Personal Evolution

Personal Evolution

Life is interesting.  Oftentimes I come across something that I wrote years ago and do a retrospective / introspective review.  I think about where I was at the time, physically, mentally, economically, emotionally.  I think about who I interacted with closely, who I may have been involved with romantically.  I think about where I was, how I lived at the time.  I take an overall look at WHO I was.  Sometimes this is fun, other times painful.  I have gone through so many stages in life that I can only see it as an evolution.  

I identified some of my stages as platforms to actual change, not just phases or levels.  Some of these touchpoints were catalysts to major shifts in full thought processes.  For instance, I can remember when I realized how different I was.  That realization changed my posture in being different.  It was in Hatch Middle School, Ms. Betts’ Spanish class, 7^th Grade.  I recognized that I was not only physically different, but the way that I thought was atypical.  I did not respond to things the way everyone else did.  Initially I thought that I was just a weirdo, sometimes punkish, soft, and sensitive but I realized years later that it was my heart that made me that way.  

Instead of running from my weirdness, I decided to migrate to it.  I never wanted to be like anyone else so I started to do things to purposely set myself apart.  I wore mismatched socks.  If I found out someone wore the same perfume, I stopped wearing it (I still do this).  In High school, I parted my hair straight down the middle and dyed one side blond, the other side jet black.  I was unique, odd, sometimes weird, but always me.  I did not do what the world wanted me to do, conform; I embraced being uncommon and went down my own path.  Acknowledging that I have my own path also helped me to respect the path of others without competing but that is a different blog post altogether.

I am certain that my stubbornness played a great part in my finding my own lane.  I never really cared what everyone else wanted or liked.  I always got excited if I found that someone had a commonality but I never swayed from what I liked.  I see now, that was an admirable quality for a teenager.  It always took a lot to get me to change my view on something.  I am still like this; it is a blessing and curse.  It doesn’t matter if anyone else on earth likes it, if I like it… I like it, end of story.  This is another reason why I love weird and abstract people.  They do not care what everyone else is doing or what other people think.  I am always interested in anomalous thought process.

Here are some takeaways I gathered in taking the scenic route through my own personal evolution:

1.    Celebrate your evolution.  Clap for your own growth.  No one knows what it takes every day to be you.  Rejoice in the beauty of being who you are.  Give yourself a cookie for those internal, self-driven accomplishments and realizations.

2.    Take time to evaluate your stages and changes.  Our experiences and our responses to them make us who we are.  Being retrospective is one of the greatest tools in my life box.  I like to look deeper at what made me do things so that I can avoid or gravitate to what I need to in the future.  Am I great at it?  Not yet, but I will be.  J

3.    Never let people dictate your stages.  Once you let other people control your stages, you make them your god.  Every single person needs to walk out his or her own life steps.  No one can live for me and I cannot live for anyone else so why would I let someone else direct my journey? 

4.    Do not discount your phases.  Do not go through your levels begrudgingly, embrace them, take what you need from them, eat the fish and spit out the bone. 

Go through life present and alert so that you can get the tools you need to be who you need to be and contribute what you need to. Don't expect perfection from yourself or anyone else.  We are all evolving.  – Catherine Elizabeth

Gracefulness Under Pressure

Gracefulness Under Pressure

Pressure, pressure, pressure.  Everyday we are faced with pressure of some type.  This life can be a bit of a race.  I believe our victory is in more than just getting to the finish line.  We are victorious in HOW we get there.  Fight or flight.  Battles come, I can choose to fight through them or run in other directions.  I have done both more times than I can count.  In attempting to mature in life, I am focusing on my approach and response network during high-pressure periods. 

At the point of pressure engagement I can choose grace or disgrace.  For me there is not much middle ground in this.  Although I often fall short during pressure, I want to show and extend gracefulness, not because of me but because of God’s grace towards me.  It covers me. 

I love the word grace because it has so many meanings: simple elegance, refinement, poise, politeness, finesse.  Here is my favorite, in Christianity grace is the unmerited favor of God.  Grace under pressure simply means to remain calm and disciplined when life’s heavy stresses would cause you to unravel. 

Displaying grace under pressure takes courage and is not easy.  To me, having grace under pressure would mean:

• To remain silent when you would rather cuss people out
• To be kind when you have every right to act unseemly
• To try to find more tactful ways to articulate disagreement 
• To find ways to display love when faced with blatant disregard
• To show compassion even to people who seek to destroy your dignity

NONE of this is easy.  This is not in apathy or cowardice.  Knee-jerk reactions are easy, they don’t take much thought.  Being flippant and saying everything that comes to mind is easy, it does not take much self-control.  Pulling back and not saying the first thing you want to takes restraint and mental agility.  I want that gracefulness. 

I want the gracefulness that makes me pray for the people that treat me less than the Queen that I am.  I want the gracefulness that pushes me to be kind, even when I am dealing with people that do not deserve it, by the world’s standards.  I want to show gracefulness, not because of weakness but because of strength.  Gracefulness under pressure, fire and heaviness.  Gracefulness that is not circumstantial or situational.  

A continuous state of gracefulness.

Check the Trigger

Check the Trigger

I recently watched a MadTV parody that made fun of social sensitivity and the overuse of the term “trigger word”.  Although they were being extremely comical about it, it made me think about a few things concerning my own triggers.  As I attempted to do some studying on the term I came across tons of references to triggers connected to traumatic experiences.  I will not focus solely on negative triggers although they tend to get the most focus and the most drastic responses.  Triggers are not all bad.  For instance, the smell of brownies baking can trigger fond memories of your childhood or the smell of freshly cut grass might calm you, or the scent of a particular cologne may make you feel heart warmth.  These are all potentially good triggers.  

In my research, I realized that the term trigger is very far-reaching and broad.  I want to focus on a narrow area of it.  A trigger can be defined as any act or event that serves as a stimulus and initiates or precipitates a reaction or series of reactions.  Now this is where, to me, there is a fork in the road because that is really an expansive statement.  I simply want to focus on knowing and acknowledging what we CAN control in regards to our triggers.  Ownership. 

I understand that sometimes when triggers are activated it is usually unexpected and feels beyond our control.  That does not give us space to be irrational, unkind, and dismissive or any other negative reaction often justified as response.  We cannot always choose our triggers but we can control our responses.  To change our automatic responses we must first identify them and proactively posture ourselves when they arise.  We need to consistently and aggressively manage our own response network. 

Sometimes we give too much power to the past.  We give too much mental real estate to people and things that are not a part of our now.  We should not be content with reacting to circumstances with old defense mechanisms.  We have to learn to manage through our triggers. 

On the flip-side, sometimes we don’t give enough focus or energy to positive triggers, we don’t explore those constructive internal enablers.  Accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative.  Examine the motivational triggers, the happy triggers.  I am exploring what triggers spike my ‘good’ responses and proactively trying to be around them more and the negative ones less.  This is taking diligence but feels like it is worth it.  I hope that I am changing my normal for the better.

“Triggers can be like little psychic explosions that crash through avoidance and bring the dissociated, avoided trauma suddenly, unexpectedly, back into consciousness.”
― Carolyn Spring

Heart Be Still…

Heart Be Still…

For me stillness is difficult because my mind runs a mile a minute.  This is part of the reason why I don’t sleep like normal people do.  When I sit still my mind starts racing, reminiscing, analyzing and replaying EVERYTHING.  Sometimes I attribute it to loneliness but the fact of the matter is I have been sleeping alone for many years now.  I know it is much more than that.  At night, in the quietness, when the television is off and I am not reading or re-reading texts (the best texts I read 3-4 times)... when I am not reading email, not on Facebook or Instagram or Pinterest or Tumblr I am usually searching my heart and really deeply thinking.  Undistracted.  Reviewing life sometimes helps me unravel deeply rooted principles that I need to either toss or fortify. 

The mental race begins… What could I have done differently?  Should I have done this?  Should I have said that?  Why didn’t I try harder?  Should I bring that up now?  Did I hurt their feelings? Why do I feel like that towards so and so?  On and on and on and on. *like Erykah Badu*

I would think everyone struggles with this sometimes.  When this happens it is not normally regret-laden but just a reconciling of my heart and mind.  I believe this is a part of self-awareness.  When I know that I need to get to the point of stillness I try to push myself through the loudness of my thoughts.  I want to break this heart process into 4 parts… 

Retrospective, Introspective, Stillness, Perspective 

1. Retrospective – Defined as “looking back on, contemplating or directed at the past.”  This gets intimidating sometimes because even though hind sight can be 20/20 remembrance can also be a stretched or yeasted version of the truth.  We are all human.  I have some very vivid memories going back as far as pre-kindergarten but they are usually driven by my own idiosyncratic behaviors.  During this stage I try to remember what actually happened.  I try to take my own personal spin and flavor out.  I try to look at situations in a more neutral, unemotional way.  This point helps me try to see things from other people’s points of view. 
2. Introspective – Defined as “the act of observing or examining one's own mental and emotional state, mental processes, etc.; the act of looking within oneself.”  This one tends to be difficult.  It is when I do a bare bones, naked, undelusional, untainted, deep, critical assessment of my own thoughts, motives, desires…. my heart.  This is when I rebuke myself for dumb choices, when I cry over stupid decisions.  I try to stay at this point without randomly jumping all over the place, no mental domino effect.  I try to recall things and not pollute it with thoughts or blame on others or on any outside driving forces.  Just me.  Yes, that person’s actions may have changed my trajectory but this part is for me to look at my own heart, my response network, my intentions. Raw.
3. Stillness – I feel this is the most important part. Be still.  Calm your heart.  Calm your mind.  Breathe.  Stop thinking.  Let everything steep and prep you for healing.  Sidebar:  Stillness is the part of prayer for so many years I skipped.  I was so focused on knowing and studying the process of prayer, I didn’t want to get it wrong.  Are the proper steps to ask for forgiveness, worship, thank God, then make my requests or does thankfulness come before worship?  Am I expressing this eloquently enough?  Did I worship long enough?  I never got to the part where I shut up and listen for the answer.  I am away from the ritualistic Pomp and Circumstance altogether now but I recognize the importance of the stillness.  For me it is necessary and tough because my thoughts are so very loud. 
4. Perspective – Defined as “a particular attitude toward or way of regarding something; a point of view.”  One of the most life changing things David G. Evans has ever said to me is “Experience forms perception.”  Three words that not only helped me adjust my outlook but it helped my heart posture towards my recollections on life.  I realized our experience is what it is, we typically cannot change or avoid some experiences but it is when we give it the power to FORM how we see things in life that is the impact.  We need to glean everything we possibly can from the experiences of this life, but how we let things change our general perspective is paramount.  After the retrospect, introspect and stillness ultimately I have to decide how everything I processed is going to affect my mental filters.  How am I going to let these experiences change how I view life itself?  I believe this is the crossroad point that determines whether a person becomes bitter or better after negative experiences. 

-Catherine Elizabeth