Serving You: from sloppy joes and tv cuddles Even the Wunder Woman gets busy sometimes! So here is a short, sweet little post for this week. I saw a challenge on Facebook yesterday and loved the concept! Generally when something bad happens in our day we reflect on how unfortunate that situation was and how it negatively effected our day. However, we don’t do this for the reverse and note all of the great things that happened in our day. I think we often categorize these good moments in our day as “normal” and so only the bad stands out to us. It is important to remember the good things that we are taking for granted and maybe we can remember how much the good outweighs the bad. The challenge? Write 7 things that you enjoyed about your day. GO! What's good with the Wunder Woman... 3/29
Now it's your turn! look at only the good for one day and comment your top 7 below!Serving You: from a late night bowl of cereal and netflix Okay so we will start this blog off with a true story, something that happened to the Wunder Woman just yesterday!
offers a building that doesn’t look like it used to be an insane asylum but also offers a large parking lot for people with appointments! Crazy concept, I know, but the previous center in the MIDDLE of campus offered around five parking spots for the hundreds of people to be seen in the facility of which were taken by students late to class anyway and not actual appointment goers. But let’s get back to the story! Again, two destinations, both on campus, it’s a matter of stop signs before I get from Point A to Point B. I’m making my way and after the first few stop signs there is a car RIGHT behind me, I mean RIGHT behind me. Sort of annoying, just like hello what are you doing? So this car is literraly f o l l o w i n g me down the main drag and also happens to turn into the health center parking lot. Me: “I guess this guy is late for his super important appointment! Jeezo, back off buddy!”. So I park in the furthest row from the entrance of the building (because I’m not in such a hurry!). I go through the usual checklist in my mind: phone, wallet, water bottle, grab keys…. I look in my side mirror to see the same tailgating car stopped right behind me. Well that’s interesting…. It was obvious this person had something to say to me but at this point I have NO CLUE what about! Did I drop something back in the lab and he was being a good citizen? Did something fall off of my car? So I get out. And immediately get yelled at like I’m a six year old by a 30 something man with an obvious east coast accent driving a gray hybrid car (like he’s a super nice dude that cares about people and the environment). So he spews his initial line “you almost caused five accidents back there!!!!!!!!!!”. 1) Interesting that in my 3 stop signs I almost caused 5 accidents 2) there was zero honking? 3) To think I almost caused ALL of this chaos and I didn’t notice for one mili second? So the guy rants for his solid 30 seconds, something about left turns, and right-aways, and I don’t know, I tune out. Then he pauses, I come back to consciousness. Me: Okay he must be done with his spiel. I let out a “mmmkay” and he huffs and puffs and speeds away (like the role model, excellent driver he is). After the guy drives away I begin to assess what has just happened and wish I could ask this road rage guy a series of follow-up questions. Was that what you needed, do you feel better now that you got to yell at someone? Would your life just not have gone on if you didn’t get the chance to tell everyone when they do something “wrong”? I mean hopefully the dude feels better about himself, however I can’t imagine handling every small situation I run into in that way, that takes a LOT of effort! Okay Katie so you were a dummie and may not have been paying the best attention and some dude having a bad day yelled at you, boo hoo. Well, I’m not really focused on me in this scenario but I honestly begin to feel bad for the road rage guy… how can his life be so miserable that he feels the need to take down other people on his way? And where I think road rage guy starts getting into trouble is when we analyze where he is allocating his energy to. We all get frustrated, we all get mad, we all get annoyed and if we allow ourselves to spend all of our energy on these negatives moments, the negatives become our lives. We get to choose what aspects of our day we would like to focus on and what pieces of our life we would like to spend energy on because trust me, we only have a limited amount! Your life follows your attention. Wherever you look, you end up going. — Martha Beck So road rage guy finds pleasure in spending his energy shaming others and making sure everyone knows when he is frustrated. But sadly this becomes his life, a life full of amplifying, magnetizing and highlighting all of the shitty things that have gone on in his day! Knowing that the not so awesome stuff is going to happen no matter what may help us be less “surprised” when something is frustrating and doesn’t go our way. It’s a fact of life that we can NOT control. What we can control is what moments we allow to take our energy, what moments we allow to define our character and what moments we allow ourselves to highlight as a reflection of our lives and our inner self. What are you spending your energy on?
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“Real love moves freely in both directions. Don’t waste your time on anything else.”
“Love is a game that two can play and both win.” —Eva Gabor in Reader’s Digest Equality but not necessarily fairness. Both feeling equally appreciated but in different ways, at different times, with different sacrifices, different ups and different downs. |
“Love cannot survive if you just give it scraps of yourself, scraps of your time, scraps of your thoughts.”
—Mary O’Hara in Something More Understanding that fake love lacks this power that Sandra mentions in the quote above. It’s not all rainbows and butterflies but it is an experience like no other where people are exposing all that is them and in turn that receiving person accepting what they see fully (the great and the not so great). |
2. Who's who.
We often like to base our feelings on someone by what they could be. This is the classic "bad boy" example and why, often times, women get caught up in wanting to fix someone and become fascinated on this idea of what they could be rather than assessing the situation by what is right in front of them.
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3. Food.
While this doesn't have anything to do with what the mind has made up, this is a topic I’ve very passionate about but have not yet been able to incorporate into a post! There are so many people driving different health fads and advice into our brains, how do we know what’s really good for us!? I used to sort of fall for these claims but now have come up with my own formula that works for me. My formula is based on exactly what today’s post discusses and my idea of being a healthy consumer of food is to eat real food. The best way to do this? Cooking at home!! Know what goes into your meals and keep ingrediants limited – meat (if that’s your style), lots of veggies, and your spices!
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4. Worry.
Worry is this made up concept in your mind, its an idea you’ve created and have allowed to blossom.
“What we focus on, we empower and enlarge. Good multiplies when focused upon. Negativity multiplies when focused upon. The choice is ours. Which do we want more of?” —Julia Cameron from Blessings Often times these worries are NOT formed from an actual problem (similar to what we’ve discussed in #2) but are based on an idea of what could be or what could happen. A line from a John Mayer song that has resonated in my head for years goes, “I will worry about it when I find out what it is I’m worried about…”. This very simply explains the notion that we are worrying about an unknown not something that has actually occurred in our lives. |
5. EXPECTATIONS
This is a VERY tricky one for me, the presence of my own expectations that I have created in my mind causes a lot of self destruction for me in form of some sort of dissapointment. Similar to worry, expectations are an idea we have created based on what could be, not on anything real!!
“Flexibility is one of the key ingredients to being successful. If you feel like it’s difficult to change you will probably have a hard time succeeding.” —Andrea Jung in You Can Do It! Being flexible has become my answer to this problem of setting expectations. I’ve found I can’t really totally avoid setting them or ideating on how a situation may go (though I can be more realistic sometimes) however I can change my reaction to when those expectations aren’t exactly how I had envisioned (which happens more often than not). “The real winners in life are the people who look at every situation with an expectation that they can make it work or make it better.” —Barbara Pletcher in The Walk Out Woman |
6. Y-O-U.
You are real, obviously! But you also create these false expectations, ideas, personas, etc. and apply them to yourself in the same way we apply these ideas to others.
“You get your confidence and intuition back by trusting yourself, by being militantly on your own side.” —Ann Lamott in Bird by Bird “Thoughts are energy, and you can make your world or break your world by your thinking.” —Susan L. Taylor in Essence Magazine You have to be your own biggest fan and accept your true self, otherwise who else will! “There’s a point where you go with what you’ve got. Or you don’t go.” —Joan Didion Essays and Conversations Coming full circle from our first discussion point, YOU HAVE TO LOVE YOURSELF. Practice all of these points applied on your own self with expectations, visions, thoughts versus reality, etc. |
p.s. Wunder women! :
After writing this post I stumbled upon a video shared by a family member on Facebook that I thought was very applicable to today's topic and all that we have been talking about over the past few weeks! Check out what Will Smith's thoughts on "Be Someone Who Makes You Happy" below.
Now I'm sure you're thinking, wow must have taken some time to gather all of those quotes together for today's post! I would like to take credit for this conglomeration of great quotes however someone already did the hard work for me! Check out Women's Quotations for Successful Living, available on Amazon. I received this book as a gift a few years ago and while I've read through all of the pages, every time I open the book a new quote that has become more relatable than before.
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UNDERSTANDING real things to focus your energy on...
Author
Meet Katie!
Age l 23
Traits l Red Hair
Superpower l Speaking without using words
Girl Crush l Miranda Lambert
Fav Food l Avocado Toast