. For me, this daydreaming practice is allowing me to re-train my mind to see myself as someone who can do things. I can absolutely make my dreams come true. And once I believe that, it becomes so much easier to actually take the steps toward reaching them. xo Bree Cherie
I am not the sum of my parts. I am more than and different from them. My cultural psychology professor had us think on that idea quite often. The idea is that the aggregate of what makes you who you are, amounts to greater than the mere sum of your physical and mental capabilities (you are more than them). In addition to that, the combination and arrangement of your parts in particular, makes you different from the individual pieces. This idea can be easily explained in the context of a chair for instance. Or more like a chair from IKEA... When you get an IKEA chair, it comes with many different parts that you must assemble in a particular fashion in order to make a functional, and hopefully cute, piece of furniture. You have the legs, and the seat, the back, and the screws that hold the chair together. But when you create the finished product, do you simply have legs, and a seat, and a back? No, you've created a completely distinct entity from the parts. Not only that, but the way the chair functions, the way it meshes with your other furniture, the time it took you to build it, and the memories that you later ascribe to it (like "this is the chair from my first apartment"), all add to the meaning of what that chair "is" in the world. This idea, applies to us as people as well. I am my organs, my muscles, and my bones. I am my skin, my hair, and my face. But the combination of these parts, along with my spiritual being and mental being, make me so much more than a flesh covered skeleton. The way I interact with others and the world around me makes me who I am as well. The way I think and the things that inspire me make me who I am. I went through a time where I didn't quite feel like the sum of my parts amounted to much at all. I had a time period of feeling lost and broken. I had moved away from home to join a teaching program only ten days after my college graduation. I was suddenly immersed in a rigorous training program, enrolled in a master's degree program, and expected to be an effective teacher with very limited resources. I was struggling to balance life's responsibilities, and was crumbling under the pressure of the program I was in ( which shall remain nameless because the point isn't to bash them). I found myself struggling with anxiety and depression worse than I ever had in my life, and I've been through things seemingly much "worse" than this. It got to the point where I was having constant anxiety attacks and my depression reached a low that was really quite scary. One day in particular, I had an anxiety attack while driving and almost crashed. That was the day I walked straight to the principal's office and quit my job. I had no plan, I had tons of debt, and I had no idea what I was getting myself into. The next few YEARS ended up being a struggle of trying to start on a new career path, trying to pay my debt, trying to dig myself out of the hole I had put myself in. During this time, I was strictly focused on trying to "make money" to get my life back in order. But I wasn't focusing at all on the things I like to do, the things I'm passionate about, or my ultimate life and career aspirations. In fact, if I'm being completely honest, I think I let the situation scare me. Looking back, I realize that after I quit the teaching program, I kept my sights very low. I was afraid to "fail" again. I only envisioned myself being successful at a very limited amount of things. I honestly felt like I was somehow "less of a person" than my counterparts who had been successful in the program. But I am not less than. I am more than, and different from the sum of my parts. What makes me who I am just wasn't a good fit for that program, and that's okay. In Japan, it is a common practice to mend broken objects with gold. This art is called "kintsugi." The cracks and fissures tell a story about the object's history. The object is not seen as less valuable for having once been broken. I am not my broken pieces, I am more than and different from them. I now understand my inherent worth. I know that my accomplishments do not make me who I am. All of life's experiences, for better or for worse, are just parts. You decide how they will contribute to the whole. You give the parts context. You give them meaning. And you can choose to line all of your experiences, even the supposedly ugly ones, with gold. Let your scars tell a story of how far you've come. And yes, maybe once you were broken. But the important thing is you didn't stay that way. xo Bree Cherie
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