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The Over IT Over Haul…My Decision to Make 2023 For Me!

There is a song that plays incessantly on the radio. You’ve heard it either via TikTok, your own indulgence in pop music or because your children also control your play list when in the car. If not, then consider an upbeat tune that has a happy and fast pace beat. Once you’ve got that down, listen to the words. “Do you ever get a little bit tired of life? Like you’re not really happy but you don’t wanna die?” That’s the one. The song, entitled, “Numb Little Bug” by Em Beihold.

If it wasn’t a hypothetical question I would scream from the rooftops; “YES!” However, it is hypothetical, and no one actually cares when a mom says “I’m over it!

Honestly, that phrase is a daily mantra spoken at my house, and expletives can be added for a more realistic and dramatic impact where needed. I’ve decided, therefore, I’m in need of an over haul. Welcome to my over it over haul and my decision to make 2023 for ME!

Over What? Over IT!

I am so over “it”! Over what? All of it. The constant battle for balance. The incessant worry. My insecurity. Obsessing over money, kids, and work. I am exhausted. I have completely pushed myself to burn out. I am burnt out and ready to burn it down to the ground. It’s time for an overhaul. An over it over haul!

Imperfect and Inspired

I’m getting absolutely nowhere waiting for everything to stop being so difficult. I’m not perfect, but this “all or none” attitude I have adopted is hindering my ability to make the changes I need to and stick with them. If change is what needs to take place, then I’m where it has to take place.

I’m an old fan of the quote “BE the change you want to see…” A quote that came from an interpretation of Gandhi’s quote about being a mirror to the world.

Another inspirational quote that I use often to motivate me to be more present and positive is, “You can’t wait for life to not be hard anymore, before you decide to be happy!” Which is a quote from Jane Marczewski. In addition, it is one that reminds me of my brother, as he introduced me to this quote amidst some an extremely difficult time for me.

You may remember a previous post I wrote back in 2021. It was entitled Journey to Positivity. My other creation was my Goal Getter Guide, in which I shared how I managed to reach my goals despite the challenging circumstances that were complicating my daily life.

Overhaul Objectives

The previous posts I have written and the steps I took prior to this point are all relevant to this process. They were designed to help me level up and guide me through my journey. They served me well. This overhaul is designed to help rediscover that path. I am looking to realign with my desires. I am looking for opportunities, risks, and actions I need to take in order to make forward progress towards catching my dreams; not just chasing them.

Now, I am giving the objectives I plan to accomplish with this overhaul. I’ll say that healing and self growth are an evolving process. I am constantly thinking of ways I can better myself as a person, be more content, and how I can keep momentum in my self-awareness journey. There is no “quick fix,” and life doesn’t come with an “easy” button.

Objectives

  • Realign with my purpose, goals, and desires.
  • Find a routine/schedule that is prioritizing my needs and allowing balance in all aspects of my life.
    • Selfcare
    • Family
    • Marriage
    • Hobbies
  • Set and achieve goals that are important for my continued success.
  • Create more opportunities for my future and the future of my family.
  • Communicate with an openess to receive criticism, improve, and to grow.
  • Continued healing and mental health improvement
  • Finding peace of mind, contentment, and positivity by silencing the inner critic.
  • Create solutions to the problems that weigh on me that are in my control.
  • Learn to better control my emotions, my reactions, and my assumptions.

Forward Trajectory

In short, I am capable of making changes to reach my desired destination. I am stubborn. I am competitive, and I am driven to be the best version of myself for myself and also for those around me. I am particularly passionate about my self growth and healing journey. I will accomplish my goals. I am deserving of more than what I give to myself. I am in control of my narrative, my attitude, my actions, and reactions. I am ultimately responsible for overhauling any behavior that is not aligned with my desired path.

Now I plan. I will let you know how I propose to meet these objectives and reignite my passion without burning out. It’s time to say “I’m in it” and not “I’m over it.” Therefore, I’m ready for this overhaul. I wish you all the peace, love, and happiness in your journey! Check in on Facebook for my daily updates on the over it overhaul. As always, me and you, we’ve got this! ☮️❤️😊 ~M

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It’s Ok to Say ‘No’

I’ve been struggling with boundaries. I forgot that I am a person that has needs too. I think as a mom and a woman that I try to make everyone else happy and ok. Guess what? It’s ok to say ‘No’ to protect your peace. However, I know how hard it is to say ‘No’. I am learning that the ability to deny requests is going to be required for my own personal well being.

What About Me?

As a mom I’m constantly tending to my little people. I’m making sure everyone else is ok. As a manager at work I want to make sure my employees are ok. The list goes on. Suddenly, everyone is taken care of and I find myself at the end of the day physically exhausted, mentally spent and emotionally drained. I’m not selfish, it’s not about me, and it never has been. When is it my turn? Saying that out loud makes me feel selfish for even putting myself as a priority. That’s ridiculous! I deserve to be on my own list!

Wake Up Call

How did I decide to make myself more important to me? Well, I haven’t fully committed to doing anything honestly, but something has to change. I had a wake up call. I’m killing myself slowly by giving my everything to everyone else. That’s not dramatic. Unfortunately, that’s just the truth.

The past seven days I had ten hours of sleep total, I worked 60+ hours, helped my ex husband get into drug rehab, tried to care for my threefold, fix all my work problems, made sure everyone else got a day off, and maintain a relationship with my partner. I hadn’t eaten enough to sustain myself. I was too busy to drink a bottle of water. I totally forgot I was a person who needed to stop and take care of myself.

The Breaking Point

My breaking point was a cabinet truck that I had to unload by hand. I worked hard and got through it, but it took the rest of my strength. However, I kept pushing through the week. Suddenly, my body was in ketosis and I was dehydrated. My muscles were locked up. My anxiety was sky high. Also, my legs were swollen like I was 9 months pregnant. Yet, I still wouldn’t stop. I had blisters on the bottoms of my feet and had completely depleted every nutrient in my body. My diet was caffeine, ibuprofen, and the chaos around me. Enough!

Sounding the Alarm

Hello!!!! SOS. HELP! Everyone saw it and asked “are you ok?” When my answer changed from yes to no, that’s when it changed. I’m an adult, a grown woman. No one can force me to take care of myself or stop until I decide. My choice. My fault. My consequences. However, it was clear I was not ok for a long time. I didn’t know how to stop doing what I’d been doing for months.

Something’s Gotta Give

I’m figuring out how to change my habits. It’s easier said than done. Saying no to anyone that you care about or want to help is difficult. It’s easier to rationalize the yes than the no. saying yes to myself feels selfish. I’m used to going until I crash. I crash, recover, and repeat my cycle. It’s not going to continue to work if I want to be able to keep going.

It’s Ok to Say ‘No’

Self care is something people say. This involves more than taking time for yourself. I am not going to book a massage and pedicure. There is no mom vacation without my kids that is on the horizon. Going to the store alone, or sitting and meditating to clear my brain is self care. Is it all there is? NO! It’s more than that, but it starts somewhere!

Self Care for me the past 24 hours has looked like a lot like stuff people should do, but for me it’s difficult. My goals to keep myself going this next week are minimal.

  • Eating at least 1 meal a day. If I eat with my kids at dinner then I’m accountable to eat.
  • Drinking water and having something to drink around me at all times.
  • Sleeping. I’ve slept 12 hours. Yes 12. And I will probably sleep more. However, deciding to be done and sleep and getting at least 4-6 hours per day is a goal.
  • Take my day off from work and try not to worry about work.
  • Spend time with my kids doing something other than appointments or errands.
  • Work at work only
  • Take some time for myself
  • Say no if it is something I can say no to.
  • Stop saving everyone and save myself.

Now, I sit and prop my feet up. I try to keep food down, because my body doesn’t feel like it is ready for this. I sleep and I allow my body to adjust to not going. I have guilt for doing these small little things, but my guilt is due to my own inability to slow down and be ok with not being ok. ☮️❤️😊~M

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Go Get Your Goals!

I thought about just giving up on my goals and then thought twice about how important my goals are to me. If I could just give up on my goals so easily, did I really want to reach these goals? YES! I want to reach my goals. My goals are too important for me to just call it quits 3 months into the new year. I have decided to revamp my resolutions and go get my goals. I am going to share with you how I plan to do this and I hope this will inspire someone else ready to flush their goals down the drain some motivation to join in on the challenge. 

Goal Getter’s Guide to Revamp and Revise your 2022 Resolutions

 

I should be ready to call it quits and throw in the towel on the year and all the goals I wanted to focus on in 2022. Afterall, four hospitalizations for two of my threefold since starting 2022, would be enough to make even the most stable people go completely bat shit crazy. YET…here I am in all of my trauma drama bipolar momma bear glory ready to take the second quarter of this year by the horns and reclaim my new year!

The new year did not start off with the momentum, fire, and future forward trajectory I had planned for. I was not expecting the chaos to commence right out of the gate, but hey, you get what you get and you can’t throw a fit! {you can but it won’t help} So I’m calling shenanigans and saying I’m going to start this year over! Anyone else?

Obviously, I’m not a time traveler who has the ability to go back to January 1st and start over, but I can restart today. I truly believe this is where so many people lose track of their vision. It’s so easy for us to say ‘screw it, I haven’t gotten to my milestone goal so I should just quit.’ I’ve done it a million times. That mindset kept me stagnant. It’s time for that to change! We need to fix the mindset that says it’s ok to give up when we aren’t where we thought we’d be. How?

Finding a Better Way to Achieve Goals

How many times are we going to set ourselves up to fail before we change the plan? Many times failure is not from the inability to accomplish the goals you’ve set or a lack of resources to achieve those goals. I’ve determined that failure is found when we choose to make our excuses bigger than our motivation is to be successful. The key is to set goals with a vision for your life in mind.

I’m not good at keeping myself accountable for my progress. This usually leads to excuses or blaming external sources for my failure. I’ve found that it’s really easy to fail when you set yourself up to fail beforehand. An internal dialogue that is negative and is constantly triggering your self doubt in your abilities will lead to you stopping to believe in yourself before you can even get any momentum.

What is your Vision?

Create a vision for your life. I know that is easier said than done, but knowing what you want is the first step to getting there. This is how I plan to create my vision for my life.

Creating the Vision to Determine your Goals

  • Write what I want my life to look like. Go into detail about everything I want for my life to be.
    • The first is the overall vision for my life.
    • Next, I will create a vision for the next 3-5 years.
    • Finally I will create a vision for this year. 
  • Create a vision board. This can be done as a cluster method with words, your own doodles or pictures of things that you relate to your dream life.
  • Determine which areas of my life I need to set goals in to achieve my vision. These are my 6 areas that I feel encompass my overall life. Feel free to add your own and edit these to fit your vision. Rank them in accordance to the importance of your ability to fulfill your vision.
    1. Family
    2. Love
    3. Self Care
    4. Creativity
    5. Work
    6. Financial
    7. Social Circle
  • Create achievable goals in each area that you feel are necessary to reach your end result or vision. Making sure these goals are dependant on your action and not the actions of others are key. 

Action Plan

Now that we know what we want it’s time to create a plan to get there! It’s easier to say you want to have x, y, and z, but how you plan to achieve those goals is key. Create an action plan that you can track and grade yourself on. This will allow you to breakdown these goals into action items that require you to take steps towards the goals and your vision for your life. If you can create a goal, you can create an action plan to reach that goal. When making my action plan I used the following template that you are able to use or edit to individualize your action plan.

  • What is the goal?
  • What do I need to achieve this goal? 
  • How much time will I need to invest to achieve this goal?
  • What is my contribution to this goal going to be?
  • What are my milestones?
  • When do I plan to have this goal accomplished?
  • Daily steps I plan to take to reach my goal?

Tracking Progess of Goals

It’s important to be able to track your progress. When we keep ourselves accountable to our goals we can more easily see what steps are working in our favor and which need to be revamped to better serve our success. I choose to track my progress on a weekly basis. This allows me to see what I’m doing right and what I am doing not so right each week. This will help to fine tune my action plan and see what aspects of my action plan are working for me and what aspects are working against me. This will keep me accountable to my plan for success. 

Each month, I will do a more thorough review to make sure I am on the path that leads me to my desired results. This is why I feel it’s important to have milestone goals. If we are hitting milestone goals then we are on the right path to hitting the target goal. If we aren’t then it’s time to see why and reflect on what actions we didn’t take or didn’t work.

Part of the accountability is in grading your progress. Much like when you get a report card in school, this well help you to grade your action plan to the progress you are making towards your goal. Much like what I’ve seen in many other goal plans, books, and guides, I have adopted the grading method as a way to make sure what I am doing is working. If I set a goal and have the action items, the action items will be what I grade. If I have five action items then I should be able to easily track which items I completed and how much momentum those action items will have in my forward trajectory. 

goals

Don’t Give Up on Your Goals!

We have to remember that this is all trial and error. Cut yourself some slack, but not too much. It’s important to remember that if it were easy we would have had it. If it were easy then everyone would be doing it. If it were easy it wouldn’t be near as exciting when you achieve it. Keep yourself motivated with the milestone goals, don’t allow them to be your excuse to not continue towards the goal. 

In addition, we tend to have  an ‘all or none’ attitude towards reaching goals. We tend to put so much pressure on ourselves that we believe one misstep means that all progress is lost. There is a correlation between repeated mistakes andfailure, but I believe if we can evaluate our actions objectively and see our mistakes as stepping stones towards the goal vs. away from the goal we can accomplish anything. It’s all dependent on how much you want it. If it’s really important to you, then you will do anything to achieve it. Even if it means revamping how you thought you would get there.

 

Goal!

I have decided that if I chunk up my goals enough I should be able to reach my goals in a shorter period of time. Since this is my quarter new year, I have opted for the 90 day challenge approach to reach my goals. I will set goals that are attainable in 90 days. 90 days is long enough to do just about anything. This way by the end of the year I will have met my goals and be well on my way to the vision I have created for the year, five years, and my life in general.

Each 90 days I will set new goals and measure my success. Follow along on this goal getter journey and lets keep each other accountable and headed towards the vision we have created for ourselves. I want to hear your goals and see your progress too! Sign up for the 90 day Goal Getters Challenge and receive a copy of my “Goal Getter’s Guide”, exclusive content related to the 90 Day Challenge including my personal goals for this challenge, a buy one get one free coupon for the stuff-n-things shop for My Threefold, AND a chance to win a $100 gift card at the end of 90 days! What do you have to lose? You can meet your goals, be in the goal getter gang, get free merch and win prizes along the way. SCORE! Your goals, my goals, together – we’ve got this! Stay positive!  ♥˜

 

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ENDurance

We’ve all been enthusiastic about something in life. My favorite example of enthusiasm is how the night before my first day of school as a kid I would be so enthusiastic and had this anxious excitement for the year ahead. It was a fresh start, school supplies were accounted for and I knew that it was going to be a great year. I was enthusiastic about getting started. I believe that enthusiasm is a common occurrence for everyone. It may be that first day of school or a new job. Maybe it was a relationship or a project. However, enthusiasm can only take us so far.

Eventually, we hit a wall and enthusiasm isn’t always enough to get us to the finish line. The desire doesn’t go away, but it’s not as exciting now that it’s hard or now that it’s actually happening. Maybe it wasn’t what you thought it was. Your schedule changes at school, the job isn’t anything what you thought, the fighting begins with the partner, or you hit a roadblock with the project you wanted to do. In the loss of that enthusiasm we tend to give up. I know, I do.

I’ve been known to lose enthusiasm and lose my want to see whatever it is to the finish line. School was exciting and I would try really hard for a few weeks, but if that effort didn’t pay off, I didn’t like the class or just simply lost my motivation for a couple of days…it was done, I didn’t try anything else. I would diet, lose weight, and do well for a few weeks. Then there would be a ‘bad’ day. I would eat the fries and have cake. I would throw in the towel and say ‘there’s no point. I can’t do this, I already screwed it up.’ That’s how we react when it doesn’t go exactly according to our plan. The end.

Wait…It’s time for endurance, not time for the end! This is when I think we set ourselves apart. There are numerous things that even with enthusiasm and good intentions matched with hard work and a willingness to learn that will require endurance, patience, and strength to be successful. Some things may come easily and all it takes is the attitude and confidence that you are capable. While other ventures may end regardless of the enthusiasm and endurance you have. It’s about listening to yourself and finding what you believe is worth fighting for. For me, it took a long time to find what I was willing to endure and recognize what I was capable of enduring…and yes, what I needed to end.

I endured and persevered through an abusive and unfulfilling marriage. I felt I gave what I could and allowed what was taken from me. I tried to push through and find the enthusiasm to continue. I had the determination, but when there are many factors involved and other people have an effect on your result, it’s trickier to decide if it’s meant to be I fought the end many years, in fact much longer than I should’ve, but in the end I knew that I tried and could walk away knowing that it wasn’t just me quitting when things got hard. I didn’t jump ship at the first sign of bad times. I stuck with it, but it wasn’t healthy for myself or my threefold. It had reached the end. The end has been a process of endurance {and enthusiasm} in and of itself. I could’ve just as easily ran back to what I knew, instead of facing many hardships or fighting the battles I have. The end was my goal. I needed to end that chapter and find my path to happiness; for my threefold and I.

I am enthusiastic at my work and it pays off. I have a good attitude and I enjoy what I do. I’m confident in my abilities. I know my value and my work is often rewarded. I attribute this to my success in my company. It’s not always easy, I often want to say ‘screw it, someone else can handle this’ or have to pull myself out of bed in the morning, but I endure those challenges of my own making and those beyond my control. This endurance has led to two years under my belt with two promotions and four raises, amongst accolades from my clients and my company. It’s resulted in creating a name for myself and a future for my threefold and I. It also led me to find the man I now consider my soulmate and my second chance romance, which is quite enough to call myself successful.

I could’ve quit on my relationship with ‘E’ when things got hard. I could’ve stopped writing when I’ve had blocks. I could’ve quit many nights fighting my threefold. I could’ve quit my job when #2 was hospitalized. I could’ve quit trying to find solutions and treatment plans to help myself and my threefold. I could’ve quit my healthier lifestyle. I could’ve thrown my hands up a million times, but that’s not who I am or the role model I want for my threefold. I’m not a quitter. When life throws punches, I bob and weave. I wait for my opening and show life who is in control. I win. I’m a badass. Stay positive. Endure. We’ve got this! ☮️❤️😊~M