I collect these postings all the time because they speak to me. And because of all the voices I need to
speak about them to get them out of my head. LOL
Here goes;
Focus on what's important.
Make sure you zoom in on the good things. The best shots are sometimes fuzzy because we refuse to focus where and when necessary.
Capture the good times.
I am forever telling people to put down their cameras and enjoy the moment. Had I taken pictures in Hawaii swimming in the bay with wild dolphins one morning I never would have swam with wild dolphins. I would have taken pictures of swimming with wild dolphins. Sometimes you need to be in the moment and just live.
Develop from the negative.
As a picture develops so do we. We learn every single day, every thought, every interaction can be taken as a learning, a development, tool. Or we can ignore it and develop nothing.
If things don't turn out, take another shot.
Don't stop trying for that perfect shot, why would you? You have a lifetime to get it, take your time, focus, and go for it time and time again.
I love this post. I have seen this comment floating around for years but it still impacts me. What are you striving for? The better job, the perfect husband, the athleticism you had when you were younger, money, fame? What do you think all of that boils down to in one word in your head? I think, "happiness".
Those moments in time where we are sitting on a dock on a chilly fall morning, coffee in hand, blanket wrapped around us. Maybe that's it, that's happiness at it's best. Maybe you have a dog sitting beside you, maybe your child, or a spouse. Maybe you just hear them off in the distance. Or you hear nothing but a loon. In that moment you have happiness. Now focus on that.
I am not saying don't have goals. But do all the things I listed above (money, job etc) mean happiness or are they just goals you are setting because you think you don't have enough? Did you have enough sitting on the dock in the morning with a coffee and a blanket? I bet you did. Makes you think a little more doesn't it. Keep it simple. It's okay to have goals but make sure they aren't defining your happiness or postponing your happiness. You hear people say it out loud, I will be happy when I fit back into my old jeans, lose 25 pounds, get that promotion. No, you can be happy right now, in this moment and the rest, it's all just stuff.
I don't suggest anyone run away like this one above says to test the theory. I don't actually think you have to DO, any of these things. In fact you probably already have and just haven't stopped to see who was right beside you. So go back and think about each of these times and focus on who was there with you during them all and you know who to keep in your life.
There was a time where significant tragedy almost struck my home. It was an emergency and life threatening. It was years ago and it was full on trauma time. There were three people involved, my husband, my best friend Brenda and my Father (which comes with my Step Mother and Brother). The rest were just fluff. I don't mean to belittle them as people, it's not what I am doing. They were here for me but who I needed was only that small group. My husband because he is who I always need, my best friend because it's who I always call, and my family because they fight for me. No matter what else might be going on with my fucked up family if you fuck with one of us, you are doomed.
Don't get me wrong. There are more people in my life I consider important, there are. They are the icing on the cake of my life. They are the people that say, if they lived closer, I would have had my best friend call to surround me. That list, husband, bestie, family. That's really all you need. Maybe you haven't found the spouse yet, that's okay. There is nothing wrong with a bestie and family to keep a girl happy.
I do have time. But it's a definite waste of it, my time that is. I resent people who don't like me. I resent people who don't care about me, people who don't treat me right and I stew on it. And it's a complete waste of my time. So technically I have time and I am wasting it on these people. They aren't wasting it on me I would bet. I bet they don't give me a second thought. Wanna know how I know this? I stalk their FB and Twitter and I see them living life to the fullest and it makes me crazy. Wanna know why it makes me crazy? Because they are happy without me and what does that say about how important I am to the world?
Actually, come to think of it.....it says jack shit about my importance to the world. It speaks to how important I think I am and that's not important enough. Even if it takes to my last breath, I will work on this until the day I can say I don't long for the haters to love me back. When I can say that and truly mean it, I will have come full circle. If you feel the same way I hope you see you are just human, like me.
We shouldn't waste our selves on the haters but we slip up and we de-value ourselves by doing so. As long as we do that less and less as we learn then we are making progress in this crazy thing called life.
A couple of years ago a girlfriend of mine said something really mean about my marriage, or so I was told second hand. After quickly studying our friendship and seeing so much negativity coming my way from this girl I realized in all likelihood she probably did say it. It was plausible and it was downright wrong. Mean spirited, de-valuing, attention getting bullshit. And I fell for it hook line and sinker. I went rage crazy on her ass. I got as mean spirited, de-valuing and attention getting as she did in that moment, I sunk right to her level and I paid her back in spades. I told people every wrong thing she ever did to me and some of them got filled in on things she said about them too. I got her back.
I have regretted it since the minute I hit send on the email that was my master payback plan.
I don't entirely regret losing her friendship. Until she can actually tell me why she is so negative and work on it, we shouldn't really be friends.
I regret making a fool of myself. Which is exactly what I did with a lot of people who never should have been involved. I dragged them all into a situation that was basically between three people. Me, Miss Negative (about me) and the person she told the story too. I brought in 9000 other people. Why? Because a supposed trusted friend said something bad about me and I let it MAKE me bad. I wasn't bad before she said it and I wasn't bad after. But I let it de-value me and in doing so I needed 9000 people to tell me they loved me and she was wrong. Most of them did. A lot of them hid in the grass. Some people I really needed love from showed me their true colours and blended really well into the grass.
I learned a lot that day within hours of hitting send. I learned a lot about how much value I had and how much I needed outside sources to value me. I learned I had nothing but superficial value of myself. Had I placed more value in myself I would have just started to retreat from this friendship with Miss Negative and that would have been that. I would have seen her comments for what they were, bullshit about her not me, and I wouldn't have cared.
Maybe due to the long length of friendship I should have valued us both, her and me, more and simply contacted her and tried to talk it through. But I couldn't see past the rage over wanting to defend my superficial, so shaky value. THAT made me strike out, not her. I did that. I shouldn't have.
I regret sending that message more than I can explain.
Now that you see the story above is it any surprise this girl decided after we tried to re-friend not to do so, to not trust me? I told 9000 people she was a piece of shit. Would you want to be my friend? I am not saying she didn't do anything wrong, I am asking would you want to be MY friend after my reaction to her behaviour? I wouldn't.
So she had every right to terminate the toxic relationship that was me. We were at a place where she was negative where I was concerned and I was going to rip her head off for it every time. I don't know if she even sees the negativity part....yet. I hope in time she does as it means she grew from this incident as well but for now, all she knows is I lashed out badly. So she protected herself by leaving our friendship.
If I valued myself more I would never have second guessed my needing to walk away. And yet I do it all the time. I think because we have a history and a long friendship I would like to have seen us really work through it. Even though I am not sure she's even capable of that. I don't think she sees the volume of negativity sent my way. If she did she might have seen the explosion coming. She was blindsided by it because she was clueless to her own behaviour. And that's okay. It's where she's at in life.
Would I take her back as a friend? I am not sure. If I valued myself more would I want too? It's why I haven't pushed the topic. I am not sure she is capable of the depth I need to make it work and I deserve that depth. I value myself enough to know I deserve people in my life who can say why they behave the way they do.
Hey, look at me. I have more value than I thought. Atta girl.
God how this one speaks to the entire situation.
I accept blame for what I did in RE-acting to all this nonsense. I do. You know why I do? Because I have studied my reaction to what happened over and over. I needed to really get to the bottom of why I did react how I did. I couldn't live with myself not understanding what happened. I was so depressed at the time and lost because of all this. I took course after course on mindfulness and self awareness. I had to find happiness. I had to understand why she hurt me. Why me? What was wrong with me? Why oh why lord? Why me?
Thankfully, today, because the matter took me to my knees I am able to say why it happened. What the problem REALLY was? And how it should have gone. I likely will never repeat something like that again. I don't RE-act anymore, I RE-group and RE-spond only where necessary. I now know things about myself I would never have seen back then. I couldn't. I was blind to my rage and hurt.
This situation gets a lot of my attention, seems like I talk about it a lot and it's gotten a lot of my time. And it has, because it has been such a journey. I refuse to hide my head in the sand and pretend it didn't happen. It wasn't the best journey but it's been life's lessons at their greatest. People rallied around her, some me, friends were lost, friends were gained. And all of it with all these online, instant gratification tools to be done on. (Blocking people is plain hurtful for the record. It's silent bullying). It's just been growing pains as they say, by their best definition, because they hurt like a bitch. And if my talking about it helps one person look at the situation they are in differently then that's great.
I have a saying tattooed on my foot and it says, "To hurt is to learn, To teach is to heal". I believe it to be true.
Through all this I now understand that I am brilliant, I just don't see it often enough. I don't give myself enough value.
I wonder if she does? Do you?
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