LIFE IN COLOR
Find What Lights You Up & Romanticize Your Life
Welcome to this week’s Substack! In this week’s blog, we will dive into the world of ~magic~! Okay not the kind that deals with cards, disappearing acts, or fire. But instead of finding the fire that f*cking ignites our souls. How can you romanticize your everyday life and make the mundane into the movie that is your life? Wear your favorite color, surround yourself with beautiful things, and prove you have a life worth living! (I apologize in advance for all the “f*cking”, I’m just amped for this topic)
INSERT MORE JOY
To feel more joy, we must first know what makes us happy. For example, the sun is my power source. When I am basking in the warmth of the sun, making the colors around me bright, it puts the biggest smile on my face. Now, in those cold winters, stormy, gloomy days just overcast as f*ck outside, I have to become the sun. What the sky lacks, I make up for in bright, colorful outfits, embodying the feeling the sun would’ve provided. I love to take walks, read, start my day with a coffee and most of all choose to smile walking down the street. The things that make me happy will be different from yours, but I challenge you to break the routine and figure out what it is that makes you feel warm and fuzzy inside. Maybe it’s playing with your dog as soon as you wake up or putting on an outfit that screams “I am getting shit done today while looking fly as f*ck” or maybe going to a workout class. By figuring out what makes you, you, then you can start to embrace a life where every day can be your favorite day!
The thing that prevents us from living fruitful lives is outside noise. The phones that take us away from being present, the noise of a busy city, long to-do lists, and the relationships that drain us of our energy. We give so much of our precious time to things that don’t fuel us instead of doing the things that give us life source! Humans are funny because most of the time we know the solutions to our problems but we choose not to follow the equation, and then we complain about feeling anything but joy, wondering how we got there. It’s a silly little game we get sucked into playing, and I want you to break the cycle!
HOW TO BREAK THE CYCLE
Okay, so you are stuck in a loop, you are doing the same thing over and over, expecting different results. I hate to break it to you, but to achieve something new and really stick to that change, you have to accept it with every fiber of your being. If you want to stop waking up tired and drained from the never-ending to-do list you have to believe you are capable and deserving. I’m here to tell you that you are deserving and f*cking worthy of a life that puts the biggest smile on your face.
You can start by trying to adopt a new mindset, maybe challenge some thoughts that are trying to convince you to snooze the alarm. But no matter how much you try to convince that brain of yours, the longest journey to take is from your mind to your heart. You can sit there, blue in the face every day, trying to think your way into being happy, but the best way to feel it is in the body. Convincing yourself can be great, but f*cking being about it is how you are gonna feel joy in the long-term. Don’t think about not snoozing the alarm, choose to get out of bed when the time comes, don’t convince yourself to work out, and start just getting changed for the gym. The only way to get unstuck is to take baby steps toward your goal.
HEAL TO BEGIN
To meet our goals, a level of healing needs to be done. This is why there is such a prevalent push for therapy today because having someone guide us to heal in a way that is beneficial to our specific needs is so underrated. But not everyone has access to therapy and for that reason alone, I find it so important to talk about these subjects. Your healing journey won’t be the same as mine, but one golden thread is that we both want to do the damn thing. Something in us aspires for more, and we can make that happen regardless of a therapist or not. The thing about healing that people get wrong is thinking it is just becoming aware of our triggers, but it is the aftermath of awareness that matters most. I used to think healing was just the confrontation of what is holding us back, previous limiting beliefs, understanding our triggers, and recognizing what in our childhood shaped us this way. But now I’ve come to realize that healing is ongoing; it is what we do with this information after learning about our triggers. It is giving our younger selves support and love constantly, building self-reliance, and practicing in real time a new way to react after behaving in a way that no longer serves us.
The measurement by which I know I am healing is how quickly, after being triggered, I can come to an awareness of my reaction. I can emotionally regulate in real time and quickly atone for how I just behaved. For example, you get quick-tempered when someone cuts you off in traffic, so you slam on the brakes, feel anger in your body, and honk your horn. An individual who isn’t actively participating in life from a place of love may let that snowball into ruining their day. They complain, pout to the world that it happened, and harbor anger that lingers for hours. But someone who is actively trying to heal will take this as a test, to get in touch with their body, breathe, let it go, and remind themselves with a little affirmation that the day is still an unfolding masterpiece. I mean two completely different frameworks for how to live life and I think we all would like to master the second one. But I wish it were as simple as just saying that is how we live life now, and from here on out, every time we are triggered, we just react that way. Instead, it is a practice in real-time that we don’t have to succumb to the instincts our mind and body feel at that moment. It is a skill that has to be at your forefront when confronted with fight or flight feelings, and recognizing in the moment when it comes up is the first step. Then comes the reminder to pause, this is the part I find to be the most difficult, here’s why…
WHY PAUSING IS SO DAMN DIFFICULT
We like to validate our own emotions. We like to reinforce our attitudes because it gives us a feeling that we are right to feel that way. It is easier to say “I’m upset because” than to say “I just got upset but now I need to recenter”, living in that victim mode is addicting as f*ck. Pausing in real time to realize “hmm, maybe I shouldn’t be this worked up” is giving in to something more difficult to do. We humans like easy, if we can order online instead of talking to the person at the counter we will, if we can send a text rather than call to tell someone we miss them we will, and if we can for the love of god sit on the couch and sulk rather than get off the f*cking couch we will. The truth of the matter is that choosing to live a life from love is more difficult, we are programmed and hard-wired to live from doubt, fear, and worry. Creating a new framework from which to live requires hard work every day to practice, and I argue that would require an unusual amount of pausing that feels unnatural to us.
Pausing = acknowledgment and trust me we don’t want to acknowledge when we overreact or scroll a little too long because then that means guilt and shame come along with that. We don’t have to live this way, though! What if all a pause meant was a break in time? There is no other connotation or meaning to it other than just taking a moment to breathe. If we can remember this, the next time we are triggered then baby, it is smooth sailing. Become aware and write a new narrative, one that supports your goal of feeling joy every day. Pausing might be the hardest thing to master, but once you realize that this amazing tool is at your disposal anytime you get triggered, the real magic happens.
If any part of you resonates with the stories I shared, the overall message of healing consider tuning in for my weekly blog. I am just a girl with a big heart who wants to share the very things that have helped me lead a life of love. I appreciate you taking the time to get whatever you needed out of this and keeping an open heart & mind to the possibility of healing your limiting beliefs. Until next time, treat yourself with kindness <3
