My 2019 Message

One thing I’ve reflected on heavily in the beginning days of 2019 has been the aspect of regret, and missed opportunities.

We oftentimes take things for granted; people, opportunities, even material things. We think that people will always be there, that opportunities for growth and positivity will always come our way. We take our journeys through life, and sometimes we anticipate that everything will always go smoothly; however, the fact of the matter is we have to expect that life has a trajectory that we all are unknowing.

I have to say that while I haven’t experienced very many tragedies or traumatic experiences in my life, and I’m grateful for that, there are some that I do have regret. If the tables were turned and things were different, there are situations that I would have ensured I had done differently.

These experiences have taught me to never take opportunities for granted. If you love someone and feel the need to say it, then say it. If you want to do something that’s in your power to do, then do it. If you need to say something, then say it.

Never live with regrets. Try hard to live life without having too many “I should have” and “I wish I did” moments. Take advantage of the good things life gives and take the bad moments as learning situations.

That’s the message I’m taking through 2019.

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Self-Discipline. Self-Love.

Lately I’ve been channeling more ways to love myself, before I put myself in the position to find the passion and love for other things. I feel like in every aspect of life, you need to love yourself in order to have the positive energy to be the best you can for your life (we all want to live our best life, right?). After realizing that even in some of the things I thoroughly enjoy doing weren’t even peeking me up, I realized that my overall happiness with myself, caused me to not even be happy about anything I do. So I started to look myself in the mirror, and tell the blunt truth:

“Girl, you need to get YOURSELF the hell together.”

And thus , we begin the process to self love and respect because I’ve been trippin’.

I watched a video on Will Smith’s Instagram, that eluded to self-love beginning with self-discipline. So I decided to look up what discipline really means.

Discipline:

a : control gained by enforcing obedience or order

b : orderly or prescribed conduct or pattern of behavior

So, with that being in place, I began to dig deeper into how one would need to begin a self-love process, and it’s very relatable to obtaining a level of discipline that relates to this:

“I’m going to enforce and be obedient to the process of loving myself.”

In order to love yourself, you have to teach yourself the discipline. If you do not have self discipline, how can you be obedient enough to love yourself properly?

This can apply to several parts of life. Loving yourself means loving wholly; mind, body and spirit. This can come from even the smallest commitment of obedience and change. For example, choosing to meditate for 5 minutes a day before bed is a small change, but could yield an impactful result, and even expand into a deeper and more meaningful practice with discipline and routine.

I realized that even over time, as I told myself “I’m going to focus on loving myself more”, because my level of self-criticism is through the roof; I really wasn’t truly doing the work needed to commit to that statement. I would find and adapt different hobbies, try to set my days differently, etc. and I realized I was really only touching the surface. I wasn’t really being honest with myself and figuring out how to fix those things. And here I was, wondering why I still woke up some mornings and couldn’t get out of bed because I was so dissatisfied with life.

Now that I’ve been able to really assess my life, and determine what and how I want it to go, I’ve been more apt to begin with setting up obligations and expectations for myself (in small doses), to make myself more disciplined towards living a life where the love for myself shows externally and internally. Without it, you truly cannot be someone who can love other things and people, because you will not be able to find the beauty in life. Begin your journey with assessing how disciplined you are to a change in your life, and that is when you will start obtaining whats necessary to lead the life you will come to love.

🖤

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Things I Now Have Come to Learn about Life

  • There’s no age requirement on having purpose in life. Some people go their whole lives and not know their purpose. But find one, and hold on to it, no matter when you do.
  • You’re not always going to like the hand your dealt, the goal is to play that hand to the best of your ability.
  • Put more energy into your happiness instead of dwelling on the bad stuff.
  • Sometimes, you’ll be really low; lower than you’d ever imagined. But remember, you can only go up from your lowest point.
  • Smile more, frown less.
  • Do not put energy into things that won’t mean you any good. Your energy is too valuable to waste.
  • Tell people you love and appreciate them, even if it’s for the smallest things.
  • Don’t be afraid to be wrong. Being wrong is how you learn.
  • The strongest person in the room, most times is the person holding on with everything they have.
  • Take time to be still. Enjoy the present. Because this moment is only as good as you make it the first time.

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Time.

Stop wasting time.

Stop believing that you always have time.

If you feel a certain way, say it.

If you want to do something, do it.

If you want to be something, become it.

Stop telling yourself there is time for everything, or “I’ll do it next time.”

Opportunities are only as good as the moment they walk into your life; and if you’re not careful, you’ll miss the opportunity to truly enjoy living.

Can you say at this moment, that you’ve taken advantage of all the time you have in this world? I know I can’t; which is why I have to start seizing the day no matter what.

Life comes at you fast, hard and sometimes rough as hell. The key to surviving is living, with no regrets and making this the best life you can, despite the mountains you may have to climb.

🖤

Whitney C.1 Comment

Parenting Moment: The Kid Takes on Pre-K!

On 8/6/18 , I woke up, got Kynnedy ready, and dropped her off at her first day of Pre-K.

She was full of life and confidence; I, internally, was a mess.

I couldn’t help but stay in constant prayer all the way to the school that morning.  I had to make sure that if God heard nothing else from my mouth, he would keep my child safe from harm while at school.

My daughter is now in the public school system.  There is a certain shift in energy and a direct desire to be completely overprotective.  I believe it is due to the type of work that I do.  I receive several calls throughout the school year involving children, and even children being hurt by school personnel.  I hope and pray that one day that is not my child, or that I am not in the position to have to report inappropriate actions by a school professional about my child.

I have reflected over the course of the week, and I believe that you’re never prepared to send your child into the public (or private) school system.  For a child, it is a rite of passage and a new adventure; for parents, we are full of nerves, joy, apprehension, etc. (or at least that was me lol).

To all of those in my position, who’s child is entering the school system world and all it has to offer, we will get through this.  The nerves will subside, the tears will stop, and we will have a successful year!

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Being Available for You

How many times do we clear our calendars, shuffle and scramble to make room for others, but when it comes to our own personal availability, we do not show the same effort?

With jobs, children, significant others/spouses, family, etc., it is very hard to say that you want to carve out time for yourself, when you have so many competing priorities in your life.  So how do you find the time?

You make the time and you commit to yourself.  It’s easy for us to make commitments to other people, even ones that may even be unrealistic to attain, but when it comes to putting forth that same attitude towards our own lives, we tend to draw back and say “no, I don’t need to.”

YES, YOU VERY MUCH NEED TO!  2018 is the year that we are all saying we are “living our best life”, and we all need to actually start doing that.  We need to start making ourselves priority number one.  If not, how can you even try to make time for anyone else to be a priority?  How will you have the energy, the determination or the dedication to put your best foot forward for someone else, when you cannot even show that same energy towards your own life.

I personally get it; I have a husband, a child, nephews, family, and a very demanding job.  I understand fully what it means to put forth all of this energy towards these other things and leave me on the back burner.  My one example of that was when I was working out.  Between all of the other things going on in my life, I neglected the one thing I loved doing, working out.  For six months, I made excuses as to why I was not taking out the time for myself to go to the gym like I should have been, and I suffered greatly for it.  It wasn’t until March when I realized that in order for me to be my best self, I need to make time for myself.  That is when I got my motivation back to go to the gym consistently, and I am seeing major results from it.

Now, I can still manage to give to those who need me most, but I start my day off in the gym, so I am committing to giving to myself first.

For the second half of 2018, we should all adapt a mentality that says that we need to make more time for ourselves.  We need to remember that priority number one is our health, well-being and mental stability; because without those things, how can you do anything or give 100% to anything else in your life, when you refuse to give 100% to yourself?

-Whit C.

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Dealing with Downs

Most times, I enjoy writing things that people could relate to.  I’m not like other bloggers; I don’t have a “niche” per se, I don’t have a specific thing that I want to talk about all the time on my blog.  But, if you could ball my creative side up and put it into a category, I would call it “Life.”  That’s what I enjoy writing about; sometimes my innermost thoughts, sometimes the things that you are thinking but just won’t say, but most importantly I like to write about the things that I feel the person to my left or right of me is going through also, but are too afraid to bring it to light.  I believe that everyone sometimes has similar problems or trials in life, and we all just need someone to sit down and talk to them about it.

So, with that being said, here is mine.  As I’m sure the greater 475+ of you have noticed, I haven’t written much in a period of about 2-3 months.  I haven’t been on my blog, I haven’t promoted anything, and honestly I haven’t even finished the projects that I intent to publish very soon.  Mentally, I haven’t been in the headspace to create anything that I feel people would care about, but I felt like if nothing more, someone could relate to this very post.  Emotionally, I’ve been on a roller coaster.  It’s something that I don’t want to put so much effort into disclosing, but just know that there are times when you can be at your lowest, and in a split second be on a high; eventually, you ride that high all the way back down to a low point, and that could last for a long while.  I feel just like that, like I’ve been riding an emotional wave between high and low for a while now.  Some days I’ll sit down and crank out 10,000 words for my book or have really good content to write for my blog, and another day I may not have the motivation to do anything and that could last for days.

Sometimes, I am at a complete loss on how to move past those down moments.  It’s really not a fun place to be in. I know there may be several people in the world, creatives especially, that may go through these moments of lows when it comes to doing what you’re passionate about. First and foremost, I have to say keep pushing. No low moment lasts forever, and with proper self-care and self-love, you can pull yourself out. Some of the things I enjoy doing are listening to music, meditating, working out or just basically having alone time and thinking about positive things. I re-read affirmations I have written and journal constantly to try and vent my feelings, but also bring myself out of said funk. I urge anyone going through something similar to find what hobbies and activities put you in your happy place, and build off of those.

For me, I am currently in “pull yourself out of it” mode, and with that will come more writing, more content and overall more happiness.

Stay with me, I’ll be just fine. 🖤

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