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Journey to Positivity: Day 2

After my not so great start, day 2 was EXACTLY what I thought this journey would be about! I am much more positive and I am not nearly as drained as I thought I would be at the end of the day. It was overall exactly the day I needed to keep my motivation alive and myself from drowning in failure. I am ready for the days ahead. I am ready for this challenge!

I SLEPT 6 hours straight! No up and down. No interruptions. It was miraculous and restorative. I woke up at 6:30 and didn’t hit the snooze button! (This has been a struggle for me daily for years) Granted I set a 6am alarm that I hit snooze on. That was my way of tricking my mind into thinking I got 30 minutes extra sleep when I didn’t. I spent an hour on setting myself up for success and going through my goals and checking them off one by one. By 7:40 I had already completed most of my daily tasks. I was off to a running start and feeling confident.

I went to work and was ON TIME! I accepted help with getting 2 from treatment. I accepted help from 2 by letting her help me catch up on some of the tasks I don’t do as often as I should. I was able to get completely caught up today on all of my work. Nothing was left for me to do by 5:30 except close up. I was focused. I kept a great attitude and didn’t let anything bother me. I had to make myself relax a few times, but other than that all was good. I was having fun and laughing. I was smiling and helpful. It was amazing! I didn’t even have to shift my thoughts to positive. I stayed there. ALL DAY.

Usually by the time work is finished I have been drained. I actually still had energy to spare today. I was so pumped by my good day that I purchased supplies for the whole family to work on our vision boards. We got posters, magazines, glitter, glue, construction paper, markers, letters, and colored pens. 3 dyed our shower blue with the hair dye that she used today. Even as I was cleaning the shower and the PPP announced that the whole shower needed to be scrubbed thoroughly because of the amount of hair dye on my white tile floor and on the walls I caught myself saying “well we needed to clean the shower anyway!” Yesterday I have no doubt I would’ve had a yelling match with 3 and had her in there scrubbing and I would’ve been b!tching about it the whole time. I would’ve fussed when the 9yo didn’t get it all clean and that I had to clean up her mess. I realized today though that would’ve only led to me becoming more frustrated and negative and made 3 feel pretty bad about herself. I cleaned it and went about the night like nothing had ever happened. It was true after all, I did need to clean that shower. It’s been a hot minute! Hopefully, I continue making conscious effort in my positive actions, reactions, and words. I caught myself getting frustrated with 1. I was frustrated that they were upset about something that didn’t make sense to me. I had to remind myself that they are allowed to have feelings and as the PPP tells me often just because someone feels a certain way doesn’t mean the feeling is based in truth. We have to acknowledge their feelings before we can try to change their perception. Validation is key. I caught myself becoming defensive and quickly stopped myself. There is a reason I keep the PPP around. He is amazingly insightful, positive, and right about many things (don’t tell him I said that!) I am excited to be the one to spread some positivity to the fam. I am an example to them too, and I want it to be a positive example I am setting!

One thing that is a large part of our daily routine is that we sit down and have dinner together. We always sit around the dinner table laugh and joke. We have always done “positives and negatives”. This has been my way of getting everyone (including myself) to see the positive things that happened in our day and also let others know where we may need to improve, what our struggles are, and how we see different things. I’ve grown to love this and I believe it is a great way to get defcon four talking and listening. We cheer for each other and support one another. Tonight we did something a little different we created a “family mission statement”. This was a tool to get us all to participate in recognizing our strengths and weaknesses as a family and setting goals on how to improve and what changes we can make as a whole as well as what we enjoy doing together and what goals we have for the future. 2 was the one that suggested we sit and discuss this as this was an assignment from her therapist. I really think it helped us all see what we expected, liked, disliked, and what we want as a family. Everyone was included and everyone had a say. I highly recommend doing this with your own family, especially if you have kids. I can see how this could be beneficial in all relationships and possibly might want to do one with the PPP as well that is personal and exclusive to us.

I am very proud of my progress today and even as the phone shut down is approaching I am still keeping a positive mindset. I am excited to discuss some goals and plans I have for the coming weeks with the PPP. I am hoping he will be on board or have some ideas of his own to help me be more positive, productive, and to help us as a couple as well as a family. I am super excited to keep this journey going. Thank you blog for keeping me accountable!

Accomplishments and Gratitude List Day 2

  • Woke up at 6:30am ✅
  • Completed 15 minutes of morning meditation SUCCESSFULLY ✅
  • Journaled my vision for the day ✅
  • Listened to multiple motivational videos today ✅
  • Completed positive affirmations ✅
  • Scripted how my day would go ✅
  • Reviewed my monthly and yearly goals✅
  • Blogged my journey✅
  • Unfollowed some of my trauma groups as these can be triggering and keep me focused on the past. ✅
  • Purchased supplies to work on vision boards ✅
  • Today I am grateful for my family
  • Today I am grateful for the PPP, my partner, my soulmate, my love.
  • Today I am grateful for this journey.
  • Today I am grateful for the day.
  • Today I am grateful for all that I have
  • Today I am grateful for the motivation to continue
  • Today I am grateful for my career
  • Today I am grateful for this blog
  • Today I am grateful for my ability to help my family
  • Today I am grateful for the therapists who work and support my threefold and help me understand them better
  • Today I am grateful for our family mission statement
  • Today I am grateful for family dinner
  • Today I am grateful for having help
  • Today I am grateful for my ability to choose to live in positivity.
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Journey to Positivity: Day 1

I could lie, but I’m just going to be straight up and honest. My day 1 was mostly a bust. My head is still spinning and my thoughts are racing. Day 1 should be where all the motivation is. It’s the beginning, I should be the most excited on day 1. I’m not. I’m disappointed in myself. I let the negativity win today. I wasn’t mentally or physically prepared for jumping into and meeting such high expectations of myself. It sucks. However, I do know all the places I went wrong.

I went to bed about 4:30am (ish), heavy on the ish. Not the best start considering I was supposed to be at work at 6:30am. I shouldn’t have even gone to sleep, but I wanted to rest for a minute even it was just relaxing. The exhaustion won and I guess i just shut down. I don’t remember turning off my alarm at 5:30am, but I did. At 7:00am I woke up and realized there wasn’t much point in trying to go in early. I tried to go ahead with the plan. I did a 10 minute meditation, but I was unable to focus on it. I couldn’t get my mind to clear. I journaled my intentions for the day. That wasn’t a difficult task. I did listen to the motivational speakers on the way to take 2 to treatment and on my drive in to work. Stumbling in a couple of hours past schedule, with only a couple of hours of sleep was enough to put me in a uphill battle against my own motivation.

I was fading and unfocused. I was lagging, I was taking too long to do stuff I knew how to do. By noon, I had a coffee, a coke and a 5 hour trying to try to keep me in the zone and focused on the tasks at hand. I managed to sell, complete my work, update customers, but I was definitely having a harder time keeping up and taking far longer than normal to complete the tasks I needed to. I pulled it off, and come 3pm I was headed to pick up 2. I did positive affirmations with a focus on ridding myself of anxiety and negativity on the way there and listened to a Ted talk on my way back to the office. I finished out my day and managed to not go off on anyone, get snappy, or jack anything up. So those are positives!

Once I left work I could feel the exhaustion settling in. I was becoming more irritable. I was definitely anxious and unfocused. My least favorite thing is to feel like I have 100% to strangers at work and that I was unable to give that same effort to my family. Work can drain me though because it feels like I have to plaster on the smile and amp up my positivity to do my job. By the time I get home I’m done with the fake and ready to settle in my feelings and decompress. Unfortunately that decompression is where I lose my “fake happy” and the true feelings show up. The frustration, the anxiety, the irritation, and the overall mood shift just makes me quiet and introspective. I really need to figure out the balance. I hate feeling like this and I know everyone is picking up on this energy. That’s why I’m doing this! That’s my motivation to feel better and to not pass on the disease of negativity to everyone around me.

It really is hard to get out of my own way and get out of my own head. I just didn’t have the energy today. I will try again tomorrow. I will do better tomorrow. I will be successful tomorrow. I am worth my own effort. I am worthy of my own time. I am not a prisoner to my past or to my future. I am free from my mistakes. I am working hard to change my life. I am healing. I am present. And so it is.

Accomplishments and Gratitude List for Day 1:

  • I REALLY wanted to call in to work. I went anyway and got a lot accomplished.
  • I am in the top 10 in the company this week for sales as of today.
  • I attempted meditation.
  • I completed 26 minutes straight of positive affirmations.
  • I listened to 30 minutes of motivational videos today.
  • I journaled my intentions for the day.
  • I completed my goals for July 2021
  • I completed my goals for the remainder of 2021. I scripted and am manifesting where I am going to be in my journey by January 1, 2022
  • I did another 30 minutes of positive ‘I am’ affirmations.
  • I danced it out and sang (badly) until I couldn’t hear my head over my music and my own voice.
  • I cooked dinner for the family (it was bussin’ or so I hear!)
  • I was able to smile and enjoy the family during dinner.
  • I gave myself a break from being perfect.
  • I am being honest about my struggles.
  • I never gave up and said the c word (can’t) when I knew everything wouldn’t be completed today. I still worked towards meeting the goals I knew I still could achieve today.
  • I am reframing my mind set to say tomorrow is an opportunity to do better than today. I am giving myself grace.
  • I am thankful for my family.
  • I am thankful for my work.
  • I am thankful for the chance to try again.
  • I am thankful for this blog and my ability to express myself freely here.
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Hidden Super Powers

It’s been one of THOSE months, weeks, days! You know the ones I am talking about! The ones where you start off on a high note. You’re positive, you’re feeling yourself, you’re living in gratitude, and all happily living your best “live,laugh,love” life. Then *BOOM* the world comes crashing in on you and throwing the punches to remind you just how out of control you really are! Well, honestly it’s been that kind of MONTH at my house. A total whirlwind of emotional whiplash that has left me begging for July to come and melt away the stress. (It’s hot AF here in the summer, it’s the south y’all!) I would think I was making headway and being more positive and then something else would pile on top of me to make me feel like the universe was against me and I was never going to crawl out from under the pile of sh!t that I felt was actively being thrown at me. I was losing my sh!t and was ready to piss and moan until the universe decided to play fair and nice again. OH. Ok, so you got jokes? Hmm, well let’s see how the universe responds when I stop reacting, I decide to get my sh!t together, stay strong and stay positive despite its attempt to send me into whatever karmic catastrophe it had planned for me during next week’s episode of “THREEFOLD: my crazy chaotic catastrophe filled life”! Quit playing with me, you play too much! I ain’t got time for your bullish!t anymore, I am ready for the fight! If only I could stop allowing negativity to be the kryptonite that kills my super power of positive thinking!

I started the month off on a bad foot. I was arguing with the perky positivity peddler aka the man in my life. Work related issues carrying over into personal issues. Blah. Blah. Blah. I had recently found out that #2 of my threefold was resorting to self-harm behaviors to cope with “having too many feelings” or “not being able to feel anything” again. (This has been an ongoing battle for 8 months) This up and down continued for a week trying to decide what to do and the constant worry of if she was going to be okay. My co-house manager Mr. Positivity Personified aka the man in my life, had to leave town for work AGAIN amongst all of the chaos. I hate being a b!tch about him working out of town, but it always seems to happen at some of the worst times. I guess it’s the universe testing my mental stability and making sure I’m still as strong as I claim to be. The universe has a way with making sure I remember I can always handle things alone if I have to, even when I don’t want to. As I rolled into week 2, it was like a bomb went off in our lives and I was scurrying around trying to pick up the pieces from the aftermath and put things back together again. After some deliberation and consulting with our mental health team we decided I was to admit my daughter to an inpatient psychiatric facility for self-harm and suicidal ideation. Every mother’s fear. My failures, my guilt, my anger, my own trauma, my anxiety, my world came flying at me full speed and didn’t stop it’s brutal assault on my way of life for weeks. Soon I was consumed with dealing with all of the ins and outs of having a kid in the hospital, getting kids back and forth to school, finding out 2/3 kids are probably going to need summer school, the ceiling falling in, doctors, therapists, assessments, trauma evaluations, family sessions, dealing with the Exhole day after day, CPS and abuse allegations (against the father), no contact orders and court preparation, insurance coverage and coordination of benefits, #3 trying to adjust to a new schedule and less time with her dad, coordinating partial hospitalization aftercare, losing a friend I thought would always be here for me, cutting hours at work, not sleeping, not eating, my dryer going out, #1 of my threefold getting sick and needing a bunch of tests and follow up care (pending final diagnosis *fingers crossed*), sweeping bedrooms, cleaning house and generally just losing my sh!t from the stress and emotional, mental and physical exhaustion. I couldn’t focus on anything. It has been one of the hardest months I’ve had in a really long time, and believe me I’ve had some hard months. I was literally running on caffeine, chaos, cuss words, and courage.

As I was witnessing everything seemingly falling apart I started seeing how moody, irritable, closed off, anxious and down right exhausted I was becoming. I was constantly between a laugh and a cry. I was holding on to my last bit of strength and after picking another fight with the person I want to share the rest of my life with I began to hear what he was saying to me. He wasn’t pissy and fighting back. He wasn’t calling me a b!tch or telling me I was making everyone miserable (even if I was being a b!tch and most likely making everyone miserable) He was worried, but his worry was surrounding me. Of course he was worried about the kids as well but he saw me struggling and he saw that it was a self-inflicted struggle. He saw the tired, worn down, running on empty, half beaten, half hopeless person I was and my desperate need to cling on to the last bit of strength buried in my bones and keep fighting for what I felt was survival. What good is life if we are just surviving? He looked me in the eye and with all the love, concern, and frustration he could convey he said “You. ARE. Exhausted! You can’t control any of this! You are KILLING yourself with worry! What GOOD is it doing to worry about everything when you cant change ANY of it?” I will now say the three words every man loves to hear, but so rarely does. In black and white for the world to see. He IS RIGHT. I was mad. How was my anger, anxiety, pain, fear, and constant worry serving anyone in my home most of all how was it serving me? As I sat there and resigned myself to the fact that I was not in control of anything that was happening. I couldn’t change the past and I certainly can’t predict the future. I realized I wanted to control everything. The more I fought to hold onto that control the more of it I was losing. I wasn’t focusing on the now, what I could do in that moment or how I should be displaying a positive attitude and being who my threefold needed me to be. I needed an attitude adjustment, a change of perspective, a vacation (hopefully eventually), and some damn sleep! I finished that thought and went to bed to submit to the sleep that I desperately needed.

I woke up after 6 hours of sleep straight through and felt more like myself and less like the basket case I had been the past few days. When you are consistently sleeping only 2-4 hours per night for nearly 3 weeks straight you don’t realize how much havoc it is wreaking on your body and on your mood. 6 hours is magical at that point. I did my positive affirmations (because live,laugh,love) the next morning, listened to my “Living Fearless” videos, and tried to remind myself that I couldn’t control any of it. The universe tried to continue bullying me, kicking my ass and taking my lunch money. I had anxiety creeping in when #2 admitted after 10 days home after 7 days inpatient and now going to a new partial hospitalization program during the day, that she was struggling with feelings of wanting to self harm and was worried she would “hurt herself or worse.” In that moment I had to remember to breathe. In 2 seconds I decided I need to be positive, for me and for her. I had to think about how to spin this and make it a positive. Where was my hidden superpower? I remembered that not long ago she wouldn’t admit this, she wouldn’t call me, she didn’t want to “bother or burden me” or anyone else with her feelings and problems. This was a positive step. I spoke to the nurse when I checked her in. I remembered she was going to a program where she would be safe and supervised, that my worry wasn’t useful, because she was safe. I went to work and distracted myself, in between phone calls with the treatment center as they were assessing 2. As I felt the tension I would repeat to myself “she is safe” “I am safe” “my worry isn’t serving me or her” “I am getting her the help she needs.” “This is not in my control” “I am a good mom”. As the day went on and I stopped to breathe when getting anxious and I forcibly made myself let go of the building tension in the muscles of my neck and back I noticed I was more conscious of my own self talk and self sabotage. I had been repeatedly doing to myself the exact thing I tell my kids not to do. My thoughts were beyond negative, they were abusive and blatantly catastrophic. These thoughts started becoming words as I spoke life into them and gave them room to intrude on my attitude towards everything and everyone. It was time for me to counteract those thoughts and words by spinning them into positives. Regardless of almost any situation you can spin a thought or a reaction to a positive. It’s about perspective and the willingness to not give in to the first instinct. Like anything else in life being more positive is a habit and is a choice. You make a decision in less than 2 seconds after having a thought as to your reaction. You can choose negativity or you can choose positivity. Allowing yourself to choose negativity will breed more negativity. The opposite is just as true, thinking positively with lead to more positive thinking. Both will have an effect on our attitude and our emotions. It’s harder to pull yourself out of that negative mind set once you allow yourself to go there. I know I have days where I set up shop and start selling it by the bushel load to the people around me. When deciding to be positive it is a proactive approach versus the reactive approach of being negative. Positivity allows us to take our power back. Choose positivity. It is something I have to strive for daily. I know that breaking patterns of behavior is difficult. I also know if I want different results that means taking different actions. I have to break the cycle of toxic negativity in my head and start countering my initial reactions with light and positivity. I can’t control what is happening around me, but with time and effort I can control my attitude and reaction to it. It takes less than 2 seconds. 2 seconds can make the day or break it. 2 seconds when the decision is all mine. 2 seconds doesn’t seem to be that much time but in those 2 seconds we decide if we are going to be positive or negative. Those 2 seconds can build into the next and then the next. Do I choose to use the hidden super power with in me, or do I choose to destroy my light with the kryptonite of negativity? I want to build a foundation of happiness and I believe that it all starts with what I do in those 2 seconds. It all starts with me.

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