Doing versus Being

There are so many of us that pride ourselves in being busy. We look up to people who seem to be juggling the world because they seem more important than those who aren’t. It seems that the expectation is that the more hectic people’s lives are the better they are doing. And the busier they are the more successful they are.

Or perhaps it’s that the busier we are the better we feel about ourselves? We feel like when we are doing something then we are achieving but not so much when we are just being. When people constantly talk about how hectic their lives are there seems to be a sense of fulfilment in that for them but in the same breath they look tired and unhappy.

It’s the same with talking. We struggle to just be quiet, and we always need to be saying something. Talking fills gaps, it distracts us from our thoughts, we feel less alone and we also get the attention we want.

We talk to get acknowledged and to be heard and we talk to connect with others. When we are quiet we have to acknowledge ourselves, we have to listen to ourselves, we have to hear our own thoughts and we have to connect with ourselves. It’s a difficult thing to be just be in the now moment even to clear our minds of thoughts and just enjoy looking at something or sitting somewhere with nothing to DO but with everything to BE.

When we are quiet, we can finally see how we talk to ourselves. What do we say to ourselves? What do we believe to be true? But how long do we actually allow ourselves to hear these thoughts before we find a distraction.

I am really inspired by people who have gone to an ashram or even just done it themselves, people who have not spoken for a certain amount of days. Imagine how you get to know yourself, imagine how familiar you become with your thoughts, and how you are almost forced to learn how to clear your mind because suddenly there are no distractions and you realise that you don’t want to be stuck with your negative thoughts any longer.  

I believe that success takes on another dimension when we are able to be with ourselves, to be quiet for a while, to not find the next thing to do but rather find the chance to just be. Even if this is with people or alone, we can still just be.  I get that our lives are actually really busy but many people will keep doing things to keep busy even in their free time.

If you ask two different people what they do with their lives and one answers that they have been busy with work, friends, family etc and the other answers that they sat meditating all week (for example), let’s be honest we would think the meditating person is a bit strange and we would wonder why they don’t have something to do? Or didn’t they get bored and lonely? And our immediate thought is that this person doesn’t DO anything.

Babies know how to just be because that’s all they know. It’s the one time in our lives that we are allowed to just be and no one judges us for it. Until we grow up and suddenly being is not good enough, now we must get up and do do do! And we are not taught to find a balance of being and doing.

Many of us were not taught growing up that it’s so important to just be. I see this so often that when parents talk about their children they describe the success of their children by how busy they are in terms of their profession/school/sports etc. Imagine a parent bragging and saying that their child has decided not to work and do "nothing" for a while? What if the parent would brag about who their child is, and not what they do? But would that be good enough?

Success in society is based on what you have to show for yourself on the exterior not on how happy or content you are.  Cildren are praised for how well they do not thier ability to be or who they are. So they grow up thinking that to feel good about themselves they need to be doing something with thier lives and there is no focus on their internal world because all the focus is on what they are doing on the outside. And so we grow up in this constant rat race of believing that in order to be somebody, we have to always be doing something.  

Just being can feel really uncomfortable and often we will feel guilty for doing nothing, but it’s not nothing, it’s just not doing. It’s in the being that we begin to really know ourselves. It’s in the being that we get messages and signs about our lives. It’s in the quietness that we find the peace we really crave; it’s in the nothingness that we find everything we have been looking for. Where we find all those things we have not found while we are doing and trying. It’s in the being that we find the connection to God or the universe and to ourselves.

Why are we so quick to judge others?

It occurred to me recently that the only thing I can know for sure and make comments about is myself. That is why I write about myself. I have always had an issue with believing people who dish out advise and tell people how to do things instead of talking about their own experiences of things.

The day that changed my life was when I watched the documentary on Neale Donald Walsh’s life (the author of Conversations with God). The documentary showed how he was at the lowest point in his life and he lost everything to the point where he lived on the streets) and then he began to write and find answers. And the whole world saw his difficult journey but the whole world saw how real and difficult life can be. I was so moved by how real he was and how unashamed he was to put his life out there for people to see and learn from.  And I said to myself that one day I was going to do the same.

 But back to the theme of today, I think we are very quick to make presumptions about others when really we don’t know.

I have noticed with me that when I become opinionated or I have too much to say about someone else that it’s really just a distraction from myself. It’s easier to focus on negativity of others and how they are living their lives instead of acknowledging what’s really going on in our own lives.

I think human beings have forgotten how to love and support one another. People have even become scared of the word love or it’s only reserved for certain people. But what if we could drop all our judgement and just find more compassion and understanding for other people.

I think we are constantly trying to protect ourselves and so we are always on the defensive and our guards are up. But these walls don’t protect, they keep away.

It doesn’t mean we have to accept behaviours that we don’t agree with but instead of coming from a place of judgement we come from a place of compassion.

But perhaps this comes down to self- love once again and that is why it’s so difficult for us. I feel like everything comes down to self- love. If we don’t love ourselves and basically if we are hard on ourselves and treat ourselves like shit can we really treat others nicely?

For some reason society has built a stigma and some sort of guilt around self- care, especially  with men. They must be good providers but when it comes to loving themselves, finding compassion for themselves it’s seen as weak. But I am not sure how common it is for a Father to say to a son that he needs to love himself and take care of himself and be there for himself. A man is mainly acknowledged for how well he provides for his family and others.

So can we really be honest with ourselves? Can we be that self- aware that when we find ourselves judging someone else, in that moment we can acknowledge how shit we are actually feeling about ourselves?  We are constantly compensating for how bad we feel about ourselves with things, whether it be material things and talking others down.  

We often will find ourselves in situations where we are treated badly but I really do believe that people treat us the way we treat ourselves. And people treat us badly for as far as we are willing to let them do so.

It’s a difficult thing to acknowledge that we really don’t love ourselves enough or maybe at all. And there are many reasons why this could be but the fact is we can’t blame others anymore for this. No one is going to ride on their white horse and pull us out of our self-loathing. Only we can do this.

But acknowledging it doesn’t mean we fall into victim mode where we now feel sorry for ourselves because we feel that we are not good enough, its more about owning the fact that perhaps all the bad things we think about others is really what we think about ourselves. When we own our stuff we become empowered, not victimised. It’s easy to be a victim though because then we always have someone to blame and so we never have to take responsibility. But then we stay unhappy waiting to be fulfilled by someone or something.

I believe if we can see it in ourselves, and then have compassion for ourselves for feeling it then we can begin to love and support others around us. And then we don’t even have to try because it will be a natural process.

It’s empowering to own how vulnerable we can really be and feel. It’s dis empowering to constantly blame others for making us feel a certain way.

But why should we change anything about our lives right? Why should we suddenly start acknowledging things in ourselves? Because we all so badly want to be loved and accepted by others and we are on a constant search to find this acceptance everywhere we go, when really, the person that is going to love us the most is starring at us in the mirror, every day. When we can really feel that, love from others will just flow and acknowldegement from the outside won't be so important to us.

We so badly want to be understood and supported and loved for who we are and seen for what we do but we cannot seem to give that acknowledgement to ourselves. And the more we seek it out in others the more unfullfilled we seem to feel. It's a difficult process this, one that I often battle with. But it comforts me to know that so many of us feel the same way and so we are never really alone.

So something for me to ponder on and practice for sure.

Love always

Becoming the Lone Wolf

I haven’t written in a while mostly because I was approached by an old friend who has been following my blog and seemed to believe in my writing so much that he is putting a website together for me. Excited is an understatement and as usual it’s always a shock when someone comments positively about my writing, albeit, a pleasant shock. So I wanted to wait to post all my new stuff onto my website but I have been having writing withdrawals. It seems that writing is not a part of me, it has become me and without it, well I can no longer imagine it.

I still laugh because I remember when my Mother bought me my first journal, I wrote often, but with much resistance, and most of my entries began with “I f.ing hate writing but for some reason I do it anyway”. Oh yes, I had the dramatic teenager thing down to a tee. But I once saw a quote that said the hardest part of writing is the actual writing; this could not be truer. It’s a mixture of difficult and exhilarating at the same time, for me anyway.

I must say though another part of why I haven’t written also has to do with the fact that I have become a bit of a loner. No I don’t mean a hermit, or a recluse, I mean I have become someone quite independent and enjoy being in my own company. I used to hate being alone in every sense of the word. I was out every weekend with friends, and the thought of being alone for an hour used to send me into some sort of anxiety. But it’s amazing how much you learn about yourself when you can actually just be with yourself, without any resistance. I have found a new found love for nature and this is where I recharge my batteries as much as I can. Trees seem to be a better source of comfort for me than people lately.

I came across an article recently that spoke to me on a deep level. It spoke about the Archetype/symbol of the Lone Wolf.

So that is what I would call myself lately, the Lone Wolf. The article describes how although wolves normally live, travel, and hunt in packs, occasionally a young wolf will choose to leave the pack and set out on its own.  The Lone Wolf is an archetype, a metaphor, a symbol for freedom, independence and self-reliance. The term Lone Wolf describes a person who is an individual in the truest sense of the word. The Lone Wolf is someone who prefers to work alone, is Self-Reliant and enjoys the peace and contentment of his, or her, own solitude. The Lone Wolf lives by his, or her, own rules: rules which are in harmony with universal laws and its own personal Divine Nature. I am sure there are many people who can relate to this.

So this pretty much explains where I am at. I feel like I have distanced myself from expectations, demands, of society and people and I get very turned off by people who believe that things should be a certain way. We don’t even realise how some of the people we choose to spend our time with have these unfulfilled dreams and expectations of themselves and without realising it we have taken their expectations upon ourselves, only to find ourselves in a position where we feel anxious because we haven’t reached certain goals or we think we are not where we should be in our lives.

So, I would describe it like I have become un-tethered to the pack.

In the last few months, so many things, ideas, thoughts began to NOT resonate with me and I often felt guilty because suddenly my thought process and the way I viewed life was completely different to so many people. And often that old feeling of "maybe I should rather not say certain things and do the right things in order to feel like I fit in better" would be better, but who would it be better for? Certainly not me.  

So I took a writing break to talk myself through this process and find my way in this new way of being and most importantly not judging it. Let’s just say that if you ever have a strange, bizarre idea about the universe, and life, I would be the first to listen because let me say that society’s way of thinking can be very narrow minded, and its one way only and that can be suffocating to many people who just don’t fit into that box or way of thinking.

So here is to the beginning of a new chapter, a different, awakened Talya, and some new ideas and writings about life that I have in stall.

And the truth is, alone= all one.

Living a transparent life

I often feel like I am surrounded by people who hide behind everything, but mostly from themselves. Maybe I notice it because I used to be one of those people. But when I look back, keeping secrets kept me from finding the peace I so desperately craved.

My philosophy became to live a transparent life. I have nothing to hide, or be ashamed of and most importantly I am learning still to hide nothing from myself. Reality can be difficult but let me tell you, that avoiding reality is much, much worse.

We like to live in illusions because they have kept us going. We believe certain things about ourselves, about the world and about others and we get stuck in that. We operate from our egos and we think that our opinions are more than opinions and we feel that we are entitled to judge others and make comments about how others are living their lives. But in this we become rigid and unhappy because we cannot see past our noses. We cannot see past the illusions we have created for ourselves and others and life. We land up living in a farce that we call our lives. We choose to “stay asleep” rather than wake up to what is really there.

We like to see things in a certain way because we are so afraid of what the reality is and that we may not be able to handle it. In fact deep down we know what the truth is but truth can often turn our worlds upside down but if we are hiding so much then our world can’t be that put together in the first place. And so what if it’s not?

I have committed to writing about my truth from the moment I began to write and I don’t know how many times I have said this, but it is truly freeing. I write about it yes, but I also speak it, and I am it. And every so often life brings me a new experience so that I can once again move past the illusions and see what is truly there. Sometimes I don’t want to, and sometimes it can take me longer than I would like to admit but I eventually do.

I get millions of different comments from my readers on my writing and some will almost feel sorry for me and think that I am now in some state of depression when I write about some of my painful processes. This is because they have the belief that when you talk about difficult things you must be really unhappy, when in fact it’s the opposite. When painful things come up I write about them and I feel them and move through them but in all of this I can still be joyful and grateful and light. But I have had to learn how to do this. To learn how to stay in my light no matter what the darkness brings. Or better yet to embrace the darkness for it brings gifts beyond our imagination.

We like to see things in a certain way because we are so afraid of what the reality is and that we may not be able to handle it. If we look to see what really is there then maybe we will see that things aren’t as great as we make them out to be, or even that our relationships are not necessarily what we make them out to be, or whatever it is. These are just examples. So we keep hiding behind what we think is there, instead of admitting to ourselves that this may just be an illusion we have created because we are too afraid to face the truth, to face ourselves.  And we are afraid of being judged. Let me tell you that I have never felt judged doing this. Yes people think they know what I must be feeling but judged, no. Maybe you judge you...

But I say so what? So what if things are actually crappy or so what if we have to face ourselves and the truth. So what if it’s hard? There have been times where it was so hard that I thought that this might just kill me. As dramatic as it sounds it’s the truth.

Be true, be vulnerable, be you, speak your truth, and commit to peeling off the layers you built in order to get through life. They no longer serve you.

I celebrate you in being the true, authentic, transparent you.

Love, always

Taking on my Father's "Addiction". A painful relationship between a Father and Daughter

So by now you know that ever so often I open myself up and write about whatever process I am going through, and I do this in the hope that my openness and transparency will benefit my readers in some way, in any way. But in no way is this easy and every time I post a piece like this it’s at risk of feeling vulnerable and exposed. But being the woman that I am I trying to move beyond fear and challenge myself. This is as real as I get.

As a woman most of my identity was based on how my Father saw me. And the most difficult thing about this is that having a really troubled and shitty Father made it hard to find myself as a woman because there was no one to mirror off of or get that affirmation from. I know there will be many women and men who can relate to this.

I can’t speak for others but my relationship with my Father was everything in the world to me. I put him on a pedestal. I remember being about eight or nine years old thinking that there was no ways in hell I was ever going to ever love anyone like I loved him.  

As a little girl you look to your Father to show you that you are loved by a man, you are worthy of being loved by a man and that you are seen by a man. But I can’t say I ever experienced this. You see in the past I would have said that my Dad tried his best and he showed me love in the best way he could. And I would have said this because a part of me wanted to still feel sorry for him and be the understanding daughter that I always was. But this is not the truth; well it’s not my truth. He didn’t show love because he didn’t know what love was.

He told me he loved me when he needed me. He told me he loved me when he was high and when he was lonely. This was more manipulation than anything and I fell for it each time. Obviously then I was too young to know any better. And those were the only times he said “I love you”. I can count them on my fingers. But I lived for those times. I yearned for them. He created a yearning in me that I have had since then. A yearning for an unrequited, dysfunctional "love".

I grew up thinking that love was painful, and it had nothing to do with freedom or joy like people said it did. Love for me was heavy. And here’s the biggest one, love was about filling voids in each other.

Except I filled my Dad’s void and he created one in me.

One that I have tried to fill my whole life. This is what happens though with parents like this and with many, many parents in general They shouldn’t have had children at all, and they had them for their own selfish reasons, and to fill their own voids and so as children our goal becomes to fill their voids, yet this just creates a void in us. Well in my case anyway.

And so I thought I knew what love was, because the way my Father ‘’loved’’ me was all I knew and in my mind it’s how I thought I should be loved by a man and how I should show love. The only thing is I can no longer call this love. Maybe that’s the saddest part of it all for me.

So in the past I knew love to be filled with neediness, pain, expectations and a lot of crying because my love for my Father was unrequited. And so, unrequited love in the form of men and relationships became the theme of my life. Love became a game, a game that was exciting, dangerous, painful and manipulating and I needed it to sustain me. It was normal for me, it made me feel alive…for a while, but it always ended in pain. Love for me equalled desperation. Yes that is the word I have been looking for to describe the love for my father, utter desperation. I spent my life loving a man who never loved me back.

 
My Father had an addiction to prescription medication and although I did not take that addiction on in anyway, I definitely took the emotional side of the addiction on (not that I had a choice then), because addiction does not only come in the form of a substance. So yes I would call this an Emotional Addiction. And trust me it’s so hard to break. I needed it, I lived for it, I felt empty without it and I was always seeking it out in people. The yearning I always had, I lived for. I am not even sure I am explaining it right but the intense feeling of it is difficult to put into words.

When he died that intense pain I felt around our relationship just grew. And I was even more attached to the fact that love had to be painful like this, it had to be ‘’I love you but I can’t have you’’. You need me so I am there for you but still where is the love here? I would die for you but oh wait, you died anyway. What is wrong with this picture?!

Seriously I am watching these words go down on the page and I am somewhat confused and flabbergasted at how I was able to live my life like this. It's like being handcuffed to him almost. This has been one of the hardest and longest processes I have ever worked on. Today I am almost an observer of this all and suddenly I want to laugh so hard! Because Dearest Dad, you really fucked up so badly. But still I love you; yes I do because somewhere deep down I actually do know what love is, even if I forgot for a while. In fact I am the most loving open-hearted person I know when I am not operating from a wounded place.

The thing is, I don’t know what it’s like for other women/men out there that have had bad or worse or no relationships with their fathers, but I know that this is how my relationship with the most important man of my life shaped the way I know/knew how to love.

There really are days where I still want to be the little girl and I wish my Father would come back and do it differently this time. I wish he could have shown me what real, unconditional love was.

It’s like a slap in the face when you realise that the kind of love you have been chasing isn’t actually real. And the love I shared with my Dad wasn’t love at all. It was the idea of love. It was manipulation, and I was a puppet on a string. I spent my life mourning what could have been with us.

So ok this is the story but now what?

Now I am left asking what love really is. And I am fearful for I can’t answer that right now. I am fearful of letting go of the idea of love that I had because it defined me. His idea of love for me, or the way he showed it, really defined me. I often still get so mad and wish that there was even a memory of Father-Love that I can go back to in my mind but there isn’t.

So now I need to create my identity without this emotional need and void that lived within me. But I honestly don’t know how. But in my experience when you set the intention, ask for an answer and then let it go, the answer always appears.

But through all of my writing and all the processes I have gone thorough I am certain that I have what it takes. So I guess to try and find that love within me again as an adult today is what this is about. So here I am setting this challenge for myself. And as God as my witness I will become the woman that I was always meant to me before I was exposed to the madness that were my parents. Herein lies my journey and it’s really difficult but somewhat beautiful at the same time. The beauty that is always in the chaos.

So as a grown woman I am now on the journey to figure out what love is. I know it begins with The Self but when you don’t even have memories of how this looks from your parents it’s difficult to just imagine what self- love looks like, never mind implementing it. But that’s not going to stop me.

I am feeling strong even if I am questioning how I am going to finally move through this once and for all! I know that there is always a way….This is one of the many steps I have taken to be the woman I know I really am.

And to remember that there are bigger forces that support us in everything that we do. The universe is always working in our favour. I recently had an experience that helped me to come to this realisation about me and my Father and now being able to feel the sadness around it is my idea of the universe supporting me so I can move through it.

When there is stuff that we still  need to work on life makes sure to give us the experiences, the people and opportunities we need to work it through whether we are aware of it or not. That is why people often say that they are stuck in the same patterns and whether they move jobs or go into new relationships the same stuff keeps coming up. This is because life is saying "ok so are you going to work on this now finally?". Life keeps knocking until we are ready to open that door no matter how unpleasant it is.

Every time I work through an issue and face that which is painful I walk with a lighter step and a more peaceful heart. So with gratitude I end this off.

And so it is.

I am a sexual woman...but what does that really mean?

I am a woman of 29 going on 30. I am not sure why I have the need to mention that but maybe because the need to talk about this comes with this age.

Sexuality seems to be a touchy subject because the mere utterance of the word sparks instant stereotypes. Usually when you mention the work sexuality people automatically think of sex.

As a woman when I think of the word sexuality I think of expression, art, vibrancy and intuition but yes sex comes into it of course. For me, sexuality is more personal and individual than someone having to make us feel sexual. As a woman I think I always felt as if it was the man’s job to make me feel beautiful and sexy and in my power. I do think this is a normal thing though but I also think it can be rather dis empowering to sit and wait for a man to make you feel those things, or to have to have a man in your life in order for you to feel those things.

I have really begun to notice how important sexuality has become in my life. Perhaps because I am more in touch with myself and self-love has become a theme in my life and maybe because it is actually a natural thing for women whether we acknowledge it or not.

As women our sexuality has not really been celebrated enough and often women operate from a wounded place to get the attention they want from a man and they base their sexuality on the reactions and affirmations of men. The wounded woman is the woman who was never noticed by her father so she unconsciously seeks it out in other men.

But as women and men we can all agree that there is nothing more beautiful than a woman who can own her sexuality and her power.

I have seen it in little girls who want to wear their party dresses to bed at night. Little girls who twirl around in their dresses because it makes them feel pretty and “like a girl”. At that age we are not necessarily going to say it’s a sexual thing but it’s about feeling like a girl, and there is something very special in that. And as adult women we love to feel like a woman and only a woman will understand what this means.

For me sexuality is about celebrating yourself as a woman. Because as women we have unfortunately been tamed. Yes I said tamed. And there has been this stereotype put on us that men are the sexual ones and we are the ones that turn over and say "no honey I have a head ache".

But let us just realise that sexuality for women holds an enormous amount of power. It’s a life force, its beauty, its art, its everything.

But can we own our sexuality and separate it from anything man for now? Because even as women we are able to notice another sexual woman because even if we have not owned it in ourselves, we do want to.  Yes all women want to. All women want to feel like they are powerful in their femininity and in their sexuality.

But I feel I must again mention that I am not talking about in relation to men. I am not talking about flirting or wearing revealing clothes, none of that. I am talking about admiring oneself as a woman. Knowing where your power lies as a woman and that even without a man, we are sexual powerful beings that could rule countries, worlds, universes, galaxies because of the feminine power we own.  And with that sexual, feminine power comes our intuition, our knowing, and our ability to Mother, our ability to transform. Our ability to aid men in their transformations, our ability to heal, and the list goes on.

So now I’m going to get a bit personal but I’m in this now, so I might as well go all in! As a woman it’s important to notice our bodies. Not how does my body look to “him” but how beautiful my body is to me. How and where it curves, how it feels to have beautiful soft spots, how mysterious some of our parts are, and that although we can be vulnerable in this place, there is power.  How beautiful we are to touch, to be felt, to be kissed, but to be admired by ourselves.

I feel that society has naturally taught us that women are vulnerable but not necessarily powerful.

Things are changing, relationships are changing, dynamics between men and women and even women and women are changing and so it’s time to own our power as woman. It’s time to let ourselves feel and express our sexuality in whatever form is right for us. Even if you just believe me that you are powerful that’s enough for now. The feelings will come. But again when I say powerful I don’t mean having power over someone else, or a man, or being more powerful than someone else, I’m talking about inner power.

For a woman that inner power is subtle, but it’s there and it’s noticeable but it’s not flaunted and it’s not for show.

But you don’t have to be a thin, model-type woman to give yourself permission to be sexual. So on the topic of sex, is it ok to love sex and want it, often? And is it ok to want mind blowing, life altering sex? Fuck yes. But first and foremost it goes back to owning your own sexuality and loving yourself, your body purely for the fact that you are a unique woman. Purely for the fact that you are a woman.

Gone are the days of the tamed woman, and gone are the days of sexuality being dependent on any man (or relationship) although let’s not forget that we do need them sometimes for the part they play in celebrating that side of ourselves. But they celebrate it with us, not for us. That’s the difference. And when you can truly celebrate yourself, you open yourself up to be celebrated.

And so sexuality is beauty in itself, it’s a form of love and expression for ourselves and another. It’s a powerful force in our lives, it’s who we are and it’s truly a gift when expressed in the right way. Because let me just say that sexuality used for manipulation or control is not sexuality.

There is a wild woman in all of us. Some of us let her out but others keep her locked up for fear of judgement. And some of us have just completely forgotten she is there or pretend she doesn't exist. But this woman is free, beautiful, and expressive, artistic in any form, loving, but powerful, very powerful and all women know what this place feels like even if it was only for a few seconds.

So let me say that I am a sexual woman, and yes I love the act of sex but I also have truly began to understand the meaning of true sexuality, of expression and the gift in this.

 

From one Wild Woman to another, I celebrate me and I celebrate you.

We believe the lies we were told

I began writing when I was in a really dark space in my life. But then again can I really call it that because the darkest spaces actually bring on the brightest light.

So here, now, today I am not the same person that wrote any of my last entries. Then, I was stuck in this identity of someone I wasn’t. Someone who felt that because I wasn’t living up to the expectations of society, I wasn’t good enough.

But I can only talk about how I experience the world and if it resonates with you, awesome but if it doesn’t then that’s cool too. The truth is, that what I write about is my experience and some of it comes from me, but some of it is channelled from somewhere or something else and I will often find myself writing things even I didn't know I knew.

So have you noticed how everyone has so many opinions about fucking everything? What we should do in our lives what we shouldn’t do. There are sayings and quotes and writings to help us to move into a place of happiness and joy. You see the problem is that if we are constantly seeking happiness and joy we don’t find it because anything we search for stays in the future. ''The search'' is an action of waiting for something to happen in the future, something that we are lacking, and so "lacking" becomes a constant feeling. And lacking creates feeling less-than and this negative cycle grows.

The now, is this moment right here, this moment that you are reading this and this moment that you are not searching for anything so you can just relax and chill and read what I am writing and of course take out of it whatever feels right and leave behind whatever doesn’t. But you see in this moment that you are reading this you are free from your past, free from what you think your future is and free from all the negative thoughts about yourself that encompasses your life.

In this moment you are reading an article by me about how important this moment here and now is. So in this moment you are truly you because you are free from thought and self- judgement because you are focused on what I am saying.

So if I would tell you that you are perfect in this moment would you believe me? Maybe at first, because you would not be thinking because you are focused on reading but in a matter of seconds you would be back to the same old thinking that you aren’t good enough, or that you maybe cannot understand what I am saying or you don’t know these things that I do for example? But none of this is true.

You see, you are so attached to negative thoughts about yourself that you cannot even begin to fathom that every negative thing that was ever told to you was a lie. Now although you may not even remember anything negative that was ever said to you, you need to know that even a lack of positive affirmation creates a negative thought pattern.  Lies told to us by our parents, friends, whoever, is just that, lies. So we take those lies and we begin to identify with them. We become them. And we do whatever it takes to numb ourselves from these lies because they make us feel so shit. But did it ever occur to you that these ARE actually lies? These things are not true.

If a thought is true it uplifts you and automatically increases your vibration. If a thought is untrue, it lowers your vibration and makes you feel shit about yourself. But why can’t you start telling yourself the truth? Because no matter how much you have been lied to, it doesn’t mean you cannot change that around by finally beginning to tell yourself the truth about yourself. But again how do you know what’s truth and lies? And again I will tell you that truth makes us feel good and lies make us feel shit. You do the math.

So in this moment you are perfect and you are the truth and that is all that matters, that is enough. Gone are the days of having to hold onto anything negative about yourself or anyone else for that matter.

We are taught about positive thinking and self- love and so we try to do this. We tell ourselves that we are thinking positively and loving ourselves when we don’t even have the first clue as to how to do this.

And we watch people on TV like the Oprah’s of the world, or the Deepak Chopra's and whoever else that comes up with these amazing insights into life and we begin to immediately feel inferior. And we believe that it’s these kinds of people that can help us. But we can watch these programs all day and still nothing changes in us because we cannot leave the responsibility to anyone else to make us feel good about ourselves. Everything we need comes from within us, not without. Without is “with-out”.

Just a few months ago I was stuck in this conundrum of what I should be doing with my life because that’s what society believes I should do.

So ask yourself, is what I want what other people tell me I should want or is it truly what I want?

 

I took a break from writing because I wanted to figure out as a woman, what is right for me and my life not what have other people said is right for me. The unhappiest time in my life was when my life was led by what I thought others expected of me. And in this place I began to fall victim to others because I was different and never fitted into the mould then I must be bad or wrong?

We are so asleep in our lives that we have never asked the question what is right for me. What do I want?

Only you know the truth about yourself, only you remember those moments where you felt so good about yourself and those are the “truest” most real moments that have existed in your life. That is the true you. Hold onto that every second of every day.


 

 

 

Why is it so hard to express ourselves?

We all have things we want to say and our minds tick over every second of everyday but most often we keep these thoughts to ourselves.

Expressing ourselves is a difficult thing to do because we not sure if what we have to say is valid or clever or even worth saying. And so we don’t speak up. We don’t speak up when we have important things to say or when we are unhappy about something even if it’s small because we don’t want to create conflict.

I have noticed in my own life that keeping quiet to avoid conflict is a silent killer. And we land up walking around carrying the frustration of keeping quiet on top of work life, home life and all the other pressures that comes with life and so we become exhausted. We become burdened by our own thoughts that we are choosing not to express.

When we express ourselves it’s not up to us how the other person takes it. I believe if we speak our truth from a place of love and kindness, then we have done enough.

So what is truth? Well my truth is what I believe to be true for me. It is not THE truth, it’s just my truth and what is right for me. We all have our truth about what we feel is true to us and we can’t actually judge someone for speaking their truth no matter how different it is from ours.

I believe another reason why it’s so hard to speak our truth is because we worry that if we do, others won’t like us. But it is really difficult to speak up when we have been brought up to keep quiet, to sweep things under the rug because difficult things are seen as ‘’bad’’ to talk about.

The hardest thing I have ever done is talk about my truth and it still hard. I am a typical example of someone who worries that what I say may be too different or too challenging. But I have realised that the hardest things to talk about are always the most meaningful.

I think we are so afraid of the others reaction and we are so afraid of a negative response so we would rather keep the peace. But keeping the peace is a false and it doesn’t exist. It’s what we tell ourselves so that we can say “Well I have done good today, I managed to keep the peace instead of creating an issue”.

But my question is who cares if there is an issue? The fact is we didn’t create it because it’s already there. We are now just going to talk about it. Things like anger, rage, and sadness are emotions that are in fact extremely healing to us when expressed. When we can give ourselves permission to feel those things, we become human.

But we are so focused on being good. Like our parents told us that we were good when we were happy, but as soon as we got angry we were told we were wrong and as soon as we cried we were told to stop so we were brought up learning that anger and sadness are wrong to feel. Many of us weren’t allowed to get angry at our parents, or other adults or even our siblings and friends because that made us bad.

So now when we want to express our anger it comes out all wrong and in the most dysfunctional manner. Some people are passive aggressive and hold that quiet, internal anger that eats away at them, others blow up and become aggressive and some only express themselves when their inhibitions are gone, under the influence of a few drinks. Often we don’t even know how to express deep sadness so it comes out as rage.

I have felt especially recently that I have lived a life of keeping quiet, about everything because that was the right thing to do. And so the anger builds and builds and in my case it took a toll on my physical health last year. Imagine what 29 years of keeping your mouth shut does to you.  And for others, it’s been much, much longer.

So here I am expressing myself through writing and does the whole world know I have issues? Yes. And does the whole world know some of my deepest darkest thoughts? Yes. And am I still learning how to express myself without shame? Definitely!

 But this where healing lies. In expressing who we are and what we feel.

 

 

 

Its ok to feel fear and doubt for the upcoming year

So 2013 has begun even though 2012 only ended a few days ago and somehow we have to find the balance between one year ending and another beginning.

For some reason, the beginning of this year has felt particularly difficult, not because the holidays are over but because there there seems to be a feeling of fear and insecurity in the air.

Since the year began I have found myself doubting if I can achieve what I would like to and be as successful as I want to be in everything that I have set out to do. I wonder if I will be able to live up to the expectations I have set for myself and if I should be actually setting these expectations at all.

There is a certain amount of pressure we put on ourselves when we say it’s going to be a good year because we then have to somehow find a way to make it so and if it doesn’t turn out that way we land up feeling like failures, or that life has done us wrong.

On New Year’s Day I had this overwhelming feeling like I was starting all over again. Over the last few months my life took on a whole new dimension, and I would say I almost found a "New Talya'', but I am now feeling like what If I can’t live up to this. I am wondering if I can still be proud of myself if I am not always happy, and if I can still be loveable and be someone that people look up to even when I am not doing as well as I would like to. But more importantly, if I can be kind to myself when I feel I least deserve it.

A part of me feels like I need to be that inspiring, happy and fulfilled person all the time. I love that feeling but most of all I love myself more when I am happy because I feel like I am achieving something great. But when it comes to feeling sad or down is where the self- judgement comes in. I know when I put too much pressure on myself to stay in a good space, the opposite happens.  

Since the clock struck twelve on New Year’s Eve I suddenly felt as if I was looking up at a massively high mountain that I now have to climb. And like clockwork, as January hit I started my negative self- talk and my self- confidence took a dive. And the ever so pointless question of ‘’what if’’ came back with a vengeance. What if things don’t change the way I want them to this year, what if I fail, what if, what if….

So my only New Year’s resolution is to be kinder to myself in the times where I am finding life difficult and challenging and remind myself that I am worthy even when I am struggling. I don’t know how I am going to achieve this, but from experience, the universe always has a way of making sure we get the experiences we need in order to make whatever changes we need to, or want to.

I think we could all afford to be kinder to ourselves when times get tough because we have no control over what happens to us but we do have control over how we treat ourselves.

So I am starting the year with much doubt and fear but I am also starting the year out acknowledging that that’s actually ok.