How I keep sabotaging myself...and how to stop it

"Excuses for ourselves still ultimately be the killer of our dreams." -- @realcandaceowens

Recently I realized I've been making a lot of excuses for myself. Why I haven't gotten to X point in life or accomplished X goal. Then I suddenly realized that the only person holding me back is myself.

I realized that the biggest thing I was doing was making excuses for myself. “It’s not the right time, I don’t feel like it, I don’t feel ready, etc.” But as the famous quote says, “Done is better the perfect,” It’s so important to actually START something and get it going, get it finished, even if it’s not perfect, stop making the excuses that are holding you back and step into the unknown.

So I decided to stop the self sabotaging behavior, take a few steps back and reassess some patterns in my life. While yes, I will be letting go of some things and grieving the way I thought my life would go, that only means I'm making room for better things to come.

That also means I’ll be challenging myself a lot more, stepping into more discomfort and allowing myself to grow, to reach new goals and to set standards that I have been too overwhelmed to set or felt like they were too much out of reach. Even if I felt that it's too much pressure or I’m not prepared, I have to remember that Tomorrow never really comes, and preparation can sometimes be a sneaky disguise for procrastination.

To turn our aspirations into reality, we must be willing to step into the unknown, face our fears head-on, and push ourselves beyond what feels safe and familiar. That's where the magic happens!

So, here's my challenge to myself: To on a journey of discomfort and growth, with the unwavering determination to reach my goals. Whether it's pursuing a new career path, starting a passion project, or simply taking better care of ourselves, l will banish procrastination from my life.

Progress doesn't always come easily. It's okay to stumble, make mistakes, and encounter setbacks along the way. Embrace those moments as opportunities for learning and growth. Each step, no matter how small, brings us closer to the person we aspire to be.

From now on I will hold myself accountable, cheer others on, and celebrate every milestone achieved. I will share struggles and triumphs, and inspire others to join this incredible journey. We're capable of more than we could ever imagine, and it all starts with that courageous first step.

So, here's to embracing discomfort, bidding farewell to procrastination, and unleashing our full potential! It’s time to step into our greatness and stop sabotaging myself and my dreams.

What have you been putting off lately and finding excuses for? Take a look at your life, you may be surprised at what you find.

Living for now...what does that even mean?

Breaking down the concept of living in the moment.

There is a passge I read from The Art of Self Love, which has always stuck with me.

“There is no time wasted or lost. There’s only this moment, and its complete within itself.

Go beyond accepting and forgiving yourself. Love yourself profoundly, but not the idea of yourself with all its vanity. Love the essence of who you are, which is the essence of every single one of us.

Learn to let go, trust, and learn the essence of it.

There’s nothing more to add.”

I love this poem and ruminated on it for awhile. At the time hen I read it, I had no idea what self love was or what “living in moment” was. Since then, I’ve built on this thought little by little, to where I think I can explain it much better for others now.

Living in the moment…what is it?

I guess you could also call this mindfulness or being present, or what I like to refer as, “just being”. It refers to the practice of fully engaging with and experiencing the present moment without being distracted by thoughts about the past or future. Without distractions about what you will say in this conversation, or what you should have said in that conversation. It involves being aware of and fully immersed in the current sensations, thoughts, and emotions without judgment or attachment.

Living in the moment entails directing your attention to the present without dwelling on regrets from the past or anxieties about the future. It means acknowledging and accepting your current circumstances, experiences, and feelings, whether positive or negative, without trying to change or control them. Instead of being preoccupied with what has happened or what might happen, you focus on what is happening right now. Essentially, you become neutral to your past experiences and thoughts. You choose only perfection, you choose only love, and you chose only being.

By cultivating mindfulness and living in the moment, you can develop a greater sense of self-awareness, mental clarity, and emotional balance. It allows you to fully appreciate and enjoy the simple pleasures of life, engage more deeply in your relationships, and savor the richness of each experience.

See that tree you’re passing? Look at those vibrant colors! Or that adorable child waving at you. Or look at that cute old couple, still just as in love as the day they met 50 years ago. When you start living in the moment you start appreciating everything around you and realizing that everything in life can be beautiful, if you choose to see it.

Living in the moment doesn't mean disregarding or neglecting your future goals or responsibilities. It means finding a balance between planning for the future and being fully present in the present. It encourages you to make conscious choices and take deliberate actions in alignment with your long-term aspirations while still fully immersing yourself in the present moment.

Practicing mindfulness techniques such as meditation, deep breathing exercises, or simply paying attention to your senses out in nature can help you develop the ability to live in the moment and experience a deeper connection with yourself and the world around you.

My favorite is walking in nature, barefoot, looking at flowers and appreciating the colors all around you. Being in silence with yourself, removing all outside distractions like your phone, other people’s voices, listening to podcasts, anything. Getting back to your core and enjoying being with you.

If you haven’t tried living the moment, try it today. Take a walk in nature. Go barefoot, without your phone or earbuds. Listen to the sounds in nature. The birds, the bugs, the wind. Everything is perfect. Nature is perfect, unspoiled, exactly as it was meant to be. That’s how we are. We just need to remember it and get back to our true selves and our core, where there is nothing left but perfection.

How to find the beauty in taking risks

The amount of people that still think I'm traveling with a dude, or someone that is secretly taking my photos, or that I'm only in places where I have friends/know others is hilarious.

Sure, there are times I'm unsure of where to stay. I have to be careful as a solo female traveler, but it doesn't deter me from getting out and exploring the world.

Last year when I heard about the murder of Gabi Petito on SM, I was camped in the desert in the above photo. The thought crossed my mind that maybe I should move. Maybe I wasn’t safe. Maybe there was a serial killer in this desert. Ridiculous thoughts I would've never considered had I not known about it the murder beforehand.

Then I remembered that this girl’s situation had nothing to do with mine. her story is not mine, her life is not mine, her circumstances are not mine. So why was I afraid? I chose in that moment to stay in the spot I was, and I would have missed the incredible sights and adventures the next day if I chickened out and left to a "safer" spot.

We've been so programmed as females in society to stay in one place, not explore or go out on our own. That everything is dangerous and out to kill us. That we're not safe without a man.

Sure, there are risks. But we risk our lives everyday driving in our car to go to the store. If I had listened to everyone who told me to stay home the past 2 years, I would still be in the same Austin apartment I lived in for ten years. I would've never gone to Asia, driven across the U.S, stayed in cabins in remote areas & seen friends around the country.

Even now as I prepare for my next trip, people are asking if I know anyone there or if I'm going to see someone. No, I don't know anyone in that country, and most of the time I don’t speak the language of that country either. I just go and learn on the fly. that’s the beauty of traveling. That’s the beauty of freedom and the beauty of taking risks.

Stop letting all the fear mongering on the news affect you. Stop letting other's fears affect you. Turn off the TV. For real. Just stop watching the news. You will see how little it really affects you when you step away from the brainwashing and just live your life. Yes, there will always be others suffering. But how do you expect to help them when you won't even help yourself? Put yourself first. There is no shame in it.

Then get outside and go do something you've always wanted to but have been too scared to. 💚💜💙

Different is the new skinny/strong/beautiful

Human Design explained. The easiest and most different thing you can do, is just be yourself.

I’ve been studying a lot of Human Design over the past couple years, and I find it extremely helpful as way to not only understand yourself better, but how to live your best life based on the unique way you were designed.

Did you know that we all have a unique design that is fixed throughout our lives? It’s true. The Neutrino biverse weather report displays the current imprint as the planets move through time and space. This is what we experience collectively on a daily basis. Human design says we live in a 6 line cycle that follows the moon. And this is called Human Design.

Human Design is a unique and powerful system that combines elements of astrology, the I Ching, the Kabbalah, and the chakra system to provide a blueprint of a person's unique energy and personality. It’s all about self-discovery and understanding the inherent strengths and weaknesses of one's own energy type. You are provided a literal roadmap, or what I like to call, a cheat sheet about your life, based on your Human Design, which is when and where you were born.

By providing insight into everything from a person's communication style to their decision-making process, Human Design can help individuals live their best lives by aligning their actions with their authentic selves. It’s is a powerful tool that can help you unlock your full potential and live a more fulfilling life, and to be ok with just being yourself.

According to my Human Design chart, I am a Generator with an open ego and throat center. This means other can very easily project onto me what they think I should be, and I will take it on as my own. I also have a hard time speaking up for myself and formulating my ideas and thoughts into active speech. I usually come to the answers much slower in the way of writing my thoughts down or having time to ponder them and formulate answers later.

Finding out that it's easy for me to get swayed by other people's beliefs and what they think I should be rather, rather than just being myself, was a huge game changer. Understanding that there is nothing wrong with me, realizing I just take a lot of time to make decisions and I have a specific way of doing things and a process ( as we all do), allowed me to accept myself fully for who I am and not let others rush me into what they think is an important decicion.

I decided to live by Judy Garland's rule to be a first rate version of myself, rather than a second rate version of someone else. This is so key, especially in the days of Social Media, when everyone has an idea and and opinion of everything, and we are living less authentic versions of ourselves in order to please others.

Stop doing that. Just be yourself. It’s ok. By being yourself, you are being different. There is no one else like you in the world, so take advantage of that!

Different is the new skinny/strong, and that’s what makes you beautiful. So stick to that.

If you want a Human Design reading, please check out HD by Z at this link https://www.hdbyz.com/appointments-1k. She has changed the way I look at myself and the world, and I think it’s such an important tool to live your life exactly as it was meant for YOU!

How to know when you've broken the trauma cycle

When “boring” means stable and “exciting” is actually abusive and toxic

I had an interesting experience recently that made me think a lot about how far I’ve come. I realized that there are some very clear signs on how to know when you’re healing from extreme trauma, and one of those is that you simply stop perceiving stability and peace with boring and normal.

Listen, I get it. Trauma is an incredibly difficult thing to overcome. It shapes the way we think, feel, and act, and causes us to feel stuck in a cycle of negative patterns that we can't seem to escape from. Also ,when you’re so deep in it, you have NO IDEA that you’re even in that cycle until you finally get to a point where enough is enough and you are ready to face some hard truths about yourself.

When you finally do accept you need help and healing, breaking free from trauma will start to bring a profound sense of freedom and clarity. It allows us to see the world in a new light and discover the safety and stability that we may have been missing. It also allows us to see that safety and stability as something natural and peaceful, something to be sought after…not something boring.

Breaking free from my trauma was a long and challenging journey…it still is, in a way. I honestly can’t even say I’m done with the journey or completely healed, but I do have a massive toolbox of modalities to help me when I am triggered, not to mention a completely different mindset to go with it. And that is what counts.

It took years of therapy, self-reflection, thousands of dollars and hard work to finally realize that the chaos and instability I was so accustomed to was actually…not natural at all. I grew so used to chaos in my life (that was a constant in my childhood), I didn't even realize it was STILL causing me harm in my adult life. Only when I started to break out of the trauma cycle I realized how much damage it caused me, and how avoidable all the chaos in my life was.

Most importantly, I realized that the chaos in my life was NOT normal. I was not doomed to deal with one dramatic situation after another, I was just so accustomed to this happening that I continued to welcome in chaotic people and situations, and actually REJECT calm, stable, non-dramatic individuals and environments.

Because what I perceived as boring was actually safety and stability and my default state of chaos was fear and drama, everything else felt dull and unexciting. When I began to unpack some seriously f’ed up patterns in my life that were repeating from my childhood, I knew I had to break the cycle.

So I accepted I needed help, and sought out anything I could to begin to heal and regulate my nervous system. This included therapy, plant medicine, energy work, movement, breathwork, journaling, being in nature, even new diets. It also included parting with people in my life who were also living in chaotic patters and severely draining my energy. Only after that did I start to see glimpses of the beauty in the calm and the serenity of safety.

Deconditioning decades worth of negative patterns is a gradual process. But I continued to work through my trauma, and incorporate simple habits to help regulate my emotions and find joy in little things. Things like appreciating the stability and predictability of my day-to-day life. Finding comfort in a simple routine, being at ease alone with myself, allowing myself to sit with my thoughts, to feel sad, feel discomfort, feel confusion. To feel all the emotions that are often suppressed when you are in a constant state of chaos, because your body remains in fight or flight.

Most of all, I worked on forming healthy relationships, both with myself and others. I sought out and connected with individuals who either healed from their past trauma, or individuals I knew who lived a calm, steady, peaceful life. A life I wanted to emulate. From there, I started to create a sense of safety in my own life that I hadn’t experienced before.

At times this change was not easy. Often I found myself back in the beginning of trauma cycle and could feel myself returning to the chaos that felt so familiar. But for me, there was no going back. I was not repeating those cycles. So I gave myself grace, and bowed out of the cycle before it took over.

Breaking trauma cycles is not easy. But it is possible. For everyone. You’ll know you broke it when what you thought was once boring is actually the key to the safety and stability we all need to thrive.

If you’re struggling with trauma cycles, don’t give up. Keep going. Continue your healing, use whatever modalities work for you. If you fall back into a cycle, don’t give up or judge yourself. Just acknowledge where you are, and move on. One day, you will see someone else’s life of chaos and think “wow, I used to be there. And I am never going back.” That’s when you’ll know you built a foundation for a fulfilling and happy life.

Most of all, you’ll realize you just found a sense of peace and happiness you once thought was impossible.

Every decade is our prime decade

There is no time when life suddenly starts ending or getting worse. Life is only what you make it.

With incredible sights like these, it's hard not to find an immense amount of gratitude for life, for this beautiful world, my health, my healing, my happiness and how far I've come on this journey we call life.

Life does not end, slow down or lessen because you reach some arbitrary age. We are not “passed our prime” after 40, or 50, or whatever society tells you. Every year is our prime. Every decade is a chapter in a long story called life. So make it count.

This is only the beginning.