I think a lot of the reason why we dive into unhealthy behaviors is because we’re afraid of being alone. It can be terrifying to be by ourselves and faced with our truths, so we run in a myriad of ways.
When I started this blog and publicly dove into the depths of my mind, I was all alone swimming in a scary pool of self doubt. But I needed to explore the depths before going back to the surface. It cleansed me.
So for this weeks practice, I want you to be alone. Read a book, write in a journal, do a yoga session, make jewelry, read your own tarot cards, do arts and crafts, take a bath, literally ANY hobby. But do it without distraction. Not with a glass of wine. Not while the TV is on. Not with a huge bag of chips or candy.
Go on a date with yourself and see what you find. What is intriguing in your mind? Do you find that inner critic coming up? Can you follow the advice from last Wednesday to quiet it?
Spend at least an hour doing this solitary activity, and then, when you are done, write down how you feel. Write down what you learned. Make concrete observations and force yourself into self awareness.
The more you practice this, the more you will learn to appreciate yourself. You will open up a Pandora’s Box of creativity, but maybe not until you flush out some monsters. This exercise, over time, will increase your confidence because YOU will know YOU inside and out.
It might be scary at first, and if it is, write it down. Write down why. Show yourself some compassion for being scared. It takes courage to face your truth.
So get out of your comfort space, get alone, and stay witchy ( *)
I’m SO EXCITED to bring the first ever podcast! Here you’ll meet Hannah Fuller, who shares her story about body image, competition, and carving out an identity in an image-driven industry.
www.itsafullerlife.com
Please enjoy here, on Soundcloud through Shawn Engel, and on iTunes
If you’ve been hurt before, it’s definitely a struggle to get back on the horse. You’re going to carry some baggage, and hopefully you’ve learned some things along the way that make you a little less naive.
After a toxic relationship, it is super easy to hate the other person, talk badly about them, and at the same time, beat yourself up for trusting them. I mean, it had to be someone’s fault, right?
But I think it is important to remember that, at the time, there was something there that you loved or admired about the other person. There were actually good times amongst the shit, and though the shit prevailed, you have to look at the relationship in its entirety.
When you begin again and take a leap of faith with someone new, it is also easy to fall into a compare mode. This isn’t fair, because this is a whole new person with a whole new set of inner workings, but what else do you have to base your knowledge off of so you don’t make the same mistake twice? You need a blueprint before you can build a house.
What I’ve been trying to do, as of late, is look for the positives and negatives in my approach. That is all we are responsible for and all that we can control. And through my healing from codependency and my tireless work on myself, I can say that putting my feelings out there and being a supportive and nurturing partner is not something I can beat myself up for. It is part of my authentic being, but I should only use it where it is deserved and not at a detriment to myself. And boundaries will help to keep that light alive.
But by looking at myself, looking forward, and opening my heart again, I can free up all of this negative energy that was once used as a shield for my pain. I make an effort to empty out the bad jujus to make room for the good. I understand that my ex loved me the best he could at the time, because he was sick. And I the same for him. And there were good times. But that is the past, and that relationship served as a period for growth and nothing more.
Love is hard and scary. But for every nugget of fear and difficulty, there is a high of such amazing proportions that makes it all worth it. And while there is bountiful uncertainty in the future, there is always a way to forgive and be grateful for the past. Live authentically, love authentically, and stay witchy ( *)
Not only is today the beginning of a New Moon, but it is also my birthday! A New Moon brings about rebirth and regeneration, and I feel that it is perfectly appropriate that it would appear tonight. I have always imagined the age 27 as the perfect adult age when I was a child, making all of my Barbies and dolls this age. With the launch of this new brand I have created and the beginning of my life coaching career, I just know that this year is going to be a major success.
In numerology, the number 9 (2+7) is the number of universal love, eternity, and faith. It invokes a spiritual awakening, and coupled with the New Moon, I’d say my spirituality and life purpose are going to knock it out of the park. The number 9 in tarot also symbolizes fulfillment and the giving of wisdom, and I am certainly excited to see what that brings! As the Nine of Cups symbolizes comfort, happiness, and satisfaction, I am so excited to go into this year with an open heart.
To kind of piggy-back on the 3-parter I just finished, I want to step in and discuss triggers. Throughout my exercise in clarity and empowering myself to make the right decision in my everyday dealings, I started to notice all of the triggers that got me to the fork in the road in the first place.
Triggers are anything that can send you into a spiral. You are the loaded gun, and the trigger creates the explosion. Everyone has them, and recognizing them will help you have more control over your actions and emotions.
Triggers are insanely important within the realm of addiction. No matter in what stage of my addiction, certain triggers would bring me to need to fill myself up with my substance of choice. Those triggers that seemed to be most effective were comments from people I may or may not have misconstrued, a let down (like a lost job), comparing myself to people on TV or magazines, or even something as simple as location. But even if you’ve never experienced an addiction per se, look at some of your habits and see what comes before your need to act them out.
Triggers are creatures of habit. They come from our brains natural conditioned responses to save us from what it thinks is harmful. They are learned. If some girl says that you look fat in that skirt, and you went to throw up your lunch after so you could feel better, your brain starts to think that, in order to feel good after feeling bad, you need to throw up your lunch. If you keep doing this with the same effect, you are training yourself against yourself. You are teaching your brain bad habits, but that doesn’t mean you can’t UNteach it.
The Ace of Swords represents your mental force. It represents using your intellect to analyze the situation. Everyone possesses the ability to do this, but you must exercise this muscle. This starts with recognizing your triggers, and then doing what you need to help retrain your brain. If, for you, that looks like avoiding a certain route to work to help quit smoking, repeating a mantra to help you shift focus from a rude comment, filling your life with hobbies so you don’t reach for that fourth drink, or calling your sponsor instead of reaching for (insert paraphernalia here) then do it! There’s no right or wrong answer with triggers. Every journey is tailor made. But in order to embark on it, you have to make the decision to do the work. I invite you to try the exercise I did below and see what you find. It could be the first day you see things clearly. Stay witchy, friends ( *)
The World signifies wholeness; a complete circle. And that’s what we are all shooting for, right? To feel complete?
Well, after seeking out some less than desirable traits I possess and the woman I would like to become, we have finally come to the last segment of this three part exercise. Hopefully, if you got inspired and decided to do it along with me, your personal obstacles were brought to light as well as the goal you’re gunning for. Bringing this awareness to a surface level presents choices for you at many different times of the day. Now lets explore how to go make the right decision based on my shortcomings versus my inspirations.
Starting with self pity, if I found myself getting sour faced and ready to throw my hands up, I would take a breath and remind myself of Strength. It might seem dark, but through strength and patience you can endure. And the way that I would switch from self pity to patience, was through the work of repeating mantras to myself.
Blocking my heart and setting up walls is another fallback that I exhibit. But as the Ace of Cups reminds us to be open to intimacy and trust our intuition, we must break through the fear of being hurt first. To work through this, I have set intentions for the day, and when a choice faces me, I do my best to act openly and honestly, rather than working with anger and aggression to ward off harm. This one is a big one. But waking up and setting a true intention helps to keep this practice alive. It is very powerful.
The fear of having a lack of direction is a pretty complex one, because it isn’t easily pinpointed. The real problem is the anxiety surrounding the issue. The Queen of Wands lives a busy and active life, and since I want that for myself, I set goals throughout the day to achieve. I must go with the flow during the day, but setting a plan to achieve daily goals helps with the anxiety. Deep breaths help with the rest. Day by day.
Succumbing to anxiety is a big player in my pitfalls, but if I am ever to be as bold and original as the Two of Wands, I must first learn to trust my capabilities and be confident in them. There is no reason not to be; by this time I feel like I have proved to myself how much I can accomplish. But sometimes those voices in your head are better at keeping you down than lifting you up. So in order to combat this, I made a list of all of the times in life I felt that I had overcome something and then wrote how I did it (much like this exercise.) To see everything laid out on paper was visual proof that my anxieties are not as strong as I am, and reminding myself of that when I start to get anxious helps to quell the feeling.
Lastly, taking impulsiveness and taming it with moderation has proven to be a bit easier to do than previously thought. If I feel like I absolutely need to do something, I give myself 24 hours to sit on it. If I still find it to be just as pressing 24 hours later, than I will go through with it. But 9 times out of 10, it just isn’t that important.
These were my findings throughout the week. It proved to be very enlightening to me, and having everything come out so clearly by defining it out loud really helps to make the change. I hope you found some clarity in this exercise as well.
Now in closing, I want to share this awesome quote by Linda Evangelista:
“No one is born with perfect eyebrow.”
I love this quote because not only is such a great metaphor, but its so imperfect in it of itself ( It’s eyebrowS, Linda.) Your whole life is a journey and the way you want to live it is up to you. I intend to live my life up to my full potential, so when I see room for improvement, I go for it. Do I intend to be perfect? Absolutely not. But do I want to find happiness by minimizing my own negativity? You bet. So get your shapers out and start stenciling your perfect brow, because these are my findings from this week. Start finding yours. Stay witchy ( *)
Hello witchy readers! Welcome to a three part series that is basically an open book worksheet in self- awareness. In this three-parter I’m going to sift through and discover some traits that I possess that are holding me back, traits that I admire, and how to move into my ultimate awesome self by employing some self help skills. I invite you all to do this along with me, cards or not.
Lately in my daily readings I have been having strong emotional reactions to cards that illustrate some of my shortcomings (no one is perfect,) and in the spirit of getting curious, I thought I would openly sift through the clutter in the hopes that it may help a few of you as well. Within this series, I’m going to be using cards to illustrate certain qualities. Not that these cards or qualities should be shamed in any way because of their context, but to help drive the point further.I want to make this clear: these cards do not definitively mean what I have associated them with. They are merely my interpretations to fit my life and my story. If they show up in a reading for you, they can mean something entirely different.
Now lets dive in.
Blocking Feelings
Self-Pity
Lacking Direction
Overcome by Anxiety
Impulsiveness
So at first glance we see the suit of swords popping up frequently, one Major Arcana, and a reversed court card. The suit of swords deals with the mental level of consciousness; intellect, action, and change. Major Arcana cards represent large life lessons or obstacles. Kings represent a strong, powerful, male influence within the suit.
The Two of Swords represents how I block my feelings. After many bad experiences, I have created a wall around myself to protect me. Not in the way of healthy boundaries, but in order to not let anyone in. I see myself do this in the way of self sabotage.
The Ten of Swords represents how easy it is for me to fall into self pity. I have an easier time recognizing the triggers now, but when things are not going well, I tend to fall down the rabbit hole.
The Eight of Swords represents a lack of direction. This isn’t actually representative of myself, but it’s a trigger for anxiety. I feel as though if I don’t have a plan, everything will go to shit and the world will be set on fire. This fear is hindering at times.
The Moon represents being overcome by anxieties. This Major Arcana card also reinforces the previous in the theme of confusion. When my anxieties take a hold of me, I become completely derailed and focus only on the negative.
The King of Wands reversed is a big one for me. He represents impulsiveness. I have written before about acting with intention over impulse, and he is the inspiration. My anxiety drives me to act impulsively, and this is something I have been working on as of late.
At the end of the day, I do not want to be a closed off hermit who wraps herself in a blanket of anxieties and never experiences happiness because I am getting in my own way. While that is an extreme metaphor, if it weren’t for self help and doing the work, it’s not far from what could actually happen. Through tarot and self help, I am discovering (and can help you discover!) the biggest obstacles in the way of enlightenment and happiness. And the coolest part about this exercise is that these cards were all in my spread today when asking to show my shortcomings. The cards can be very honest when you listen properly.Stay tuned in two days for part 2 and stay witchy ( *)
🍪 We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. If you continue to use this site we will assume that you are happy with it. 🍪Ok
