CHANGE

You can't make anyone else change and no one else can make you change.  That's true.  Only you have the power to change yourself -- on anything.  In fact, changing yourself is the only thing you actually have control over.

Here's the thing, changing yourself doesn't mean making big, scary shifts in our lives, changing ourselves can simply mean choosing to react differently.

SEE

See an excuse for what it is...FEAR.

Competition

Competition doesn’t make you stronger, it makes you insecure because you’re constantly looking over your shoulder.  You’re so busy measuring and comparing that you never feel good enough.  At bottom, hyper competitive people are terribly unhappy and insecure because even though they may be ranked best, it does nothing to actually make them feel that way.

Fear and Loathing

A good friend of mine, an intelligent, kind, funny and beautiful woman had started hearing a ticking sound in her ear.  It was starting to worry her so she finally went to see a doctor and he told her, “Well honey, what do you expect, you’re not getting any younger.  The ticking of your biological clock is only going to get louder.  Better get a move on.”    

My friend then moved to crazy-town, into a nice cozy bungalow on Anxiety Lane, down the street from Hand-wringing Central and north of Twitchy-eye Heights.  She became a predator, engaging men just to apply inquisition like tactics to determine ‘husband and father’ potential -- she left a mutilated and bloody trail.

The last time I saw her she handed me a wedding invitation with one shaky hand while the other sank her nails into the arm of her fiancee.  Her vivid blue eyes, restlessly searched for something just over my shoulder.  Her deep red lips stretched across her face in an insincere smile, her body constantly in motion shadow boxing with a prevailing unease.

She was an intelligent, kind, funny and beautiful woman who bought the hype, who buckled under the pressure to conform, who became a stereotype, who thoroughly lost herself.  

So long as we continue to conform we will fear our ‘biological clock’ and loathe the creatures we become.

Let’s be clear: you are conforming when you feel you are betraying who you are and what you want just to please something (society/culture/traditions) or someone.

Mirror

Women especially get so bombarded by messages that make them feel as though they are not enough they forget how perfect they actually are.  So even though sometimes we forget to see it in ourselves, I know we can see it as clear as day in the women we respect and love, so we, as their friends, must mirror to them, by telling them, how amazingly beautiful, smart and ENOUGH they truly are.

Your focus

People oftentimes apply laser-like focus (obsessive focus, some would say) on a wedding but completely neglect to do the work to understand what it takes to make a marriage.  If people would spend as much money, focus and effort on preparing for a marriage as they do on planning a wedding, my guess is that there would be fewer divorces.

Consent

Only you can give it.  It doesn’t just apply to the external it also applies to the approval or agreement that you give your internal voice, that primal brain.  How much of it are you agreeing with?  Are you questioning what it’s telling you or do you give it automatic consent to dictate what you will think and how you will feel?

So with Valentines Day around the corner is your primal brain unearthing old hurts and insecurities because you don’t have a valentine, or is it stirring up dissatisfaction because you don’t have a more exciting valentine, more handsome valentine, more than one valentine?  

If that’s the case, you’ve given your primal brain consent to hurl you down that slippery slope at the bottom of which you helplessly beat your chest and gnash your teeth at the rotten life you’re leading.

It’s not true - it’s a matter of consent - refuse to give it.    

Relationships, an odd irony

There is a ‘reverse' stigma associated with being in a relationship - a stigma connotes a bad sign, so I propose that a reverse stigma is something that connotes a good sign. Following this logic, when a person is in a relationship it’s viewed as a a sign of health, a sign of getting along, it communicates to society that you are ‘normal.”  As an aside, when reviewing case studies of psychopaths, you hear profilers say ‘he appeared normal, he was married/had a girlfriend.‘   We of course know that being in a relationship is oftentimes far from being an indication of health or wellbeing*.  

Ironically the ‘real’ stigma (the bad sign) associated with being unattached tells us that it’s an indication that there is something wrong with a person, that they must be antisocial, they must have a disease, they are surely undesirable and certainly unlovable.  This is an irony whose very wrong but yet powerful message keeps us tethered to toxic people and embroiled in dysfunctional relationships by nothing but a big fat lie.

What’s even sadder is that many unattached individuals internalize this message of being less than if unattached and make themselves crazy trying to find a partner, at all costs: at the cost of their pride, their self-esteem, their spirit and sometimes their lives.  Start looking for the runway now.  Go.  Don’t buy this sham for another minute.

*(A 2005 study reported that 7% of partnered Canadian women experienced violence at the hands of a spouse between 1999 and 2004. Of these battered women, nearly one-quarter (23%) reported being beaten, choked, or threatened with a knife or gun. (Family Violence in Canada: A Statistical Profile, 2005))

Better than being alone.

It absolutely amazes me how people rationalize staying in a horrible situation because it’s “better than being alone.” 

As far as I know nobody ever died of being alone, yet plenty of people have died staying in horrible situations.

What kind of perverse thinking does it take to rationalize yourself into feeling so completely worthless?  

Please believe me when I tell you that feeling this worthless isn’t a result of something being done to you, not at this stage, not as an adult, but it’s a result of the small, seemingly insignificant decisions you make every minute of every day.  

Very specifically, it’s in the way you decide to talk yourself into being every single day.  And it’s your decision to either continue, or stop.

Colluding with toxic people

You absolutely teach people how to treat you so when someone keeps making an appointment with you but then cancels or reschedules repeatedly, and you go along with it, you are teaching them that you don't matter.


When your date keeps showing up late, they're telling you that you're not that important. And by not saying anything you're telling them, it's okay to disrespect you.


We think that not saying anything is being nice.  That getting angry but not saying anything to this person (being passive aggressive) is okay because we're not making a scene.  We don't want to make a big deal, so we don't say anything.  REALLY?  Your silence is screaming "GO AHEAD WIPE YOUR FEET ON ME, I DON'T MIND.'


Stop colluding with toxic people; go ahead make a scene, challenge the shabby way you're being treated, don't let your silence do the talking.  Speak up.  The empowering boost to your self-esteem will be exhilarating.

Sliding into heaven.

“Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely

in an attractive and well preserved body. But rather to skid in sideways, chocolate in one hand, wine in the other, body totally worn out and screaming "WOO HOO what a ride!"” (Author unknown)

That’s what I want to be able to tell myself when I’m 80. 

To me this little aphorism isn’t talking about hedonism, irresponsibility, or checking off all the items on a bucket list.  To me it says you’ve lived your life authentically and expansively, going out of your way to enhance someone else’s life as well. It is by far, the best way to be used up at the end of the day.

Let's be clear...

The flight imperative is the antithesis of running away; it's a moving towards.

A New Year for Miss/Mr Lonely Hearts

Oh yes, a new year and boo hoo, you're all alone.  Oh wait a minute, you're not.  Is that a guy in your bed that you picked up because it was New Years Eve, you got shit-faced and... you never know it could turn into a relationship. 

A lot of women are not going to buy into this and that’s okay.  There are a lot of women who would rather bemoan the fact that they’re not in a relationship, how difficult it is to be in a relationship, how disappointing online dating is, how difficult it is to meet people, etc., etc.,  I don’t have an answer for these women -- actually I do, but like I said, they’re not really interested in hearing it.

The answer is this -- so what!  Is that how big your life is?  Are you waiting for someone to rescue you? Are you waiting for the man/women/small furry animal to make you feel safe and loved before you can actually lead a happy life?  That is tragic indeed.

I think it’s this ‘rescue me’ attitude that makes women desperate.  Since when have women abdicated their responsibility -- and don’t give me the old ‘well look at how we’ve been socialized.’  At some point you have to see what a load of crock that is and move on.

Now there's a resolution to think about.