How many times have you been angry and regretted saying something to someone you love, the minute those words rolled of your tongue? I know I have. Many times.

I’ve gotten into the habit when I am really upset about something that is a big deal, of giving myself 24 hours to let things calm down and really think about how I feel about what happened. In the past, I’ve really struggled with being able to articulate exactly how I feel, or even that I am hurting. Giving myself that time helps me reflect, organize my thoughts and feelings, see the other person’s perspective and game plan how I want to address the issue.  

Many times, we will find yourselves rehashing our own personal traumas in our relationships. It is so important to heal ourselves from what has hurt us. Otherwise, we end up carrying that baggage into other relationships and we can bleed on people who didn’t cut us. And honestly, we end up sabotaging our other relationships because we are coming from a wounded place.

We are responsible for our own closure. Our peace of mind and ability to move on should never be in someone else’s hands.

How we spend our time and what we focus on, when no one else can see us, is really who we are. The problem for many of us, is that we tend to fill this time with things that we don’t even really value. For example, we can spend hours a day on social media, but is that who we really want to be?

Or we can spend our free time distracting ourselves from working on things we feel passionate about because we are scared that we will fail. Perhaps we fill our days with chores and a never ending to do list.

The truth us, it is the small things that you do consistently that make the biggest change in your life. We underestimate the impact that those small changes make, but they will always beat short term intensity.

If you are finding that you aren’t spending your time doing the things you really want to do, prepare yourself to confront your own self-sabotage. Is there some bullshit story that you keep telling yourself about why you can’t do something or why you don’t deserve something?

In an earlier post, I talked about eliminating limiting beliefs you may have about yourself so you can start living the kind of life you want to live. This is your life and your story – and you are the author.

What can you start doing today, when no one is looking, that gets you closer to living the life you want and deserve?

Coined from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, this metaphor illustrates that people who run away from their challenges and problems die a little bit inside each time they do so. Their character slowly erodes away when they don’t confront what is ahead of them.

Adversity and challenges help us develop character. How we overcome struggle defines who we are. It helps us develop resilience. These lessons are life skills and when we don’t develop them, we end up in an arrested state of development as we get older. Everything becomes much harder because we simply lack the understanding of how to deal with and overcome our problems.

How can we use difficulties we run into help strengthen us, rather than weaken us? Here are some things to remember when times get tough:

• Everything that happens to us is an opportunity for us to grow. We may not see it in the moment, but all situations have been put in front of us for a reason.
• Accept the situation for what it is, rather than what you want it to be. Honor your feelings in the moment. It the situation sucks, then it sucks. Don’t judge yourself for what you feel.
• It’s okay to have a meltdown if you need to. Just don’t unpack and stay there. Remember, you don’t drown by falling into the water. You drown by staying there.
• Start formulating what steps you need to take to overcome the challenge. Don’t be afraid to ask people around you for help. Most people will do all that they can to help a friend in need – even if it’s just listening.
• Realize that you are not alone in this and that there are people who are rooting for you. We all go through hard times. Sometimes it’s hard for us to see because we spend so much time looking at social media and think that what people show on their Instagram or Snapchat is this perfect reality. What you are seeing online is a curated life, a highlight reel of what people want you to see. Often times, it is very far from reality.
• There is always something to be grateful for. Whether it’s something as basic as the roof over our heads or that we have food to eat. Be especially grateful for the challenge you are facing now. It is an opportunity for you to experience growth and to gain mastery in your life.

Your turn…Is there something in your life that you’re running away from or afraid to confront? What can you start doing today to turn this difficulty into an opportunity for growth?

Are you really living or are you just existing? We tend to choose to exist because it’s safer. Really living requires courage and a vulnerability that is just plain scary to most of us.

Why don’t we live like we’re dying? (Spoiler alert – we are all dying.) We are perishable items and our time here is limited. Yet we forget that and fall into our daily patterns and routines. We stay inside our lanes, just looking ahead to what comes next. We go onto autopilot chasing all the wrong things for all the wrong reasons. And chasing the wrong things and staying within the lanes of what society says we should do is not living.

You are here for a reason. And it’s not to live a monotonous life. Or a life filled with fear and worry.

Tomorrow is promised to no one. We don’t know when our time on this planet is over. If you found out you had only a year to live, what would you do? I bet you’d start doing the things you’ve always wanted to do “someday”.

Whether you have one day, one year or another 50 years left, isn’t it about time you broke free? Isn’t it time for you to spread your wings and fly?

in·teg·ri·ty:

noun

1. the quality of being honest and having strong moral principles; moral uprightness.

2. the state of being whole and undivided.

We determine our own set of core values and morals. Having integrity means that we behave consistently with those morals and values – especially when no one is looking.

Deviating from your own code can have some serious costs. When I was in high school, I got in a lot of trouble. It was typical teenage stuff, but one of my problems was that I had friends who were older and out of school already, and I didn’t want to go to class. I would make the argument to my mother that I was going to get more hours in at work – and I usually did. Or I would go to the beach or spend time with my boyfriend. At that point though, I was in the last semester of my senior year, and I had turned 18. And my first period class was history, which I found boring at the time. Ironically, I married someone who loves history and now I love learning about it.

Anyway, long story short, because I had missed so many history classes, my teacher was going to fail me, and I needed that class to graduate. So, we made a deal that if I passed the final, I would pass the class and graduate. Now, I am a firm believer in when you choose the behavior, you choose the consequences. But my 18-year-old self was scared. And really scared of not being able to graduate.

I had started to study for the final, when a friend approached me with a copy of the exam. It was all pretty much multiple choice. She said all we had to do was look up the answers. I rationalized it to myself that it was kind of like studying and I was using it as a study guide.

Well, for someone who hadn’t really gone to class that semester, I soon learned that trying to memorize a bunch of historical events wasn’t easy. So did my friend. So, we ended up researching the answers and carving the answers to the exam into our pencils.

I had never cheated on a test and the day of the exam; I was a mess. I was convinced that I was going to get caught, and I thought about how embarrassed I would feel and what my family would say. Whenever the teacher walked past me, sweat beaded up on my forehead and I was convinced the he would see the etchings in my pencil and grab it out of my hand. I was also convinced that he would pick up on my nervous, strange behavior and suspect that I was cheating. It was awful. But nothing happened. I finished the exam and handed it in.

I ended up passing and I graduated. But I can honestly tell you, that YEARS later – I have nightmares of being in high school and being unable to graduate. And it is because I know in my core that I didn’t earn the right to graduate. My teacher made a deal with me that was more than fair, and I deviated so far from my own morals and values, that my guilt from it manifests itself in the occasional nightmare – years later.

Obviously, I was young and when we are young, we make a lot of mistakes. And my husband and I laugh when I have a dream about not being able to graduate. Because it is still haunting me! And it’s kind of funny. But the lesson here, is that when we lack integrity, there is a consequence to our psyche. And honestly, I am grateful for this experience, because it taught me how live with more integrity.

When you look at your own set of morals and values, do you feel like you are living with integrity? If not (or if you’ve just cheated on a final), what can you start doing today to start being more consistent with your beliefs?

We tend to judge people as a means of making sense of why people do the things that they do. Our brains make snap judgments, so we can clear the confusion we have and move onto the next thing.

When we judge someone, we tend to make a blanket judgment about who their character is, based on only a snapshot of their behavior. Say I called a customer service line because I had a problem with an order and the person who answered was unhelpful, rude and downright nasty. I can walk away from that call and think, “wow, she is an incredibly rotten, miserable person.” Is that really a fair judgment for me to make after speaking to this person for two minutes? What right do I have to deem this person any way after only interacting with her for two minutes?

Let’s be honest. It’s easy for us to make snap judgments about other people. If we are focused on tearing someone else down, we don’t have to look at ourselves. But I can promise you that if you are the kind of person who tears other people down, it will catch up to you. People who constantly judge others are avoiding the judgment they really feel towards themselves.

If you find yourself getting a little “judgy” with others, start looking at it from more of a situational perspective. Observe someone’s behavior and get curious about what might be causing them to behave that way. Don’t make an assumption about who they are.

For example, say I walk by my colleague in the morning and say hello, and she doesn’t respond. If I was in judgy mode, I could make the assumption that she is rude or doesn’t like me. Or I can look at it and be like, “Maybe she didn’t hear me, or her mind was on something else.” It’s actually more likely that she didn’t hear me, or she was preoccupied with other thoughts. Or she could have had her earbuds in and literally didn’t hear me. Who knows?

When you focus on trying to make sense of someone and why they did what they did, challenge yourself to look more at the situation and their motivations. Get curious about it instead of just making an assumption. Give people the benefit of the doubt.

Standing your ground isn’t about being aggressive about what you believe or trying to push your beliefs onto someone else. It’s about knowing yourself and the things that really matter to you. It’s knowing your values and morals. And it’s about being in comfortable in your own skin with what you believe and standing up for it when it isn’t easy to do so.

People who are willing to stand up for themselves or others are people who aren’t afraid to stand alone if they have to. They aren’t paralyzed by what others think of them or of standing up for what they feel is right. They know that the cost of not standing up for what they believe, is greater to their self-respect and mental health than any difficulty that may happen because they stood up and pushed back.

What happens when we don’t stand up for ourselves?

When we don’t take a stand for the things that are non-negotiables to us, our self-esteem erodes one compromise at a time. We lose sight of our own feelings and defer to others and what they want. We stop feeling comfortable making decisions for ourselves. Emotionally, we can become sucked into other people’s drama and take on responsibilities that aren’t really ours. We completely lose sight of ourselves, and the price our mental health pays is enormous.

The funny thing is, we never mean for these consequences to happen to us. We want to be nice and not rock the boat. The problem is, we fall into the trap of operating this way, day to day. It becomes our pattern and routine, and we lose ourselves along the way.

One way we can start stand up for the things that are important to us is to start by setting boundaries with others. You can start with smaller things first if the major things feel overwhelming. In an earlier post, I talk about how you can start setting boundaries in a fair, assertive way.  

Remember, empathy is a great trait, but that empathy without boundaries is a form of self-destruction. In this previous post, I talk about the mental health challenges that can arise when we don’t stand up for ourselves and set healthy boundaries.   Your turn…What do you stand for? Are you willing to stand by what you say you believe in?