Attitude and Actions

In life, I’ve found that there are only 2 things we have any real control over; our attitude and our actions. The other stuff is the things that happen in the course of a life. Thing is, those things that happen result from our actions and attitudes about the things that happened before it. Sounds a bit confusing I know, but it really isn’t. I’ll give you a few examples. Say you overslept this morning. Damn it! You immediately jump up pissed off because you woke up late. You rush around like a banshee, forgoing a hot shower and even pass on your morning coffee because you don’t want to hear your supervisor’s ‘damn’ mouth and you know the traffic’s gonna be backed up. You jump in the car, blowing your horn at any and everybody on the highway who is doing anything remotely close to the speed limit and give the finger to the dude who is slowing down in the fast lane. You swing around him just in time for the realization to hit that he was slowing down because a trooper was sitting in the cut and now you have a nice, fat speeding ticket. You finally get to work, exasperated, almost an hour late, and have to listen to your supervisor’s ‘damn’ mouth anyway because “you didn’t even have the decency to call and say you were going to be late.” Here begins the day from hell! Sheesh!!

REWIND- Let’s try it again. You overslept this morning. You already know you’re going to be late because the 7:30 traffic is much heavier than the 7:00 traffic and there’s no getting around that. You call into the office letting your supervisor know you’re going to be half an hour or so late and that you’ll call if anything changes. You jump in the shower then pour a cup of coffee into your travel mug. You knew the traffic would be bad so you relax and turn on the radio for your drive to work; nothing ranting and raving will do about the traffic anyways! You get to the job exactly 35 minutes late, having had your coffee, and laughed at the morning radio show- those guys are hilarious, stop by the supervisor’s office, letting her know you’re in and head off to handle whatever comes your way today. Much better right. Same scenario, different results! These are the things that we decide, and based on the decisions that we make, we determine what happens next.

I’ll share with you a secret- sh** happens! It’s not just you and it’s not personal. Everybody has problems. Best we can do is wake up everyday with the thought that life is gonna throw us some curves and we gotta deal with them. On any given day when everything is going fine and it’s not spectacular, but nothing bad has happened, the average person does not sit around wondering where the problems are. “Why am I not having problems today? Where is my speeding ticket? or Why didn’t I miss the bus?” Doesn’t happen right? But as soon as we break a heel or lose a 10 spot, the world is out to get us and we are just magnets for bad luck. Get a grip! Having a good attitude leads to being solution oriented. Obviously, more serious problems call for more serious solutions and a greater capacity to cope. (For me, this is where meditation comes in.) There’s a saying that “Life is 10% of what happens to us, and 90% how we react to it.” We take so much for granted in our everyday lives but when we have control over our thoughts and actions, and we learn to cope with the sh** life throws at us; we’ll be just fine.

Get your mind right.

Peace-  two fingers, one love!

Life’s Museum

So this morning I’m talking to myself (out loud), and I’m wondering what it would be like if our lives were displayed in a museum. I began thinking about what fills our days; the people we talk to, the things we do, etc. Then as I was watching an episode of Law & Order, a defense attorney made a statement about how our days add up and what it all means and I thought- that’s it! Now it all comes together… If we had to watch our lives on screen or in pictures, or even worse, put it all on display for others to see, we might choose to make better decisions so that our gallery showing is not met with bad reviews.

For me, as I started to think back to some of the events of my life, some of my fondest memories are of singing and dancing with my siblings, closing the family store late at night with my dad, going to the ball park when all the women in my family played softball, holidays, reading stories to my children when they were young then taking naps with them and going to their sports games and other events as they got older. I also recalled with a smile the vacations I’ve taken (I’ve been fortunate in that department) with my parents, with my children, with my man and by myself. I’ve been to some wonderful places and have been able to really enjoy having been there. But what I also began to see was how much time I wasted on things I did not want to do. How many things there were that I would have liked to say no to but did not because I didn’t want people to think bad of me, the days that I cried before I went to my job because I hated it just that much, the worry, the lean days when money was tight or hell- nonexistent, the relationships for the sake of being in a relationship, the bad sex, the mean “leave me the hell alone” days, and my IDGAF (I don’t give a f***) days. Finally, I looked back on things that had very profound effects on me over which I really had no control like the migraines and PMS, the sacrifices for my family, death (especially my dad’s), racism, sexism and learning my purpose. I must admit, looking back, my good days have outweighed the bad and trust me, there’ve been some baaaaadddd days! But what I must also admit is that my exhibit got hella better once I figured out my purpose in life.

If you could walk through my gallery, you would see my journey. You could begin to see how I got to be the woman that I am; the good, the bad, and the ugly. Now I charge you to walk through your own museum, even if it’s painful. But as you make your way through the exhibits on display, try to find the lesson. I can really only think of 2 things that could happen to us where there is just no rhyme or reason, no excuse, no lesson to be learned. For everything else, a message awaits you. Find it, figure it out, make it make sense. It’ll make your future a whole lot clearer. I promise!

Til next time… Peace- two fingers, one love!

Unlimited Possibilities

With everything we talked about this week, I think I’ll just keep it nice and light today. I’ll just mention a concept called unlimited possibilities.

When we talk to children, we often tell them that they can do anything they want to do; be anything they want to be. And when they are young, they believe us. What I’ve noticed is that when I talk to very young children (like 8 and under) they still want to be things like doctors, lawyers, police officers, engineers, etc. They want to build buildings and put out fires. As they get into those middle school years, third grade-ish and up, their stories begin to change. Already, they’ve realized that the world is not friendly to everyone, so they figure they’d better alter their dreams into something more possible for them. Entertainers and ball players lead the pack because those are the things they see they can do without anybody’s help. If they work hard enough to hone their talents, someone will discover them and make them famous and there’s nothing anyone can do about it. There is a huge disconnect.

Problem is, we tell them they can do or be anything, but then we give them no guidance or training to point them in the right direction. Fast forward 20 plus years and you’ve got, well –US! We were those children many years ago. We had lofty hopes and dreams, altered those dreams to make sense in “our world” and are now wherever we are, doing whatever we are doing to make a living. If we’re really lucky, we don’t ABSOLUTELY HATE what we do, but a lot of times we do. We are working too hard, robbing peter to pay paul, putting up with all kinds of bull from employers, etc. just to have a job. If we are lucky enough to have “a career,” it is usually so far removed from anything we would have chosen to do that, while we’re not miserable, we’re not fulfilled.

So I’ll tell you now like we tell kids, you can still do anything you want to do! Like they say, where there’s a will- there’s a way. It doesn’t matter much where you are today, if you know where you want to be, and commit yourself to getting there, you can make it happen! As we go forward, we’ll talk about making a plan, making good decisions, getting help getting there, etc. but the first thing is to determine what you want to achieve and then believe it can be done. Trust me on this! Talk to you soon.

Til next week… Peace- two fingers, one love!

Technorati Tags: dreams,work,hopes,possibilities,opportunities,life,children

One Look Back

I am a very forward thinking person. I have learned (often the hard way) that it is not always helpful to analyze why things are they way they are. It IS important however, to understand mistakes so that we can learn to avoid them in the future. This post is our one chance to look back at where we’ve come from and see why we are where we are. I’ll even allow room for us to assign blame – JUST THIS ONCE! – for BS situations we find ourselves in. Then it is Solution Time; the time where we determine how to get from where we are to where we want to be. Ready? Okay, let’s go!

Everything that we have experienced to this point has made us into the people we are today. We have learned things both consciously and unconsciously. Conscious learning is when someone sets out to make sure we understand the lesson; like when we learned that the stove is hot or how to balance on a bike. Unconscious learning comes from watching people around us and learning how to react to certain situations based on how they reacted. That is like if our parents hated to take medicine, we might also learn to hate to take meds or how since my older sister was allergic to and therefore afraid of cats, it made me afraid of cats and subsequently my daughter is now afraid of cats. No one ever said, “Be afraid of cats,” but that hasn’t stopped the fear from carrying from one generation to the next. If you’ve ever wondered why cycles repeat themselves, that explains it. Kids are mimics. It’s all we know. By the time we are 8 years old, we have already learned nearly 75% of what will shape our actions and reactions as adults. Imagine that- much of what we do today is based on a child’s understanding of things!

Now what happens as a result of that is that we learn good things that keep us safe and make us wise. But what also happens is that we learn a lot of bad habits that often have nothing to do with anything but that keep us stuck as adults. Things like being put down by parents or teachers because we weren’t good in school which creates a fear of failure, witnessing drug/alcohol use or being picked on by other kids (ugly, bad breath, fat, poor, etc. – Kids can be sooo mean). Things like watching our parents duck bill collectors so hello bad credit, bad intimate relationships that makes us question our judgment or teaches us distrust, getting into abusive relationships because our mother followed in her mother’s footsteps and put up with men who beat her, and even OR ESPECIALLY running the rat race – ie. we get up and go to work every day at a job we hate, struggle to pay bills, buy things on credit we can’t afford, and go to bed to get up and do it all again the next day because that’s what our parents did. And it’s not all their fault either. They teach us what they know based on what they learned from their parents, who learned it from their parents, who learned it…(I’m sure you get the picture). Every now and again, you get a person who challenges their upbringing and works against the grain to make other things happen, but unfortunately, that is the exception and not the rule.
As for our formal education, I’m smh (shaking my head). Don’t misunderstand me, I am a strong supporter of and believer in the importance of a good education. I’m smh because while we learn a lot of useful information in school, rarely are we taught subjects that prepare us for real world living. I can’t think of many days I’ve experienced as an adult where it was important for me to know how long the 12 years war lasted or what 2x+7 is if x is 13. Classes like Home Ec, Shop, Drivers Ed and First Aid Health, which have some real world relevance are the first to go in budget cuts. Very few schools teach subjects that are preparation for future living like finance, developing critical thinking skills, household/auto/childcare skills, strategies for success, anything about relationships or communication, or career planning- especially in the watered down inner city school systems.

I know I’ve given you a lot to digest today but what I hope this look back has done is shown you why we make some of the “jacked up” decisions we make. I will tell you though, that once we become adults, it is on us to fix it. Whatever skills, knowledge, opportunities we didn’t get as children is spilled milk and there’s no use crying over it. Where we are right now, with what skills we have or need, and the desires we possess are what’s important.  The onus is on us. Now is the time – this is the place. STAY TUNED!

Til Next Time… Peace- two fingers, one love!

I’m Not Your Superwoman

The idea of the “Superwoman” is one of the few concepts that crosses ALL race, class and economic distinctions. In a survey I conducted with women across the country, the one thing that the vast majority of them had in common no matter where they were born or raised, how much money they had, how old they were, etc. is that they were all expected by their families and by society to “take care of things.” They had all been taught either specifically with words, through actions or most importantly, by watching the other females in their families, that the woman is the one who holds it all together; who sacrifices for the greater good.

Nearly all of them could also finish the following statements with frightening accuracy. And for the most part, they all also admitted that they were already teaching or had taught many of these lessons to their children, suggesting that future generations of women are being conditioned to be Superwomen as well.

Sticks and stones may break my bones {but names will never hurt me} LIE!
Children should be seen {and not heard} What’s fun about that?
Big girls {don’t cry} OMG! No wonder women suffer such high rates of depression.
It's okay to talk to yourself {as long as you don’t answer} Well then what in the hell is the point?
Misery {loves company} Truer words were never spoken.

They also all knew that double standards exist for boys and men. And FYI- The term Superwoman can also be exchanged for “Good Woman.”

As women, we begin to learn at a very early age that we are supposed to be everything to everybody and then if there's anything left, we MAY be able to take time for ourselves. Our teaching and conditioning at every stage of development trains us to put others first and to take care of ourselves last. Now I want you to get a real clear picture of that- when is it that SOMEBODY around you doesn't need anything? Exactly- Never! (Which pretty much means there is no taking care of you.) There is always something to do, someone to help, someone who needs you to do something, etc.

We are even taught that we are better people for sacrificing our needs, wants, and desires to help others. It’s no wonder we rarely do things that please us, and that we feel guilty when we do. And while we’re at it, let me go ahead and point out how as women, we are usually the only ones making those sacrifices and how when we need other people, they are not there for us, have no problem telling us no AND will come right back and ask for our help again.

I can’t begin to tell you how long it took me to get past the Superwoman concept and live my life for me.  With the exception of young children, I don’t owe anybody anything. I’m not mean, I just realize that I MATTER! Understand that I’m not saying to you that we shouldn’t help others. What I’m saying is that we have options. Superwoman is dead! Don’t pass up doing what you enjoy so that others can do what they enjoy. By learning to say no, we begin to teach others responsibility and accountability. Let’s find other ways to get our daily fix of the joy that comes from feeling needed. Do something special for yourself every day. Be a “good woman” to yourself!

Take a listen to the Song of the Week, “I’m Every Woman.” I LOVE this song. Only problem is, the message is detrimental for women. Example- “I ain’t bragging, cause I’m the one. You just ask me, ooh and it shall be done. And don’t bother to compare. I’ve got it!” I listen to it, I jam to it, but I understand that it is pure entertainment.

Til Next Time... Peace - two fingers, one love!

Their Blues Ain't Like Ours

It's been said that when you educate a man, you educate a man but when you educate a woman, you educate a nation. So true, so true. The things men are taught as children are very different from the things women are taught. I'm not just talking about the general crap either like it is women's work to cook, clean and take care of the children. I'm talking about more subtle differences as well like how girls are taught to be ladylike and lovely. We are taught to take care of our man/son/father. Boys on the other hand get an education based on one main principle. "Boys will be boys." Huh? That's some real bullsh*t right there.

But after analyzing it, I realize that those lessons learned as kids create a lot of confusion for us as adults. Those double standards are why those irresponsible boys grow up to be irresponsible men. They are the reason that Steve Harvey is gettin rich telling us how to think like a man but act like a lady. It is why we women buy clothes and food and keep a roof over our heads but go through life without ever really living. Well ladies, to hell with that. This right here is an invitation to life! If you're not afraid, come on in.

Til tomorrow... Peace - two fingers, one love!