Inner Strength

How can one be honestly happy if they are not first honest with themselves? How long has it been since you were truly honest with yourself? Were you honest today? Has it been a week, month, years or has it been so long you can't even remember the last time you took the time to think what do I really want? I know for me it had been several years. I kept putting my feelings aside in order to please the people around me. I became a bystander in my own life. I saw people living their lives every day and I was envious of them. I wanted that freedom. I wanted to feel like me again but I didn't even know who that was. How was I supposed to be happy if I didn't even know who I was. So I started my search for who I was and who better to turn to, then myself.

My journey started inward. I got to thinking how can I love others, if I don't love myself. So how to go about loving myself. I had to be brutally honest with myself and be vulnerable in a way that I never knew possible. I had to start feeling. Every emotion that I felt I could no longer repress. I had to face them head on, no matter how scared I was. Let me just say that every single time I did this I was terrified. I had never allowed myself to be so vulnerable with myself. I always repressed everything and now I was facing the ghosts of my past. With each new day I found that facing my ghosts became a little bit easier for me. I started to discover a new found strength within myself. I would hear myself saying, "you are ok, no one is hurting you and you can do hard things." As I talked my way through my experiences, I found my biggest strength was myself. I discovered a strength within myself that I didn't know was possible to have. As I am discovering this new inner strength I feel more confident with myself and the decisions that I am making in life. The question that I pose to you then is how can you personally find that inner strength? I would suggest first writing in a journal and writing out all your feelings. Just write. Don't think just put the pen to the paper and let your fingers write out your emotions. Then take some personal time to reflect and within that time do not allow negative thoughts to entire into your mind at this time. Reflection time is a time of positive reinforcement and remembering that you are of worth. Start off small and just take 5 minutes of time for yourself. You are worth so much more than that but for now we will start small. Take time to let your guard down and be vulnerable with yourself. It's ok. No one can hurt you in this personal time. You are safe.

So repeat to yourself if you start feeling scared and think you can't tackle your emotional baggage, repeat, "I am safe, I am strong and I can do hard things." I know that as you take the time to find your inner strength, you will be amazed at the confidence that you can find within yourself. I know that have been amazed in the past month at the confidence, strength and security that I have found within myself. I am reminded of my favorite quote that said,

Thinking like a caterpillar does not work for butterflies.

So to all my fellow butterflies, it's time to take flight. No more crawling along in life, it is time to take flight and reach the potential that we all know that you have.

Do you believe in yourself??

I have been thinking a lot about the story of the Little Engine that could. Here he was faced with all sorts of opposition, yet he managed to make it to the top of the hill. He told himself that he could do it and he was right. Do we have the same mentality as that little engine? or are we constantly telling ourselves that life is too hard and what's the point in even trying?? Well I can tell you that I personally feel like I have a split personality when it comes to believing in myself. If I have done something before and experienced success then I think, of course I can do that and don't even doubt my abilities. Yet if I am asked to do something that I do not know if I will succeed or not, then I have a tendency to completely doubt myself. Little did I know that this split personality actually has a name. In the world of Human Behavior this concept is called Self-Efficacy. It is defined as "the personal belief in one's own ability to do something." Well how about that. That is exactly what I do. There are three constructs or foundations behind self-efficacy or your personal belief in yourself. Those constructs include, Mastery Experience, Vicarious Experience and Verbal Persuasion.

So what is Mastery Experience? This is your personal experience with something. For example, I know that weight loss works by eating nutritiously and exercise. I have experienced success in this area in my life. By doing those two things I have managed to lose 65 lbs and have seen success, so it does work. Naturally when we succeed at something, of course we are going to want to continue with that behavior. But what happens if we don't experience success?? and don't think that we can do hard things?? That is where the next construct of Vicarious Experience comes into play.

Vicarious Experience is learning by watching the success or failure of others similar to ourselves when they try things. These things may be old habits that they have experienced success with or they might be trying something for the very first time. If we see someone who is very similar to us succeeding at something new that we have always wanted to try, then we think to ourselves, "well if so and so can do it, so can I. It gives us confidence in ourselves to succeed. But sometimes even this doesn't work for us. We may be so stubborn that even still we doubt ourselves and our abilities. If this is you, (and trust me I am in this category too) then maybe the final construct will work for you. The final construct is Verbal Persuasion.

What is Verbal Persuasion you may be asking yourself. Well it is, "Encouragement by others." Have you ever said I am going to make the New Year's Resolution to start working out 5x a week. The first week you do great and think this year is actually going to be the year that you do it. You are so pumped up about it that you even persuade your friend do go to the gym with you. Then February rolls around and the excitement of the new year has worn off and you just aren't feeling the motivation to workout anymore. You start to make up excuses with your friend why you can't work out and before you know it, it's June and your running shoes have collected a nice thick layer of dust. If this has not happened to you, well then count yourself lucky because I know that this has happened to me every single year. So what happens? I know that I can experience weight loss success by exercising because not only have I done it, but I have also watched people similar to me achieve their goals this way. So what's missing? The personal cheerleader inside of my head saying that I can do it, is burnt out. She is tired of motivating myself all the time and so that is when others can come along and help. They can lift us up when we feel like we just can't go on anymore. They can help us remember what our goal is and that we are not alone on our journey.

So my question then to you is, who are the cheerleaders in your life? Do you have people that you can call or who can give you that motivational boost when you find yourself running on empty?? As you begin to find those cheerleaders in your life, you will recognize that you aren't alone in your goals. No one wants to see their friends give up on their goals and if they are a true friend then they will be with you all along the way of your journey, whatever that journey may be. As Henry Ford said,

Whether you believe you can or cannot, YOU'RE RIGHT!

So do what do you believe???

What makes you happy???

Do you ever wonder why sometimes life feels so overwhelming that you feel like the best answer is to give up? You wonder why on earth I would continue. It would just be easier to stay in bed and let life pass me by. I know have thought those same things and it really can be a scary feeling to feel like your life is totally out of control and you leave your happiness up to chance. You secretly hope that someone will come along and recognize your pain. Then with that recognition, they will do everything in their power to make you happy. Again, there you go allowing your happiness to be controlled by someone else and some event that may or may not be spectacular. I have to admit that I am completely guilty of this. When I am on one of my happiness high, I can hardly contain myself. Life is great and no matter what is happening in my life, everything is just fantastic. However, when I am having a down day or week or even month, its like no matter how hard I tried, I could not bring myself to be happy. Since moving to Utah, I would have to say that life certainly has had its difficulties. October I reached an all time low and decided it was time for me to get help. I started going to a counselor and talking to him really started to help me come out of my rut. Even though I was talking to him, I still felt like something was missing and I still felt like I was not really Traci. That worried me a little because I did not want to lose myself again. Even though I stared to feel lost, I knew that I found myself before, so I knew that I could find myself again.

In November, things started to look up. I went on my first date in I do not know how long and something started to change inside of me. I found myself always wanting to talk to him because when I talked to him I was Traci. With him, I could be myself entirely so I thrived on talking to him. I guess in a way you could say I was clinging to our friendship. In one of my classes yesterday, I learned the definition of cling. My professor described it as a fear based desperation. She then read a quote that said, “It is this clinging, the tightness of panic that gets people killed.” . When she said that it hit me that when we cling on to the past, we are killing our growth or our personal progression. We are in essence suffocating ourselves. Well if that is not enough of a wake up call, then I do not know what else is. I think I clung so tightly on to that relationship is because I had never been there before and feared that it would never happen to me again. How is that healthy?? Oh wait it’s not. I had to come to realize for myself that I do not need other people to make me happy. For so long I relied on others to make me happy and so when things did not work between the two of us I was devastated, but it has actually been the best thing that has happened to me.

These past two weeks I have been able to do a lot of soul searching and I realize now that I really can do hard things. There were nights when I would cry myself to sleep and I would wake up with swollen eyes and a killer headache, but that is all part of the grieving process. In reality I was mourning, two loses. First I was mourning the lost of one of my very close friends and second I was mourning the loss of myself. Talk about a lot of emotions to process. Never did I think of giving up on my process of self-discovery. I knew that is was necessary for me to continue on this path of refinement so I kept swimming no matter how hard the journey got. At times, I wanted to give up and I did break down, but I knew that I would be a stronger person if I could just make it through this trial. Most importantly, I have realized that to be happy it is important to have a purpose and love in your life. I want to help people realize that they too have an amazing potential and know that they too can have this amazing happiness in their life. I started reading the book, Happier by Tal Ben-Shahar and I cannot seem to put it down. In his book, he talks about four types of people or archetypes of people who are searching for happiness.



The first group is the rat racers. They are the people who believe that once they reach a certain goal or obtain a certain status, that then they will be happy. These people base their happiness on future events instead of realizing what they have right now.

The second group is the Hedonism archetype. These people seek pleasure but avoid pain at all costs, living their lives in a way to satisfy their desires without worrying about repercussions. These people take the easy way out in life instead of taking the road less taken.

The third group is the Nihilism archetype. These people have given up on happiness and are resigned to live a miserable life (talk about depressing).

The final group is the Happiness archetype. These people realize that they can be happy no matter what moment they are in. They realize that they do not have to be happy all the time but that they can enjoy life for all that it has to offer. The author puts it best when he says, “The rat racer becomes a slave to the future; the hedonist, a slave to the moment; the nihilist, a slave to the past. Attaining happiness requires that we enjoy the journey on our way toward a destination we deem valuable. “

So who are you in this spectrum of people? I am a rat racer and a hedonist. I think that as soon as I reach a certain goal that then I will finally obtain happiness and that if I do it without pain, then I will be ultimately happy. I could not be more wrong. Life is about our journey, I have not mastered the art of Happiness but I am finding that my life is more peaceful as I realize just how blessed I am. Gratitude really has changed my life and can change yours too. Start today with a gratitude journal and every day write three things that you are grateful for in your life. In three months, you will be a happier person. I have been doing this for the past two weeks and I can already see a change in my life. Now is the time to take back your life and stop letting life pass you by.

Author Tal Ben-Shahar gives great council to all of us when he said, “Happiness is not about making it to the peak of the mountain nor is it about climbing aimlessly around the mountain; happiness is the experience of climbing toward the peak.”