Find your freeing activity, its worth it!
Thursday, March 31, 2011
Being spontaneous!
This post doesn't have alot to do with learning to love yourself, it does however highlight how small experiences can bring happiness into your life. As I am sure you all have seen painting is one of my passions I just absolutely love art and sometimes in the midst of engaging in life it is so easy to forget those things that bring joy and passion to your soul. Our family recently moved to a small acreage and have decided we wanted to create a garden. Well as I have mentioned I have an injury that makes it impossible for me to work so stooping bending squatting are all out of the picture so I thought that this meant a garden would be impossible. Well inspiration hit me a week or so ago that these wooden crates that we had on our property would make perfect containers for a small garden (we have four of them they are prob 3 feet long and just plain old boring wood). I always picture a garden being something colorful and full of life. So I decided that these plain old boxes needed painting and sprucing up. So today as a family my mother, sister, my nephew, 2 nieces and myself went to work on one of the boxes. We created a wonderfully eclectic collection of art on this boring old box. I will have to take a picture and share our creation with you all. It was so fun to do something creative and to not care or judge what was being done. I think that activities like this are a great modeling for the younger ones of how not everything in our life has to be perfect or have a purpose such as working or helping someone else. Of course the outcome will eventually be a garden with veggies in it but they will most likely be eating the veggies with us this summer. Anyway it spoke to me how freeing it felt to just engage in something that was fun, and to get paint all over and not care or judge the activity. We have three more crates to paint so we get to have this experience three more times (I hope we don't run out of paint, I suspect we will I think we are almost out now, LOL). Have you done anything spontaneous and freeing lately, that just allowed you to be, and to experience life for what it is?
Monday, March 28, 2011
What Happens When Everything you know is Taken Away?
This is the question I struggle with daily right now. That very question is the reason I have started this blog! Its the very reason I have struggled with feeling any sense of purpose in who I am. So what does in fact happen, do you just be a lump and fall into a depression, I have been there done that, that did not seem very effective. So how do you live differently when you realize that the life you knew is now essentially not coming back? Well of course I do not have the answer to this but let me tell you what I've been working on. Of course I am working on my activities that I create to learn to love myself, I believe they will be powerful! (I think I will work with my t on creating some new and different activities). Aside from always reminding myself that I am ok as I am, I have been taking steps to feel a sense of purpose in my life, but I want that purpose to not define me. So I have started this blog and I have started a blog about sewing I love sewing and why not share that talent with others. Also I am going to work on a small business selling the clothing my mother and I make with a web site. I also think that I want to do something to volunteer. And with adding all these things I have to keep reminding myself that my actions as in doing are not who I am. I am me I am not a seamstress, a blogger, a business woman those are just actions. So my work is to define who I am, who we as women are. I think that is a good activity for the activities page create a definition of who you are, or a mantra. Something you can remember and repeat to yourself in order to remind yourself that your worth does not lie in external things.
Today I received an email and I do not think of myself as a religious person but I do think of myself as a spiritual person and there was a line in this email that struck me it relates so very much to what I have had on my mind. Let me share it with you: (this is from a forwarded email I do not have the exact source, although I do know there is a similar passage in the christian bible).
When God takes something from your grasp, He's not punishing you, but merely opening your hands to receive something better. To get something you never had....you must do something you never did.
Seeing as I do not think of myself as religious I am going to talk about this in more a a spiritual manner (spirituality is a whole other topic I'm going to tackle on its own but I think I want to touch on it here for a minute). My therapist is always saying to me that in the very core of herself she believes that nothing bad or negative ever happens without an assent happening. I think that this email sort of says the same thing. I do believe in a God and Goddess and I do believe that they can have impact on your life. So maybe what this is saying is that even though I/you thought that the life you had created what meant to be perhaps there is something better coming your way. Perhaps, you will learn to love yourself, perhaps you will then take your love and share it. But I guess if we are to experience that ascent or something better we first must let go of what was. So that means in the case of this blog letting go of the self hate, in my case my life of sorts that I had built so calculated and with what I believed was the purpose I had, I must step out of the hate or dislike that has come from this trial. Because if I am not open to what the universe is trying to bring to me then I will miss what is coming. My point in sharing this is that I think that even in the face of your life being turned upside down and shaken up then dumped out and you are left to put it back together, it is important to be open to growth and not to close yourself off to what can be. Life is full of surprises and perhaps even this event that has taken my life I built from me, just perhaps through my work of learning to love myself I will come across or be given something new and better.
I think my temporary mantra that I am going to say to myself is I love myself for who I am, I do not need external activities to define me. For now this is my mantra. I will of course work on that and make it different and better but for now whenever I feel self loathing coming on I will repeat that mantra to myself. What is your loving mantra, what can you say to yourself that will help you step out of a moment of hate and learn to accept the things that are coming to you? If you want to share your mantra put it in the comments :) I look forward to getting a dialog going here
Good night or morning (lol) fellow love learners!
Today I received an email and I do not think of myself as a religious person but I do think of myself as a spiritual person and there was a line in this email that struck me it relates so very much to what I have had on my mind. Let me share it with you: (this is from a forwarded email I do not have the exact source, although I do know there is a similar passage in the christian bible).
When God takes something from your grasp, He's not punishing you, but merely opening your hands to receive something better. To get something you never had....you must do something you never did.
Seeing as I do not think of myself as religious I am going to talk about this in more a a spiritual manner (spirituality is a whole other topic I'm going to tackle on its own but I think I want to touch on it here for a minute). My therapist is always saying to me that in the very core of herself she believes that nothing bad or negative ever happens without an assent happening. I think that this email sort of says the same thing. I do believe in a God and Goddess and I do believe that they can have impact on your life. So maybe what this is saying is that even though I/you thought that the life you had created what meant to be perhaps there is something better coming your way. Perhaps, you will learn to love yourself, perhaps you will then take your love and share it. But I guess if we are to experience that ascent or something better we first must let go of what was. So that means in the case of this blog letting go of the self hate, in my case my life of sorts that I had built so calculated and with what I believed was the purpose I had, I must step out of the hate or dislike that has come from this trial. Because if I am not open to what the universe is trying to bring to me then I will miss what is coming. My point in sharing this is that I think that even in the face of your life being turned upside down and shaken up then dumped out and you are left to put it back together, it is important to be open to growth and not to close yourself off to what can be. Life is full of surprises and perhaps even this event that has taken my life I built from me, just perhaps through my work of learning to love myself I will come across or be given something new and better.
I think my temporary mantra that I am going to say to myself is I love myself for who I am, I do not need external activities to define me. For now this is my mantra. I will of course work on that and make it different and better but for now whenever I feel self loathing coming on I will repeat that mantra to myself. What is your loving mantra, what can you say to yourself that will help you step out of a moment of hate and learn to accept the things that are coming to you? If you want to share your mantra put it in the comments :) I look forward to getting a dialog going here
Good night or morning (lol) fellow love learners!
Friday, March 25, 2011
Check out my new editions
Hello readers
I have added some new items to my blog that you might find interesting. I have three new activities in the activity section (I am thinking of adding on some fun cheap or free local activities to this section let me know what you think). I have also added an art page as art is my one thing about myself that I truly do love. I hope you enjoy!
Cheers!
I have added some new items to my blog that you might find interesting. I have three new activities in the activity section (I am thinking of adding on some fun cheap or free local activities to this section let me know what you think). I have also added an art page as art is my one thing about myself that I truly do love. I hope you enjoy!
Cheers!
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
Youth
I have been thinking and observing people around me, and I've noticed a few things. I have noticed young girls obsessed with how they look and with making sure they are doing things to please others. Thinking back to my youth I remember at a very young age being ridiculed for how I looked or if I wasn't doing something that was pleasing or an act of doing for others. These messages came from everywhere it seems in my memory that these messages were all around me. I can only image how a young girl is bombarded by this in this day and age with so much more media than I had as a young girl. So I think and this is a safe bet that this is true that a womens or my need to define myself by something other than who I was as a person began at a very young age. After all it was hammered into my head that a womens purpose is to care for and that your nothing unless you are doing. So I think this topic needs more exploration, I think I will look at some studies and give ya all some concrete information on this thought of mine. I have in the past looked into similar topics in some college and doctorate classes so I know there are studies out there but it might be interesting to have some facts to back up this thought.
Don't forget to look for the polls at the bottom of my page, I will try and put up a new poll weekly, the polls are for fun im not doing anything with them except perhaps putting the results into a post to let you all know the outcome. Also look for a new page that will include activities that we can do to learn to love ourselves. Of course doing something is engaging in something but I hope to make the activities such that they explore myself/you. No worries most activities will be easy(FYI as I have already said I love art and creativity so im sure that alot of my activities will be a tad artistic)and they won't be anything super clinical. I plan on making it fun but I want to learn.
Cheers Have a Wonderful day
Don't forget to look for the polls at the bottom of my page, I will try and put up a new poll weekly, the polls are for fun im not doing anything with them except perhaps putting the results into a post to let you all know the outcome. Also look for a new page that will include activities that we can do to learn to love ourselves. Of course doing something is engaging in something but I hope to make the activities such that they explore myself/you. No worries most activities will be easy(FYI as I have already said I love art and creativity so im sure that alot of my activities will be a tad artistic)and they won't be anything super clinical. I plan on making it fun but I want to learn.
Cheers Have a Wonderful day
Monday, March 21, 2011
Hi fellow women and hey men your welcome too!
Let me introduce myself and why I am beginning this blog. I am a survivor or thriver not sure which term seems more appropriate. I have survived many traumas and always thought I had made it through just a little bit wiser. Well recently I have learned that I in fact have this deep seeded hate for myself. See I have always felt that my worth is rooted in what I do in the impact I make and I put no thought into who I was nor did I feel that I as a person was worth a darn cent unless I was doing. So all my life I have ensured I was doing, pleasing others caring for others making sure that things go smoothly. I worked for years to get my bachelors and then my doctorate and then certificates for my doctorate. To three years ago be rendered unable to work and even sometimes I even had to ask for help for things I took for granted. How horrifying it was to be in this position to no longer be able to do what I once did, to go from 100 to zero overnight well in a split second actually. See what happened is I got hurt and in the past three years I have had six surgeries, and have been constantly in a state of healing/pain and am facing more.
So to the point of my blog, I came to the realization the other day that the reason I was struggling so much with my injury was that I did not love me unless I was doing. I put all my worth into my job or volunteer activity or being able to engage in group activities such as corporate cycling challenge and relay for life among a few. I realized that despite living through horrible tragedies in my past and years of therapy that I in fact did not know or even love myself just as me. And with the help of my therapist I came to understand that I had to find a way to love just me seperate from my doing. Sure its ok to find pride in what you do I mean who doesn't feel great when they do something awesome. But I guess I have just discovered that you can't define who you are by what you so. I can't say I am an occupational therapist, artist, volunteer, because to say this is only telling you what I do. So through this blog I will try and discover who am I really and how can we hold onto that and begin to love it. I call it it because I do not know what it is yet. Maybe we will learn together!
So my goal here is to explore this topic in depth perhaps I will help someone else. I can't imagine im alone in my lack of self love. Heck there are self help books full of pages that tell us to love ourself. But I don't really find that helpful. I intend to tackle this topic weekly as im sure that will be enough to digest weekly. I also intend to put up activities for self love and or things that just might feel good. Please feel free to make comments b/c I think that healing can occur through communication among people. We afterall do not live in a bubble. Also if you already have discovered this self love secret please feel free to share your story with me im sure the journey is different for us all but to know that someone does in fact love themself and not only what they do would be inspiring. I do want to state that mostly I will be stating my opinion and perhaps some information I have spoken with my therapist on (yes gasp im in therapy, and no I don't care what the world thinks about that) I might even do some research on a topic b/c I find research intriguing but I do not claim to be an expert on this topic nor do I intend to claim that this blog will be perfect. It is what it will be no criticism necessary on thoughts or punctuation if my research is askew feel free to let me know but I will attempt to make research when and if it occurs as accurate as possible.
Take care for now Just a women
So to the point of my blog, I came to the realization the other day that the reason I was struggling so much with my injury was that I did not love me unless I was doing. I put all my worth into my job or volunteer activity or being able to engage in group activities such as corporate cycling challenge and relay for life among a few. I realized that despite living through horrible tragedies in my past and years of therapy that I in fact did not know or even love myself just as me. And with the help of my therapist I came to understand that I had to find a way to love just me seperate from my doing. Sure its ok to find pride in what you do I mean who doesn't feel great when they do something awesome. But I guess I have just discovered that you can't define who you are by what you so. I can't say I am an occupational therapist, artist, volunteer, because to say this is only telling you what I do. So through this blog I will try and discover who am I really and how can we hold onto that and begin to love it. I call it it because I do not know what it is yet. Maybe we will learn together!
So my goal here is to explore this topic in depth perhaps I will help someone else. I can't imagine im alone in my lack of self love. Heck there are self help books full of pages that tell us to love ourself. But I don't really find that helpful. I intend to tackle this topic weekly as im sure that will be enough to digest weekly. I also intend to put up activities for self love and or things that just might feel good. Please feel free to make comments b/c I think that healing can occur through communication among people. We afterall do not live in a bubble. Also if you already have discovered this self love secret please feel free to share your story with me im sure the journey is different for us all but to know that someone does in fact love themself and not only what they do would be inspiring. I do want to state that mostly I will be stating my opinion and perhaps some information I have spoken with my therapist on (yes gasp im in therapy, and no I don't care what the world thinks about that) I might even do some research on a topic b/c I find research intriguing but I do not claim to be an expert on this topic nor do I intend to claim that this blog will be perfect. It is what it will be no criticism necessary on thoughts or punctuation if my research is askew feel free to let me know but I will attempt to make research when and if it occurs as accurate as possible.
Take care for now Just a women
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)