Tag: Be You

How Many Times?

It’s happened to so many of us, you are sitting down focusing on what you are going to say and write, your mind is spinning with words as you come up with a way to present it perfectly, and then, pause, you delete it. If you are like me, this has happened one too many times.


How many times have you started writing a text message only to turn around and delete it? How many times have you spent precious time out of your day to create a blog post only to leave it unpublished? How many times have you bitten your tongue from saying something that you truly wanted to say? My guess is many.


Our thought process, though complex, is very natural. We see or hear something and we have a quick natural response to it inside our heads. When we are having a conversation with someone else, our minds are steadily creating thoughts and branches of thoughts. Your response to what another individual is saying most likely is fairly instantaneous. Your reaction is a true from-the-heart response.


The act of texting someone back and writing a blog post means that you had something that you wanted to say, something that was on your mind or in your heart. This response is authentic and often occurs without prolonged thinking. Whatever you had desired to write was important to you in some way, it had meaning and was genuine. What makes us want to delete something that we believed in and said?


There are many reasons that something we wanted to say will be left unsaid. We might be afraid of judgment, afraid to be vulnerable, worried that someone may disagree, fear rejection, or even that we may hurt someone’s feelings. You started to pour your heart out in a text message that took you several minutes to write just to instantly delete it, you started writing a blog post that will never be seen by another person’s eyes, you don’t reveal 100% of how you truly feel to avoid confrontation with another person.


This type of behavior is natural, yet it is not very positive for our lives. When we have something to say that ends up going unsaid, it puts a barrier between us and those that we love. We are not speaking our minds, which ends up hurting us because we are not truly being who we are. Having to withhold what you want to say is very detrimental to one’s autonomy. Of course, there may be times that we should not speak our minds, especially if it pertains to something that could offend someone. Feeling free to be ourselves is very beneficial to our overall wellbeing.


The next time that you have something to say, let it be known and see where it takes you. As a human being, you have the right to share with others what is on your mind and in your heart. We should not have to feel like we have to sensor everything we say unless, of course, it is something that could hurt another.


Send that text to a long-lost friend, have an open-hearted conversation with your significant other, and publish the blog post that you wrote that you didn’t think was worthy enough to be posted because what you have to say matters. Your words, thoughts, ideas, and feelings are all valid and important. The more that you start to align your actions with your thoughts and keep as close to your authentic self as possible, the more peace that you will attract in your life. Say what is on your mind and in your heart for the things left unsaid will never be known to anyone.

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Truly Love Yourself

I’ve always heard that you have to love yourself before you can truly love someone else. To be honest, I never really believed that until recently. I always thought that I have plenty of love to give, why couldn’t I possibly love someone completely without 100% loving myself first? I have started to realize why.

We are our own worst critics, possibly because we know ourselves as no one else does, also we know all of our faults and our past. I’m sure that many of you have been given a compliment from someone and you appreciated it so much, yet you didn’t believe it to be true. Maybe you were told that you are a good communicator, that you are attractive, smart, and funny. It was great to hear a sincere compliment from someone, but you didn’t feel it inside and that took some of the joy away from those wonderful words. We are putting distance between ourselves and those that we love when we don’t truly love and have confidence in ourselves.

The act of loving oneself is not saying that you love yourself and your qualities 100% of the time. We all have things that we do not like about ourselves, however, the art of loving yourself comes down to forgiving yourself, being at peace with your past, having confidence in who you are and what you stand for, and truly being able to look in the mirror and tell yourself that you are proud and happy of who you have become.

When we love ourselves wholly, it opens up a brand new world for us to find, we are then able to sincerely love someone else as we can finally share pieces of ourselves that we may have hidden before accepting ourselves.
For those of you that love yourself unconditionally, I am very proud of you for reaching this level of confidence and peace. For those of you that have yet to reach this, I have faith that you will get there and I understand because I have been in your place, sometimes I still find myself there, but I can bring myself back.

The biggest step that I feel has been the most helpful in my life is negating every destructive thought with something positive, or at the very least, neutral. For example, if you are working on a challenging project at work and you are ready to give up, instead of telling yourself “I can’t do this, I am always a failure,” negate that thought to tell yourself that you acknowledge that the project is difficult, but you are trying your best and giving it your all. If you feel that you are not good at relationships you might feel that it’s all your fault and that no one loves you. Instead of this approach, negate that thought to tell yourself that you will work hard on communicating your feelings and that sometimes people are not always compatible.

Start working on all aspects of yourself until you are happy and can confidently say that you love yourself. Once you have mastered loving yourself, the whole world opens up to you and it is then that you will truly be ready to love someone else with your entire heart and soul. Get out a journal, or a piece of paper and write down all of the things that you love about yourself and the things that you are grateful for, you will find out what a mood booster this is!

You Are Not Stuck

Have you ever felt that you couldn’t change certain aspects of yourself no matter how hard you tried? Do you keep finding yourself in similar situations over and over again even though you promised yourself that you wouldn’t go down that road again? Sometimes we hit a roadblock in life and it feels like we are truly stuck, it feels like no matter how many moves we make it’s always the wrong one. I’m here to tell you some good news…you are not stuck!

People are generally creatures of habit, we like the same route to work, we keep a similar schedule every day, and habit is what makes us feel comfortable. What if however, our habits are what is holding us back, causing us unhappiness, or giving us a sense of failure. As hard as it can be, you have the power to break the habit, you have the ability to free yourself from being stuck in life, you have the tools to overcome any obstacle that stands in your way. In most cases, the only thing stopping you is yourself!

Often times we make a promise to ourselves to change, we might make a decision to eat better, to exercise, to devote more time to our families, or we may simply be working on a part of ourselves that no longer serves us in life. We may feel that certain situations in life may be preventing us from moving forward and living our true authentic self. No matter how stuck that you feel, there are ways to help you become a better version of yourself and ways to move past certain situations in your life. Sometimes the solution is just taking another step in a different direction, a sort of indirect move that will ultimately land you where you are destined to be.

So often we find ourselves saying that we cannot leave a relationship because we have been with our significant other for many years, we can’t change our job because we don’t know if we have the skills to perform at a job much different than the one have, we cannot stop certain behaviors that we possess even though we know they do not have a positive effect on our lives. Many times we feel stuck because we don’t know what to do, or we may know, but not have the push to actually follow through. As with many things in life, true change takes a lot of hard work and determination.

Part of trying to get through the feeling of being stuck in life is knowing that there will most likely be consequences and sacrifices, but keep your eye on what you are wanting in life, keep your eye on your hopes and dreams and know that if you truly want change in your life, you have the power to do so in some way, shape, or form. Imagine the feeling that you will have when you reach a goal, when you no longer live with the daily burden of feeling trapped. I hope that in some way this gives you a sense of motivation to keep pressing for all that you desire your life to be!

Center Stage

Do you ever feel like the whole world has its eyes on you, watching your every move, decisions, and mistakes?  Well, to put it simply, most of the time they don’t.  We are the center of our lives and we are so in tune with ourselves and what is happening to us that we feel like the whole world is just as in tuned to us as we are.  The truth is, everyone is involved in their own lives and is not focusing, or watching us as closely as we perceive them to be.

There is no one that knows us better than ourselves, we know ourselves very deeply.  We know all of our needs, fears, desires, we have lived through all of our past experiences and that has molded us to create beliefs about ourselves, beliefs that we feel other people have about us also. In reality, other people do not see us how we see ourselves, they do not know us on the same deep level.

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How many times were you surprised by the response of others, where you thought they were thinking one way, but it turns out that it was the opposite?  For example, you have just finished giving a presentation at work, you feel like you blew it, like it was a failure, you think of all of the things that you forgot to say, yet when it’s over, you get amazing feedback from your coworkers.  Think of when you got a haircut that you didn’t like, or a minor imperfection that you have that you feel like the whole world notices, think of how many times you have brought those minor imperfections up to people and they respond by saying “Oh, I didn’t even notice until you said something!”  All of these examples show that we are entirely more focused on ourselves than other people are.  

In the world of psychology, there is a concept known as The Spotlight Effect, it basically states that we feel like we are being watched and observed far more than is actually happening.  I know that as a teenager I felt like I was always in the spotlight, always being observed and judged, but so did others of my age.  I still feel this way sometimes now as an adult, but I am so much more relaxed and I try to live life for me and not worry what others are thinking or saying about me.

I hope that this post has helped you in some way and that it reminds you to live your own life freely, be 100% you, and do what you love.  You are at the center stage of your own life and your audience couldn’t see you in a more brighter light!

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The Magic that Happens Just by Being You

Be yourself…that sounds easy right? After all, we are living everyday as ourselves, or are we? I am sure that a lot of us can think of a time or times in our life where we didn’t stay true to ourselves whether it be due to stigmas in society, peer pressure, fear, whatever it may be, it prevented us from being our authentic self. I believe that for many of us, we don’t realize how often we “stray” from ourselves. For example, we could hold back on saying something in a meeting, limit sharing our thoughts, feelings, and opinions with friends and family, or not sticking up for what we believe in.

It seems as though many of us have this innate fear of being seen as different, being judged, fear of trusting and opening up, fear of failure, not being loved, so many other reasons that prevent us from being our true selves. One factor that I have noticed especially in myself is that once I let go of my fears, the world opens up to me. This of course, is not always easy to do, but when we start to love ourselves, boost ourselves the way we so easily boost others, say what we feel, and ask questions, that’s when the magic happens!

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We can learn to be ourselves by analyzing the way that we approach people and situations that happen to us in life. We can pay more attention to our interactions with family, friends, coworkers, others in general. Are we saying what’s on our mind and in our hearts? Are we asking questions when we are worried about something instead of believing that we already know the answer? Do we stick up for what we believe in? Do we push ourselves to do the best that we can in life? We can be conscious of the moments and situations where fear takes over and use them as opportunities to slowly start putting ourselves out there. Overtime, this can become second nature.

As with a lot of aspects of life, we cannot control what others do and say, only how we handle ourselves in these circumstances. There will be people that judge and form opinions about us, but I personally have felt that the freedom that comes from being your true self far outweighs any backlash or fears. When you allow yourself to be open, vulnerable, fearless, you open up so many windows of opportunity in the areas of life and personal growth. I have found that living my authentic self has decreased my worry and anxiety and has let me grow and develop as an individual. Remember, you are amazing and beautiful just as you are…let it shine!!

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