Positive Posture Day 2

I have been recently diagnosed with fibromyalgia. The doctor that consulted with me on the condition says that usually this condition occurs in people that had traumatic childhood ordeals and then later in life experience physical trauma like whiplash in a car accident. The brain somehow start to connect the two and start sending signals throughout the body that cause painful muscle inflammation, depression, and chronic fatigue. Improving my life’s position is not just physical but mental as well. As I start digging deeper into my past,  I realize that all the pain that I stuffed down is now affecting my health and I want to be healed. I need to be truly free of the past.

Before, I thought the negative self talk was a result of me being mentally lazy to challenge myself to think positive. Now I know it’s because I still have some things in my past that I want to resolve but need to just be set free from. I can hear the answer in my heart as I head towards the next chapter in my life and that is “perfect love covers a multitude of sins”. I need to let God’s love cover me and my sins, and let His love be enough.

40 Days to Positive Posture

This morning I read a quote by an unknown author on Instagram, “Don’t quit, if you are tired just take a nap”. I know that it was only 10:15 a.m. but I had a pretty bumpy night. I went to bed around 2 a.m. and a few hours after that my youngest got up twice to lay down between hubby and me. Although I took her back to bed, she returned and that second time I was too tired to get back up again. With their school schedule, sleeping in is not an option. Around 7:30 a.m., I woke up and put on a happy face (no one wants to wake up to a grouch), and said “good morning”. It was time to put on my Mommy hat as I swept through the house, cutting on lights and making sure everyone was up and out of bed. I was able to push forward without showing fatigue. As soon as they left, I tried to start the day but could feel the bed calling me for thirty more minutes.

Sleep is important to living a healthy and disciplined lifestyle. In the world we live in today, everyone is looking for a way to gain an edge. They think they need more time, so they burn the midnight oil trying to gain the edge. That’s ironic because going to bed before 12 a.m. and getting 8 hours of sleep actually helps your body and mind to function at its best. I know, by doing the opposite, I was creating an environment that I feared the most. In my opinion, sleep deprivation results in an unproductive and irritable edgy person. Some of you may agree with me but some of you are saying “not me”. For real…look up edge and what did you find? Yes, it can mean a favorable margin, but it also means the border of something. Many of us push ourselves to the line, not thinking that it will have a negative impact on the bottom line.

For the next 40 days, I will be taking a journey to positive posture. My late night last night opened my eyes to one area to concentrate on, sleep and rest. It has its place on this journey, but so does exercise and family.

Proper posture has not been the norm amongst us young people. We have heard of having a strong core, but we don’t always stop to think of what that could mean. I am taking this journey, because I believe in giving myself a second chance. Sometimes we look at ourselves and our lives and feel, this is just me. We work on our career goals of making more money. We work on relationship goals and learn to make time for people that are important in our lives. Sadly, we even get lost in our titles and use it to define our lives. We are created for more than that. God has a purpose for our lives, but most importantly, He loves us and created us to have fellowship with Him. I did not know what that meant for a long time. I was doing good things, but I measured my success by those good things. In the midst of accomplishing all of those good things, I woke up. I had taken the first step of understanding that Jesus died for my sins. I had taken the next step, and pushed past my fears of the Holy Spirit. It was the final step of loving someone sacrificially that opened my eyes to my fragile humanity. That was the first time that I realized, I can’t do this alone.

Question time: What does having a strong core mean to you? What does sleep have to do with having a strong core?

The Love Story

First, Hollywood has painted an unrealistic picture of romance. Sometimes life can get messy and no one tells us how to clean it up. That is not romantic to me.

In college, I honestly believed that focusing on my relationship with God would be the thing that would draw my husband to me. God was and still is my very law of attraction. I believe that as I draw nearer to Christ, then everything right would draw near to me. My family laughed and laughed saying, “what would he do? Knock on the door and say the Lord sent me.” And that’s just what happened.

During my junior year, I started reading Ruth in the Holy Bible. My study of it was very casual but interesting. Every time I opened it up, the same guy would knock on my door. This young man and I had been acquaintances but this peculiar incident only confirmed that God had sent my Mr. Right. Don’t get me wrong, this was an extremely handsome young man. He must have found me irresistible because he kept coming around. It was not Hollywood…but what would you call it? I had never heard of an incident like this. The young man and I remained friends for years; in fact, our first kiss was five years later after he met my entire family for the first time.

Have you ever experienced an incident where being focused on priorities resulted in even more blessings later on? Let us know by sharing in the comment section.

Focus

Life can be full of “TO DOs” or “I don’t feel like it”. Isn’t it wonderful that feelings do not get to vote? We may never feel it is the right time, but we learn to make time for the things that are important.

Focus requires strength. It is having wisdom to say “no” to ideas and things that will pull us away from our goals. For example, my big goal of cleaning the house was broken up into small goals. The kitchen was the first small goal and when I was tempted to put away all the clothes on the sofa, I would tell myself “that is later after this goal.”

With focus came consistency. When I was scattered all over the place, I constantly had inconsistent results because of my inconsistent actions. Don’t get me wrong, life happens and I choose to put some things aside. I will never put things before people. When I was applying to grad school, my mother in law wanted a home cooked meal with family and friends for her birthday. I was studying for the GRE and working on Essays, but took time to make her feel special.

By building my focus muscle, I learned how to be consistent (even when everything around me was falling apart). I had to choose in advance that my mood would not determine my consistency. I have to constantly reevaluate things and remind myself of priorities and choose to place energy there.

How do you build your FOCUS muscle?

Small Distractions

It amazes me that small things can become major threats to any plan.  Have you ever heard anyone admit that they allowed small distractions to interfere with obtaining important goals? One of those things is having too many things going on at the same time. How could working on several things prevent you from winning? I can only share from my experience. It caused me to be scattered and to spread myself too thin. It was one of those things. I was doing a lot of work but accomplishing very little. I had to stop and ask myself, “Why can’t I master this specific task?”

It wasn’t until recently that I experienced using the best strategy in accomplishing huge goals. I began to focus my attention on a few things at a time. For example, my entire house needs organizing. Even the thoughts of tackling it were overwhelming, but the day I chose to do “only the kitchen first” is the day my home started to be transformed. I was always doing a little each day, but it was a little here and a little there. I decided to aim all of those efforts in one direction and was able to see results immediately.

Did life stop while I worked on one major goal at a time? No it did not. I still did the regular routine things of cooking, washing clothes, working, dishes, etc.  The thing that I had to stop was the unplanned organizing of small areas throughout the house. Those small distractions had to stop. Instead I focused on finishing one huge area at a time.

This strategy will work differently for each thing, but the concept is the same. For example, you may have a party you want to pull together. There will be lots of little things to do, but jumping in and doing a lot of small things will present certain challenges. Have you ever taken a trip to the grocery store and returned home without the main thing? Well, I have and it was not fun. You must plan first, before getting started. Creating the checklist and a time to complete each will help you prioritize your time and efforts.

Can you think of areas where being distracted may sabotage success? Share your thoughts and let us know what you learned from that experience.

Your Success

When I attended college, I had made a vow to finish college and to try to do so debt free, even if it meant working at McDonalds to pay for it. I was to finish no matter how long it took me. I found a way to concentrate on the efforts or the WORK it took to graduate and not the end outcome alone of just getting the paper. I asked myself, what would it take to attend and obtain a college degree?  I was a first generation college graduate. Since I had not seen it done, I had to figure it out on my own.

Success is possible for everyone. When I say success, I mean realistic goals are attainable. What is your definition of success? I really want to know. Please share in the comments section. Do you define success by your relationships or by what money can buy? Have you adopted someone else’s definition of success and consequently their goals as well?

Look, you must create your own definition of success. When you have created that definition, you can achieve success. I was able to graduate with the equivalent dual degree in only four years by focusing on the work I had to do. I was able to serve freely without the worry of college debt. I define success as matriculating through life while making friends along the way. Have you created your definition of success. You can move forward on your goals. This is a journey you have to be 100% committed too. You are worth it!

 

Relationship Goals

Let’s talk about relationship goals. I am definitely not a relationship guru, but I have learned quite a bit throughout the years. Friendship is the best way to start any relationship but healthy friendships can’t develop if you approach them “looking for the ONE”. That kind of attitude can drive people away.

Here are examples of relationship goals that some of us make.
Poor goal:
I want to be married

Better goal:
I want to have the invaluable qualities of being loving and sharing so that I can make a great mate.

Best goal:
I want to be the best person that I possibly can be with intrinsic qualities of loving and respecting myself and others because it is what’s right.

Out of these examples, the best goal focuses on what you need to do for living, not for obtaining a relationship with a person. Before I met my husband, the quote that revolved in my head “If I am busy doing what I need to do and he is busy doing what he needs to do, then God will make sure our paths cross at the right time.” It did just that and when we met, he stood out as a genuine and vivacious young man. In my opinion, the attraction got in the way of friendship. Although we only spoke on the phone after we first met, things were revealed about his other relationships that made me not trust him. Because he valued our friendship, he asked if we could start over and this time he would be above board with me.

Most of my friends made commitments to be celibate until marriage, and hanging out was so much easier without the pressure of sex. Joking and talking with my female and male friends was the highlight of my college life. Although we all attended different churches, we all got along so well together. Our outings were huge groups of us young people just hanging out. It was nice being myself and not having the pressure of pretending so that I can get someone to like me.

I think I had so many friends because I knew how to laugh at myself. If it wasn’t too serious, I would relax and enjoy the company. Not all people will look out for your best interest, so I had to put a lot in the preliminary part of friendship. What is the preliminary? Well I chose to surround myself with people that helped me to be a better version of me. I loved everybody and could be friends with anyone but NOT everybody wanted to share the paths I chose to take and that is ok. Part of guarding my heart is contributed to that old saying “choose your friends wisely”. I’m glad I was paying attention.

I don’t believe in “what ifs”, so I do not want to relive those days. I made the most of it. It was real life…full of the good, bad and the ugly. I understood that life is made of moments that we can never get back. I did not limit myself to just enjoying time with friends, but enjoyed life even if it was solo. If I wanted to have a nice dinner alone, I enjoyed myself. If I wanted to take a long walk in the park, I enjoyed myself. All because I decided that a relationship did not define me or my importance. I embraced the moments and I’m so thankful that I did.

Happy New Year

Welcome and Happy New Year! Welcome to the place where we learn to live royally and victoriously while learning to live the life we are given. This lifestyle blog is designed to enrich and encourage everyone, not just the readers but the writers too.

I am making it all up on the spot, so bear with me. Let’s start January off with a theme: Dare To Dream. Let’s choose that because we want to make this the best year yet. Why YET? Because the best is always yet to come. Alright, I’m getting somewhere. Next, let’s start with a Dare To Dream Challenge. For this to be the best year yet, we must first PLAN for it to happen. So your New Year’s Question is, what would need to happen for this to be your best year yet?

The next post will contain our next steps. See you soon.