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Find your Focus

Hello beautiful souls! 💖

Have you ever experienced an obstacle or road block while trying to accomplish a goal? I think we all have. As we set out to accomplish goals in our lives it’s commonplace to encounter an obstacle here and there. But sometimes the discouragement and frustration caused by those obstacles can throw us off track and cause us to lose focus.

When we experience the feelings of discouragement and frustration, it is important not to give way to those emotions. We must only acknowledge them and allow them to pass. Once you let the negative feelings pass you must refocus and continue to apply effort. Know with a certainty that success is always on the other side of effort. It’s only a matter of time.

If you are having trouble finding your focus after a setback or obstacle, here are some helpful tips to find your focus and get your mind back onto your goals!

1. Think Positive

You may be thinking ‘easier said than done’, right? But in this context what I mean by ‘be positive’ is don’t quit mentally. Believe in yourself and know that there is a solution to every single problem you face. Process the obstacle as a learning experience and look for the good in it. Move forward knowing that there are better days ahead!

2. Keep A Clear, Open Mind

Always be ready to receive new ideas. Focus and concentrate. Think in a wide scale manner and always be open to new options that eliminate your obstacle. Brainstorming with peers, coworkers, or a coach is a great way to stir up some new ideas as well as refocus.

Meditation is a wonderful way to regain focus. When you meditate, you still the mind and get rid of excess noise. Excess noise is anything that distracts you from your current goal. It could be day to day nuances or huge life events that present themselves at the most inconvenient times. Either way, meditation can help you slow down your thoughts and reign in the ego. When the ego is subdued it is easier to have positive thoughts. Those positive thoughts create more positive thoughts. And with the increase of positive thoughts you begin to feel happy, relaxed, and full of gratitude. This is the best state of mind for goal setting and focus.

3. Persist and Persevere

Be sure to exhaust every possibility. Do not be afraid of trial and error. Exploring every option and aspect will increase knowledge and experience in your desired area. This knowledge, in turn will lead you to accomplish your goal with continued effort. Remember: Success is always on the other side of effort.

4. Simulate

Try to picture in your head a possible solution to help overcome and/or solve the problem you are having and return your focus to your goal.

Visualization is a really good way to simulate. Visualization is powerful because the subconscious mind doesn’t distinguish your concentrated thoughts from your reality. With diligence, your mind will accept your visualizations and work to create the reality that you visualize.

How to Visualize

Relax. Close your eyes and try to see as many accurate details as you can. For example, if you want a car, visualize the make, model, color, year, and interior of the car you want. If you can, go a bit further and imagine the fresh car smell and feel yourself sitting in the driver seat. When you think often of a thing your brain creates it. So why not think of positive things that you’d like to create? When you visualize, you can literally see it happening!

5. Ask for Help

If all fails, get assistance from others you know who are more knowledgeable on the work being done. Even if their suggestions are not the exact ones you were hoping to hear, they may trigger some new ideas and ways for you to refocus, set your goals, and find the solution to your problem.

You got this!

Until next time, beautiful souls! 💖

Relinquish my Strength?! Uh, No.

Hello, beautiful souls 💖

I’d like to discuss something that has been tugging on my heart strings lately. Ive noticed that there has been a reel trending on social media about ‘strong black women’. In case you aren’t familiar with it, it goes a little something like this:

I am not a strong black woman. I am delicate, fragile, and I can’t do it all on my own…

There’s more to the reel, and I don’t remember the audio verbatim but I’d like to address the sentiment. I viewed this audio as a cry for help from my queens who are tired of carrying the load alone.

Being strong is a blessing and a curse in today’s society. When a person is strong, they are often given more weight to carry. The growing assumption is that since you’ve carried so much, you can carry a little more…and a bit more…and wait, here’s a little more. People typically don’t check on or offer assistance to strong people. And that can cause even the strongest of people to be weary.

Yet, strength is a gift. It is earned based on perseverance and is the by product of experience and wisdom. Strength is an invaluable attribute that should be celebrated.

I am strong.

I didn’t think of myself as strong at one point. I endured quite a bit of misfortune as well as mistreatment from people I loved and to be honest I felt anything but strong. At times I felt broken, lost, and out of control. And that’s okay too. A strong person doesn’t feel strong all the time. In fact, a person is strong because they go through painful experiences and still stand.

Strength is often appreciated in the hard times. In relationships I was often commended for my strength when I helped my mate with an issue they were facing or found a solution to a problem when my partner didn’t have one. But when I stood up for myself, I was told often that I was “too strong”.

What does that mean?!

The same strength that was admired and appreciated was quickly shunned and viewed as a negative attribute once I established some boundaries. That is not how things work.

That being said, strength is an attribute that I’ve earned and I will not relinquish my strength so that a person will accept me. I am strong, I am soft, I am fierce, I am sweet. I am human. We are human. And we all deserve to be loved and accepted as we are.

Until next time, beautiful souls 💖

Take up Space!

Hello beautiful souls 💖

As the month of April comes to a close, I’d like to finish strong with a slight recap of what we’ve discussed during the month.

This is The Evolution.

First and foremost, we are to show up for ourselves. Self love and self care are the root of evolution. Growth does not happen until our foundation – is stable. We cannot evolve into better people if we do not first love ourselves and show up for ourselves.

Once we have self awareness and self love, and we are showing up for ourselves, we must be intentional. Being intentional directs or funnels our positive energy and our awareness into more purposeful, positive, and deliberate actions, boundaries, priorities, schedules, and habits.

Creating a to-do list is a great way to be intentional.

Next, we begin self evaluation. It is absolutely necessary for growth. This is where we have to be honest with ourselves about our habits, our connections, our emotions, our trauma, our “dirt” if you will. We have to take ownership for our flaws and look for ways to make healthy changes. We should forgive those who have done us wrong and we should forgive ourselves too.

In this stage, we look at who we associate ourselves with and make changes if need be. Once we become more intentional, we may realize that there are people in our lives that no longer resonate with us or the new direction our lives are headed. Self evaluation is the place where we may have some uncomfortable conversations or process some less than favorable emotions. It all works out for the best, because now we move on and we take up space.

Do you find yourself doing these things? Self Evaluation may be in order.

And now, we reach the most fun part of our evolution:

Take Up Space!

To take up space means to expand, to fearlessly step out of the shadows and be seen, and to be who we are unapologetically. We must never shrink, lower, or stifle ourselves to make others comfortable.

Taking up space requires confidence. This is something that I continue to work on myself, and I can honestly say that I’ve come a long way. Feel free to contact me if you would like some tips or suggestions on confidence building, or if you have some tips to add.

But…it is not over once we begin taking up space. We continue on. We continue to show up for ourselves, be intentional, self evaluate, and take up space through this journey that we call life. Deep down, expansion is what we all long for. What our souls long for.

It’s been a pleasure sharing my thoughts with you. I hope you enjoy this blog. Feel free to share it with like minded individuals. 😊

Until next time beautiful souls 💖

Expectations lead to Unhappiness…

Hello Beautiful souls! 💖

Today’s blog may contain some explicit language. So if that’s not your jam- no problem. I’ll see you next time. 🙂

For those of you still with me, I’d like to share an experience of mine that lead me to a very liberating conclusion.

The conclusion is: Expectations lead to Unhappiness.

For those of you that aren’t aware, I am a black woman who lives in an area that is not very culturally diverse. I mean, at all. My family and I constantly get stares when we are out in town. The stores have little to no products for our hair and skin types. A large percentage of the city’s residents are Caucasian people that seem completely unadjusted to the presence of other races…My place of work mimics that lack of diversity.

Well, directly after my traumatic discard experience from the narcissistic relationship I was in, (I discuss this more in my upcoming book entitled The Evolution) I met a seemingly nice coworker who was a Caucasian male. We worked beside each other for 12 hours and we talked. We had experienced similar relationship betrayals. We bonded and became friends. My sister and I sometimes rode with him to work. Things were going pretty well…

Another coworker joined the car pool. He was also a Caucasian male. One particular morning on our way to work a racially insensitive word was said by my friend-the driver. He said gal..

Moment of transparency: I did not hear the context of the conversation. He was having a conversation with his passenger in the front and I was having a different conversation with my sister in the back. To be completely honest I do not care what the context of the conversation was. I was immediately triggered by the word. I let out a small guttural noise as soon as I heard it.

When I looked his direction, he was already looking at me in his rear view mirror. “What’s wrong?” He asked. I informed him that I did not like that word. I explained to him that I felt triggered by that word and I told him why. He responded by casually saying that he ‘used that word all the time’. I had spent quite a bit of time with him and had never heard him use the word before, but if I may be frank- I don’t give a damn. He proceeded to use the word again while looking at me in his mirror. I found the word unacceptable, and I thought we were friends. Out of respect I believed that he should stop using a word that offended a good friend. Someone that he called sister.

Apparently, he did not agree. He went on to say that he would not stop using the word and then he called me “gal” directly to my face. I was very angry. Momentarily, I felt like I had devolved. I wanted to thoroughly beat his ass.

We stopped being friends after that. We didn’t even speak to each other.

For the sake of growth; I knew that I had to do some self evaluation. As I did, I learned where my error was. My error was that I had an expectation of my former friend. I expected him to change his choice of words because I found offense in them. But that is not my right. Whether I agree with them or not, I cannot choose his words for him.

A similar thing often happens in relationships. One person may expect certain things from their mate and become very displeased when things do not go as they envision.

*Note: Expectations are not to be confused with Standards or Boundaries.

These are my definitions-

Expectations are the imposition of a person’s thoughts, ideals or behaviors onto another person.

Standards are a person’s personal guidelines for relationships, treatment, and/or behaviors.

Boundaries are a person’s guidelines put in place to protect their own peace and personal comfort.

It is healthy to have standards and boundaries.

That being said, I realized that having expectations of others only leads to disappointment if things do not go the way that I’d like.

I should not have allowed another person’s perception to have a negative affect on me. He has a right to his reality just as I have a right to mine. I do not accept his reality. I am not a gal, girl, bitch, or any other term used in a negative context. I am a woman. A creator. I am a goddess made of strength, sensuality, intelligence, beauty, and stardust.

And no one can take that from me unless I give it to them.

And this lesson; this realization has been so immensely liberating for me because it has freed me from the weight of other people’s behaviors. I take everyone at face value, maintain my standards and boundaries. And I govern myself.

Until next time beautiful souls 💖

Sexy

Hello beautiful souls 💖

Today I felt inspired! So much so, that I’m posting my blog early this week.

Some of you may already know that I am currently writing two books. One of them is a book of poetry and the other is a book about my personal journey. While I was writing this morning, I had some thoughts that I wanted to share.

Excerpt from my upcoming book:

I never thought of myself as sexy. When men asked me to ‘do something sexy’ I always would cringe on the inside. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know what was sexy. I couldn’t recognize myself as sexy, and I didn’t know how to emulate it because I’d never felt it before. I didn’t think I could be sexy. Isn’t that against the rules? I was brought up a certain way. Christian girls aren’t sexy. They are holy. They are good. I thought I had to be good; and by default that meant that I could not be sexy.

I was made to believe that kind or ‘righteous’ souls are not sexy or provocative because that is lustful behavior. And lustful behavior will send you right to the pits of hell…I tried to be what I thought was good…

I had put too much pressure on myself to be someone else’s depiction of perfect. I had become helpful to the point of my own detriment, and submissive to the point of utter foolishness. In time, I became depressed and resigned. I was his doormat.

As I reflect on how poor my morale and my self image was at that time in my life; I can’t help but be extremely grateful for the progress that I’ve made. This journey of mine is on-going. I work on loving myself and affirming positivity into my life daily. I am honest with myself and take ownership of all of me-even the parts of me that still need work. Especially those parts.

That’s the beauty of this journey for me: discovering that I can be kind and sexy, vulnerable and powerful, whimsical and wise. I can be exactly who I am.

And I love it here.

Until next time, beautiful souls 💖

You Can Do ANYTHING!

Hello Beautiful Souls 💖

I won’t be before you long- as I’ve heard many men of the cloth say but it was never true. 🤣

I just want to take a few moments to encourage some and remind others of this undisputable fact:

You can do ANYTHING you set your mind to do.

That is an actual fact. Think about that. Understand it. You can literally do anything you set your mind to.. as soon as you take the limits off of yourself. Anything.

Because when you set your mind that means that you are locked in. You are diligent, and you are focused on this thing. You apply time and energy to this thing daily.

And when you do that- the roadblocks crumble.

The obstacles move, and you formulate a way to do that thing in your mind.

And then you go do it. Then, you come back to step one. You focus on something else. Set your mind on it and repeat the process over again.

You can do anything.

So…what are you gonna do?

Feel free to comment and let me know what you plan to do!

Until next time, beautiful souls 💖

Taboo (Religion)

There are certain things that I purposely avoid talking about. I’ve never really been the type of person that likes to upset people.

As I grew older and wiser, I realized that that had to change. I still don’t like upsetting people, but I know that there are some things that need to be said- whether someone gets hurt or not. Because in the end, if you don’t speak your truth and live your truth, it is YOU that ends up hurting.

That being said, I am going to address a topic that many people may consider taboo: religion. I feel that this is necessary because I recently published a book about a Christian family.

This book, entitled Small Family Battles; was written over 6 years ago when I was a devout Christian. It addresses common issues and situations that occur in everyday life in what I call “church culture.”

Now, I say ‘was a devout Christian’ because my views on religion and church culture have changed. My life experiences have caused me to have a less ‘black and white’ view than I had at one point.

But I was never the stereotypical Christian…I didn’t judge others and I didn’t gossip. I myself was judged and treated like an outcast- no way I’d put anyone else through that! I tried to live by the Bible and be “the ideal Christian “…whatever that is.

After a while I had to break free. Try as I might, I couldn’t meet the standards of church leadership. Yes, I made mistakes and I sinned, but I was met with the same blatant disdain no matter how good or bad I was doing. Certain other members and I were left out, looked down on, and scrutinized. I had questions about the Bible that I was afraid to ask for fear of more scrutiny. I was becoming depressed and bitter. I didn’t feel like I was becoming a better person…and that’s the point of it all, isn’t it?

Yes! Of course that’s the point of it all. If you are practicing a religion and are not improving as a person: I urge you to evaluate yourself, your life, and your religion.

And please; don’t take this the wrong way. I have absolutely nothing against Christians or any other religious groups! I just believe that people should do what makes them better, happy; whole.

And if religion makes you better- then by all means continue on. But no matter what your religious beliefs are, I do believe that everyone can relate to one of the characters in Small Family Battles. The story is filled with real life situations. It’s entertaining- no matter what your beliefs are.

Until next time; remember to live out loud, love honestly and truly, and always speak your truth.

Love and Light – Mimi 💜