Be Honest

Honesty is and will always be the best policy. When you’re honest with yourself and those that you’re involved with, you will create better situations for yourself and them. In today’s society honesty is being misconstrued into other things such as hate, someone’s “opinion” or jealously, which can be very true sometimes, that’s why it’s important to keep honest people that you trust around you but it seems as though we are doing the opposite. It seems like we are afraid of honesty and we are moving further away from it which then leads to pushing those away that are honest with us. Social media doesn’t make it any better because now we have the ability to create these false realities of our lives on the internet and make “friends” through it who are doing the same, which then leads us to feel like we aren’t alone. The reality of it is you are alone, and you’ve pushed the people away that have been honest with you to replace them with people who truly don’t know what you’re like besides what you post. The point that I’m making is, it’s easy to call someone a hater or jealous when they make claims about you or if they’re giving you advice that you might not want to hear. It’s even easier to listen to the positive things people say on social media and rely on that feedback instead of the previous but in all honesty they do not know you and you do not know them, but the feeling of someone having something positive to say about you is like a drug, an addiction that’s hard to subdue. Don’t get caught up with this virtual life and forget that you have a REAL life where not everything is going as perfect as you picture on social media, be honest with yourself. 

TIME

Time is the most valuable thing we have to offer as human beings, it takes time to unlock your souls desires, time to make money, and time to build real relationships amongst many other things. So how we spend our time and what we do with our time matters. This is a simple concept to grasp but it’s hard for many to understand it because we still tend to misuse our time, so let me make it easier for you to grasp; we don’t spend our money on things we don’t like, we walk right past the things that don’t interest us because it’s not worth our hard earned money, and if we do make the mistake by buying something that doesn’t fulfill our desires, most of the time we have a grace period to return it back, so we do and we’re able to get our money back. The point that I’m making is you can NEVER get the time you’ve spent back, you cannot put your time into someone or something and then ask for it back after you’ve realized it didn’t fulfill your desires. This is why it’s important to spend your time wisely because it’s the best thing you have to offer, HOWEVER if you don’t value yourself or your time you spend it frivolously. Learning how to spend your time will help with how you value others’ time as well, which will then create healthy balances and relationships because no time will be wasted. You become how you spend your time, it begins to wear on you as time goes by, so don’t spend your time learning countless life lessons over and over again because one day you’ll look around and realize that all the time you’ve spent has only gained you life lessons and you have nothing to show for it. Learn to spend your time like you spend your money, “budget” it so that you, nor anyone else will have the ability to misuse it. 

Move With Purpose

You deserve everything you want out of life, no matter what you’ve been through and no matter what you’ve done, therefore you should always go for what you want. The jobs you want, the type of relationships you want, the goals you want to reach etc. are all tangible to you. No matter what it is nothing should stop you from manifesting it and going for it. The problem lies in the fact that most people really don’t know what they want, they’re just walking around blindly with open ended ideas in their heads and no sense of direction. Direction and intention is everything in life, before you put your time and energy into anything or anyone you should have some sort of set outcome or idea as to what it is you want to accomplish or how you want the situation to benefit you. With no sense of direction and no intentions you’re opening up a pathway for anything to happen. If something does happen and it impacts you in a negative way, you’ll be the only person to blame because you didn’t know what you wanted from the circumstance to begin with. When you know what you want and your vision is clear it’s easier to distinguish between the people and things that will help you get what you want, which then leads to less time being wasted. Are things always going to be perfect and go your way? No, but you still have a vision for yourself and if things go wrong all you’ll need to do is change certain things in order to still grasp that set outcome for yourself. This week I want to encourage everyone to figure out what it is they want in each area of their lives and map out a plan in order to get it. Now a days we settle for too much and wonder why we aren’t happy but it starts with throughly knowing what you want in order to make yourself happy. 

Soul vs. Flesh

Wanting the best for yourself doesn’t always feel right, it’s like you’re in a constant battle with feeding your flesh and feeding your soul at the same time. The things that are good for your flesh are almost always temporary, those are the things that you bring temporary satisfaction such as; sex, changing your appearance, drugs, or having a few drunken nights out. Yes, these things are great they will send adrenaline through your body or ease your pain, which will then make you feel alive again, but when it all wears off you’ll still be left with the person you were before, this is why it’s important to feed your soul more than you feed your flesh. But the problem is you can’t do that if you can’t distinguish flesh from soul, in order to do that you have to know yourself and know what’s best for you mentally, spiritually and emotionally. I don’t have the answers for each individual because we are all different, but what I do know is, is if something is best for you your mind should feel at ease, you won’t feel like you have to control everything that’s going on around you, you’ll be able to let go and let life take you on your destined path. Even with your emotions running wild and the world falling apart around you’ll still feel grounded in yourself, that’s when you’ll know. So, take the time to find the things that are best for you, there’s no need to rush through life nor should anyone have to settle for mediocre because they feel like they are pressed for time. 

Vulnerability

Letting your guard down starts with yourself, trusting that whatever happens after you let your guard down is meant to happen and learning not to take things personally. A lot of us walk around with our guards up which leads to people only partially knowing this facade of you, but that only hurts your vulnerable side, the side that you need nourished, the side that needs to be loved and taken care of. I believe that we are all guilty of this including myself, this is one of the hardest things to master because we all want to protect our feelings rather than feel our feelings, but feelings are meant to be felt. Many of us have been through a lot of things in our lives and we feel like since we have our “tolerance” for people is lower than others but it should be the opposite, we should be sharing our testimonies and being the most open with others. If you haven’t noticed we learn and grow the most through experiences therefore if we have our guards up all the time we aren’t experiencing or sharing our truest emotions. I’m not saying that we should open up to everyone, I’m saying that sometimes the people that we have our guards up the most with might be the people who are most worthy of seeing what’s on the other side, you never know what you can learn about yourself through others observations of the real you nor should you be ashamed of the real you. The more you hide yourself the more you’ll lose yourself along the way, that then leads to the feeling that no one understands you, but no one will ever understand you if you don’t reveal your true self. We all want something real but it starts with being real. 

Content

Be content with who you are today and be content with what you have today. Often times people brag about what they have or flaunt materialistic things to depict that they’re more “successful” in some type of way, when the majority of the time they don’t really have it like that they say they do. Don’t fall in this pattern because fake success gets you no where fast and further from real success. In today’s society it’s normal for us to go on social media and see what someone else has and think to ourselves like damn I wish a had just a piece of that or if that was me I’d do this or I’d do that, but we have to learn to stop thinking like that because each time we do that we put ourselves in a box. You shouldn’t want the same thing that some else has, because if it was supposed to be yours you’d have it, but you don’t. Comparison is the thief of joy, you cannot compare someone else’s success to your own, your success will look completely different than others, but if you continue to compare yours to someone else’s you’ll never know your own success because you’re too busy measuring up what someone else has instead of focusing on your own possessions. Theres no way you’ll be blessed with more than what you have now if you’re not content with who you are and what you have at the moment. If you want success for yourself you’ll have to realize that success comes from goals that YOU set for yourself and each goal that you meet will be an accomplishment. Set more goals for yourself so that you can focus on your own success and reaching YOUR full potential not someone else’s. 

People Pleaser

The more and more you evaluate yourself you’ll begin to pick up on the little things you do unknowingly. I’ve noticed that “people pleasing” is an automatic thing we do these days. People pleasing is when someone has an emotional need to please others often at the EXPENSE of their own needs and desires. People pleasing does not get you any where for a long term, whether that be at work, socially, with family or someone you’re interested in, you’ll eventually show your true colors no matter what. It’s easy to confuse people pleasing with caring for someone or loving someone and I totally understand that, but when you are putting aside your needs and desires you’re losing yourself for the benefit of someone else, no job nor any relationship/friendship is worth that. I understand that there will be times where you’ll have to put your pride aside and make a compromise but that’s two totally different things. The point that I’m making is, each time you put yourself and your needs aside you’re slowly losing bits and pieces of yourself along the way, therefore when you get to where you wanted to be through “people pleasing” you’re not even yourself at the end of it all. Not everyone is going to like you, not everyone is going to love you, nor will everyone understand you, but that’s for you to do for yourself. Like yourself, love yourself, and understand yourself so much that your values, your needs and desires come first and in any situation where they are challenged, you’d think twice before putting them aside to please someone else.