Since I was a little girl I have been blessed to take part in competitive dance for 13 1/2 years, then I transitioned into the wonderful world of Cheer, and I have never turned back. There was a time that I briefly dated this guy and he said " Shanara, you are such a cheerleader". When he said that I was quite taken aback by his statement, so I asked him to explain what he meant by that statement. He then listed the things I did in my life that showcased my "cheerleader" lifestyle. After he was finished I sat and thought about it. Yes, he did notice a few things but he didn't fully grasp what it is like to be a cheerleader. The things we believe in, what we stand for, and even more importantly who we strive to be. So as usual I decided to share some things that have become apart of my character. -S 1. It is all about Consistency! If you come into my gym at any given time you my gym see and hear a few things. Athletes conditioning, the pounding of someone tumbling or my coach Jackie talking with a team about being consistent. It's not just about the team with the best routine out there that wins competitions. If it was simply that there would be no reason to put your heart and soul into cheer. It is all about the team that is consistent and fights to do better than the last time. Each time we set up for a full out I kind of freak out a little, however this season i've really had to find my breathing space and get into consistently fighting to keep going and not letting my nerves get to me. Through the times I get nervous I remind myself that it is just cheerleading and the lessons I have learned through cheer comes through in my daily life. I have been consistent before I can do it again. 2. It is your life, put on a show. What is one thing that everyone for the most part can agree on? That Beyonce puts on quite a show. It's because she knows her worth and gives it all she has. In cheer you are an actor along with being an athlete. You are putting on a show for your audience to enjoy and to remember. Be that memorable person, leave that lasting impression on people so that once you leave they are starstruck in who they just saw. Now being a diva doesn't have to only mean you are cocky. It means that you have the confidence to know what you can do is awesome and you are sticking to it. Plus life can be boring at times, why not spice it up and give the people what they want.... A show. 3. There is always someone watching.
Oh my goodness, when I was creating this post I knew I had to write something about influences. In All-Star Cheer there are Tiny's Mini's and the Youth division. Just for a short run down those divisions are the cutest division you will ever see. They are so sassy and full of life, you can't help but smile when you see one of their routines. My little brother and his teammates would always watch my team compete after they would go on. Hearing them say such sweet things like "Your team was so good! I love your facials". or "You are so sassy how do you do it?" and my absolute favorite that my little brother said. "Shanara, I love watching you compete you always try so hard and I want be like you". It truly melts my heart. As I said before regardless of the age whether you are a teenager, kids or young adult you can always have a someone that you look up that motivates you and encourages you :) There are always people watching you and how you react to things and that is what encourages me.
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`Good afternoon my friends. I hope that whenever you are reading that you are doing well. Even if you are not doing too good, I hope that you know that you will be well. It just takes time. The reason why I want to emphasize the idea of knowing things will be well and better is because I have been sick for two long miserable achy weeks. I have been coughing, wheezing, and etc etc.
. Everyone knows how inconvenient being sick is. You are limited in everything that you do. More often than not you are contagious, so no one is really feeling being around you and to put the icing on the cake you don't even want to be around you but you are stuck with yourself so you have no option. While being sick I have had quite some time to reflect on myself and how I want to change my circumstances and live much more simply and effectively. Do you ever just wonder what is behind each door? Wondering if I had chosen this or not if I would be in the same situations. Isn't that the point of life? To explore into the unknown, trusting your gut that the path you are taking will lead you somewhere magical if you just believe? Perhaps I am much too old to spend my time considering fairies and magical prince charmings, but am I too old to dream for things? Something else I have noticed with being sick is how you have to rely on your friends and family to help take care of you when you are sick. I don't know what I would have done without my family during these two weeks and counting. I have been in more contact with my family these past weeks then I usually am, and I live at HOME! Being sick draws you closer to your loved ones and it also brings you closer to yourself. Where am I now, well I am still sick and i'm heading to the doctor. However I know that once I am feeling better I will be doing much more writing and spending time with my loves. Regardless of my state of health I will always have my family and friends no matter how cliche it sounds. -S If you had mentioned the idea of being a homebody to me a few days ago, you would have gotten a smirk, snide remark and then a direct change of subject. You see I am CONSTANTLY on the move. I despise sitting at home or really just sitting for too long.
This last weekend I hadn't been sleeping at my house for maybe three days..... I actually hadn't really even been home besides the cordial hi's and goodbye's to my family. And my parents were not too happy about it. They called me out and we ended up having some good dialog. We came to some conclusions on why I should be home more and much more involved in my loved ones lives. I didn't realize how selfish I had been acting and how I wasn't being there with my family. I was just trying to breath and relax. But, in the times I would spend in my room or being a recluse, I was missing out on sweet moments with the ones I love. One thing that really broke my heart is when I told my little sister that we would go out the next day and she said to my mom " That's nice of Shanara, but knowing her she will probably forget about me." When I heard that it seemed like my heart was a mirror, and the glass had just shattered into a million pieces. I didn't mean to be harsh and not spend time with my siblings, parents or my dog. I was just trying to handle everything on my own and stay low. So I decided to hang out at home. Here are Three things I have learned since becoming a Homebody. 1. Home can be your happy place.... If you let it. 2. Sharks need constant movement to breath.... Humans need to rest and contemplate 3. Relying on others doesn't showcase weakness. It shows your STRENGTH, and a desire to grow. Once I embraced those things and really let myself sit, I was able to look at life much more clearly. I could sit with my loved ones and not feel panic. As I have mentioned many times on my other social media places , I am really spending this quiet time living the homebody life and using it as a time of reflection. The more I look at myself and pull from my support system, the clearer the vision is for my life. I am also able to look at others with a fuller hearts. Being a home body does NOT mean that you are missing out on life. It means that you are able to draw into a deeper connection in the life you were given. -S Do you ever sit down and reflect on everything that passed by in your day? I decided to just sit down and share my day so far with you. That is what this blog is about, to share, encourage and laugh.
I ended up coming home this morning around 2ish, from hanging out with some friends having a few laughs enjoying each others company before my new friend Robert is going back overseas.. The thought of me getting any quality sleep would be completely out of the question. However, to my suprise I woke up rather refreshed. I did not leap out of bed singing a little song and things went a little slower than I would have liked when it comes to finishing my morning routine. ( Comment if you would like me to post a morning routine on the blog) but I completed it and went on with my day. A part of my morning routine that I really have implemented this year especially since I am hardly home and see my family is to go to my parents room and cuddle with my mom or dad and just chill and talk about my day and theirs. It's really nice to have that time to be with the ones you love and care about. Anyway getting back to the rest of my morning, I headed over to my friends house where I nanny for her children while she is at work. Just letting you know right now I have plenty of good intentions when it comes to arriving to places on time and really just planning out everything. Well today I misplanned like no other. I had a doctors appointment scheduled at 10:40am and I luckily arrived at her house at 10, so by the time the babies were changed, fed somewhat content. I managed to miss the street that I needed to turn down to get to my doctor. So by the time my little side adventure ended I arrived at my doctors at 10:50am. The thoughts running through my mind were doing a number on my confidence " Oh my gosh, what was I thinking! I am late late late, will they even let me check in now?" Luckily I was able to check in and things began to go smoothly. Well I should have knocked on wood because I had left the bottle and really just the whole diaper bag in my car. Frantically I try to make a quick decision on what to do. I can't just leave the kids alone, yet again I can't leave Blake to simply scream her little head off either. Thankfully an angel momma said " Honey, I have been in your position, I will hold the door for you and watch your toddler while you grab the bag". The second she said that the biggest smile had spread over my face and I couldn't have felt so much love from an absolute stranger before. After that beautiful act of kindness we finished the appointment. The kids were AMAZING! They didn't cry, or run around. They both simply just sat there contently. Even the doctor mentioned how perfect they were. I simply just smiled and silently gave thanks that everything went smoothly. I have no idea how moms do it. I really don't and I give you all mad props. Those baby car seats are quite difficult to get latched in. After battling the carseat and the seatbelt I finally succeeded and did a much needed Starbucks run. I am now sitting back at the house getting some writing and editing out of the way. Both Brody and Blake are sleeping like angels. Aside from little whimpers from Blake she has been an absolute peach. The cool refreshing taste from my coffee is giving me such a rush. Well I spoke too soon, I hear Blake crying in the distance and Brody saying he doesn't want to sleep. I hope you have a good day reading this and perhaps you can take a chance to reflect on your day and what has gone on for you. It really is good to use that quite time for what it is quite time -S Goodness, I feel like whenever I write something on the blog, my personal life just explodes. Life isn't a movie and unfortunately will not pause while I work through my personal things. The girl who I portray on my blog is me. Very quirky, energetic, while living a life similar to the ocean. Constantly in movement. In the early stages of my writing and semi recently I will admit I was not myself. I would do research, look at successful bloggers and brutally measure myself to someone who has been working on their craft much longer than I. And that right there my friends is not fair. It is not fair to my readers and is certainly not fair to myself and my talents.
It took awhile to get to this conclusion and i'm still piecing through it. However, through reflecting I came to this conclusion
It hit me like a wall. I couldn't believe it in the beginning but the longer I let it sit and marinate the waters began to clear revealing beauty. I hated writing and furthurmore I couldn't stand composing a single blog post. The mere thought of sitting down at my laptop attempting to write something of value the more afraid I became. I had always told myself that everything I wrote was complete garbage and people would only read to be polite. The thought of fitting in with the millions of beautiful souls on the web who compose stunning heart tugging posts with images to correlate with their posts. I ended up crumbling underneath the pressure I put on myself. That pressure squeezed the life out of me. It wasn't until my last few posts that I enjoyed what I was writing. It wasn't until I began being truly raw with my readers. It wasn't until I valued my passions and desires above my addiction for perfection that I began to enjoy writing. It wasn't until I released the unnecessary pressure on myself that I began to flourish in writing. At the end of every post I actually would smile. Not a white toothy show for the crowd, but a nose crinkling, corners of the eye wrinkling smile. It was also great to receive feedback from my readers. My love language is words of affirmation, and those words that were shared with me after made my heart jump. At the end of the day we all have our quirks. We all have our things that we slave over. However, if we are allow ourselves to become slave to it then we cannot enjoy our lives and not enjoy the life we have been given. Once we engage ourselves in our passions and stop focusing on perfecting the passions then life becomes much more vibrant. -S Happy New Year my friends! I am so excited for this 2016 and what it will bring. I don't know what it is, I just know that this year is going to be amazing and NOTHING will get in my way. Now that may sound a little cocky, and very in the spirit of the whole "NEW YEAR, NEW ME" business. However, I see nothing wrong with that positive outlook.
Now, for the rest of this post I would just like to talk about some of the highlights of 2015. I want to share the amazing things as well as some of the sucky things that has built my character for this year. and what has framed my outlook for this year. One year ago the day after christmas I received a jolly little text from a former boyfriend. In that pathetic little text was the contents saying I am breaking up with you. Now this didn't completely come to be a surprise but it did leave me a little bitter.After letting the dust settle and allowing my inner Beyonce to shine I knew 2015 would be my year. That I would not allow anyone to get to me, and that I would not allow myself to wallow in self pity. So that is what I did. I put on my war face and put all of my efforts into myself and becoming the strong woman I decided to be. Let's fast-forward a few months in high school. I graduated from a charter high school that had extremely high credentials and is known for it's academic structure in creating free-thinking, independent, hard-working, ahead of the curve individuals. Since the first day of school my Senior year, we were given the task to complete a senior project. Now this project wasn't any ordinary project. We had to choose a subject that we were passionate in, complete a whole years worth of extensive research and planning to present a thesis and the final project in front of your peers, selected teachers, and the school board. Oh, did I mention that if you did not pass this test that you didn't graduate from high school. No, pressure what so over. I decided to get personal and discuss eating disorders. Not just eating disorders but the psychological back ground of Eating Disorders and how they worked. My teacher has sat me down and she asked me if I really wanted to do my topic on it since it was so personal and we had talked before about it. I told her that I needed to. That this wasn't just for me, but I wanted other people know what it was like to have one and for it to be treated with respect and not simply written off as a fake insecure girl's illness. To see the every day struggle. After extensive work, and tears I passed my test and graduated from high school with one of my life time friends. That was a day I would never forget. Prior to graduation, I was honored with the privilege to go and compete a the Summit. For those of you who may be new to my blog or to not know what the Summit is and why it is such a big deal I want to explain and share with you. The Summit is the biggest and most important competition an all-star cheerleader could ever attend ( besides Worlds, however you must be on a level 5 or 6 team to attend) The only way you are able to go to the Summit is if you are invited to go. Only 5% of the industry gets to attend. We are talking about the best of the best teams of the nation competing at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida, to claim the title of Summit Champion and to receive the coveted Summit Ring. My team found out last minute that we got a bid to the Summit after thinking we had lost our chance on going. We went and made it to day 2. We came in 4th place out of 38 teams that was brought to compete and I couldn't have been more proud and honored. This year we are out to go and win, and I will continue to keep you updated on that journey. After high school was over I was all set up to go to college, had my classes all arranged and all I needed to do was count down. However, it wasn't until three weeks before classes were to begin I had this really strong feeling that I needed to take a year off, work and open my own business and work. Focus on my writing and the things that bring me joy. I even thought it was crazy, I spent a lot of time asking and talking with my parents, mentors and trusted people for advice. Everything came back to following my dreams and owning my own business. Little did I know that by the end of the year I would be asked by a good friend and now my co-owner would ask me to open a program inside of our gym called CheerForce Headstart. This program allows kids, and teenagers to take part in all-star cheer without their parents paying an arm and a leg to compete. I have seen so many kids that would be really good in their respective sports, however are unable to pay for it. Alongside of opening CheerForce Headstart I also opened Timeless Hope Photography. I have loved photography since I was little and enjoyed studying it. The only way to explain how I feel behind the camera is complete and utter peace. Capturing those moments forever, that and also witnessing others joys and moments, that is something that could never be replaced. With ups must come downs and this year was a roller coaster. I wouldn't say I made the best choices this summer I admit. I got involved with some guys who I shouldn't have been around. Met some people who I look back at now did nothing but encourage me to go into harms way and did nothing to build me up in character. There are some things and times that happened which caused some scars that I will forever carry with me, and I still cry to this day because of them, I try to look at everything in life as a lesson. Something to grow from and to share with others, and perhaps some day when I am little further on my path I will share with you the events that took place of that dark summer of 2015, as for now I want to let you know that I discovered myself. I discovered who I didn't want to be and that I have value whether I felt it or not. I also came face to face with depression and suicide. A battle that I was very close to losing. If it wasn't for some four amazing people whom I deeply respect and admire and truly love I am not sure I would be here today writing this post to you. The last things I learned from 2015, no matter how cliche it sounds family is everything. Regardless of blood or how frequent you see them family is family and nothing can change it. I know now not to take them for granted because we do not know how long we have to truly say in person or action three simple words, I Love You. Now to New Years Eve. I went to a party with some good friends, learned I SUCK at ping pong and got burned by a fire cracker -_- Now I understand why California has rules for those kind of things. But hey, its a good story to add to #Sweet2016 Now we are here in 2016, and what a ride it has been. After writing out what had happened this year all I could do was smile. Smile at where i've been and where I am heading. I am currently in the process of moving out. I didn't think it would happen this quickly however there are a few more loops before I can officially announce the news but when it is final I will for sure notify you all and vlog every second of it. Until then I hope you guys are having a good start to the New Year and I will talk to you soon. -S Hey there my friends! I hope everyone had a nice day for a few reasons. The first is that we all deserve to have a good day. Second another day above ground qualifies as a good day to me. Nothing too out of the ordinary happened to make this day a good one. I went to work had some delicious food and then went on a lovely father-daughter date with my dad.
Now here is something I do not completely understand. I do not understand why in order to have a good solid productive day something amazing has to happen. Dare I even bring in the #GOALS. I mean since when did having a :good day" mean going out somewhere amazing, having flawless make up, an amazing relationship with your significant other or even succeeding in everything you do?. Now I am going to say this. I highly LOATH the hashtag #GOALS. Puting #GOALS to everything I personally feel robs from the moment of our achievements. With the New Year coming up we all including myself, will be setting up New Year's resolutions and saying that we are going to have good days and everything will just be amazing and good. There is nothing wrong with having a good life, having aspirations, dreams and dare I even mention goals. But! What I do wonder is why do we feel ( I am including myself in this) that we have to have it all together for things to be good? Like I shared in my latest post I wrote last night I am coming out of a really dark time of depression and some major hurts and life struggles. I thought that no day was good and what is the point of even trying if things don't get better. Even the good girls who played by the rules bad things would happen. Well my friends, life sucks. Life is hard and difficult and there are many times that not living or being present to acknowledge the pain seems like a pretty attractive offer. I truly and still have that mindset that if I do not have everything done on my list that I set out to do today that I am a failure and what is the point. If I do not perform at the level of 110% what is the point of trying. I am just letting myself down and even more importantly the whole world . Looking back at it with a bit of perspective I remember one of the many talks I had with my dad. He would say "Shanara, there 7.13 billion people out there. You cannot continue putting that pressure on yourself to be perfect and have it together. Also it is not possible to let that many people down." That really bummed me out. I would think NO! I will have it together. I will work hard and not sleep just so that my life is perfect, happy and together. However, the longer and harder I held on to being a perfectionist and performance based, OCD, type A personality I am,each day would leave me miserable, There were no good days and there was no hope. I no longer put effort in to my dreams and passions because I felt that if I am not going to succeed and draw in people then what is the point. I thought that if I had it all together that I would finally be happy. I would finally have a good day. That "good" day never happened. Here is why. There more I would hold on the harder it was to actually feel joy and enjoy the things I would do. Going to practice became a chore, a huge stress-ball on my shoulders because I was carrying the weight of my world by myself. I'm not saying that I am now this happy go lucky individual who has her shit together. No, I am far from it, but once I made that conscious choice to try smiling, to have fun and be the spontaneous, confident girl I once knew a trickle of light returned. You see, getting tacos with my dad or finding my ring that I lost in my hurricane I call my room or even just coming back from hanging out with my friends. No matter how minor the good things are they still are good things. I am blessed to home to my family who loves me and a brother and sister who crave spending time with their big sister and stumble all over themselves to be the first to tell her all about their day. A sweet little crazy dog that jumps and basically has a heart-attack every time I walk through the door because she is so happy to see me. Those are the moments I am trying to live for. Those are the times that truly count. Now #GOALS are not bad things, heck I am all for becoming the better version of myself, but once it becomes an addiction and a necessity then that is where things get out of hand. That is when the #GOALS becomes a drug instead of an inspiration to do better. You just become a slave to it and when it runs its course you will be left barren, stripped of everything you thought would bring you happiness and leaving you with the opposite. So here is my challenge for this year. Have fun. Go out on dates, take an hour out of your day to do something you enjoy. Even if it is chores like laundry (EW) complete your task and move on. There are more good days then bad. The key is to find the things that make you, not the social media representation of yourself or the you shown to the masses. But the you that lays in bed at night asking is there more. I don't have it figured out and I most likely will never have it figured out. However, I do know what works for me and I am liking the results. -S Hey there my friends! I hope that you guys are doing well. It has truly been so long since I have actually decided to upload a post to you guys and really communicate my thoughts, not just communicate logical and realistic reasons of why I have not been present. I have written many posts but not published them. I remember my old English teacher from high school asked me why I would write and then just delete all of my hard work. I had one answer for them. " It is not good enough, and I cannot follow the writing pattern that is asked of me".
That was the response I would give for everything when it came to writing. It also became my response to life. Now it is not that I do not want to write. I deeply love and enjoy writing. Writing truly brings me to life. I enjoy the idea of writing, and concocting ideas to share with my friends and everyone I meet. However the actual process of writing something that I feel is worth reading, now that is a different story. Now to turn to a bit of reality ( oh joy) These last few weeks have been really hard for me. I was and to be a bit honest afraid to write down what was going on in my life. I couldn't find the line between my personal life where I keep some things private, and then my public life that is obviously public. For some reason however I want to talk about what has been happening. Just being honest. I've noticed that whenever I meet up with my honest to goodness friends at coffee shops or just venting I am just raw and when I feel like I can I will explicitly share myself. Why can I try to be honest and share in real life, but on social media burnout? I want to share my feelings, my thoughts, my hopes, my dreams, my hurts, my pains, and well me. I want to write with no bounds. Since I have been honest so far I feel like I can keep going. I'm afraid of many things. The main fear is to not have any value. Now everyone has fears and feelings. That is what makes us human. One of the reasons why I have a love hate with writing and I guess this really ties in with anything I do is because I watch other people in fields I want to be in and I compare myself. In this case I am talking about other bloggers. I observe their writing techniques and see them articulating exactly what and how they feel. Their writing doesn't ramble. Their photos are stunning and their blog simply just makes SENSE. After reading their blogs I ask myself. "Does my blog even make sense? Is it even relatable, is it even readable? "Why can't I do that?" That is the word that constantly runs through my mind. It doesn't just leave its negativity at light material things. No, I then carry on to pick myself apart. I ask myself why do I suffer from suicidal depression. Why do I psych myself out when I do things that I know I am capable of doing? Why do I feel so lonely. If I am apparently capable of doing anything I want then why is it so hard? Honestly, I do not know why and you know what? I may NEVER know why. What I do know is that I can continue living. Yes some days are down right unbearable but to see others smile, to inspire, and to love, that is something that makes sense and I can talk about without any fancy templates and photos. Now I do not claim to no longer have depression or that I have it all figured out sitting behind my laptop on my high horse. No, I am simply a young woman with a blog and a desire to write and share her life with others. I want to be known for my struggles and share how I am learning to turn my sadness and confusion into my kind of beautiful. I've learned that it is not the depression or the anxiety that defines us. Those are simply nouns depicting a person, place, or thing. We are called to live a life of action verbs. Repeating what I said earlier, I would rather be known for the struggles than the successes. Because behind every success there was a time someone had to make a choice to keep going. Success isn't an overnight three step course. If it was that easy it wouldn't be called life. I don't know where I am going, but I know where I have been. On my future posts I will share more about my depression and the good times as well. I will be sharing whatever I want because I have finally come to terms that this blog is mine, and there are no rules. Earlier in this post I asked if my writings make sense? Well, it makes sense to me and I am sure that everyone has been confused, doubted or even compared themselves more than once or twice. To finish the story about high school and my English teacher. At the end of the year I left them a note. It said this. " Thank you for believing in me.Because of your belief in me and how you wouldn't stop even when I asked you to, I can now look at myself and know that I am capable of much more than I believed." . Thank you for reading and allowing myself to be raw. Thank you being apart of my journey of discovery. I am very optimistic for this year and I am ready to see where SimplyShanara will go. I don't need to be everyone's audience. I will find my own audience and that will attract my own bit of readers who are interested in things I have to say and I with them and that is good enough for me. -S " My aim is to enjoy living. Because my life is a gift that was given to me to enjoy. " After turning eighteen exactly one week ago, I wanted to reflect on the past eighteen years of life. Little trinkets, little nuggets, that have carried through those times. I find it interesting to see how life changes, how people grow, how i've grown up and changed entering adulthood. I had some deep fears. Legitimate as those fears were they were still fears. Worries that I wouldn't amount to anything worth while. That I would simply fail. That I would be that kid from the hometown who was still trying to become a famous rapper or actor. Another fear that is and was so relevant in my thought process was nobody cared about me. Also on top of that to make things worse I had myself believing that everyone has forgotten about me on my birthday. You see growing up my birthday has usually fallen on a weekend or if it was a weekday I was in school and everyone would wish me Happy Birthday so regardless I was still celebrated on that one special day.
This birthday was different. It was on a weekday, and I was an adult. All of my friends were adults minus a few outliars, and if they were not at work they were in school. I probably sat in my pitty party for a good half hour until I asked my mom to take me to my favorite coffee shop so I could read my new book. ( I asked because my car has been in the shop for two weeks now) While I sat in my favorite corner on the couch I listened as well as read my book. "Is it just me or am I the only one who enjoys listening to the book along with reading." After reading my family came and got me and we went to In N Out to enjoy some animal style fries. It was a good time and I love any excuse to chill with my fam bam. However, for some strange reason I still felt lonely. Now please do not get me wrong, it wasn't that I didn't have attention or that something was wrong, and to this day I am unable to pin-point my exact feelings (perhaps it was hormones, haha) Whatever the case of the birthday blues I went to sleep happy, content and more importantly knowing I was LOVED. Later in the week I was blessed by a surprise birthday present by my sweet friend Brandy who is simply amazing and fun to be around. Among those sweet qualities is gifted in cosmetology. She said "Shanara, when is your party?" I replied " We are supposed to meet at 7:30" Brandy went on to reply "Well, go shower and get yourself ready. As a present to you on your special day I am going to do your makeup." At that moment I teared up and hurried to go get ready. It was the epitome of the perfect Cinderella moment that many girls dream of. I sat on that cool stool feeling a rush of emotions of gratitude and giddiness. I know it sounds childish but it brought back those moments of childhood bliss of pretend and make believe. Imagining to be a princess, or a famous important woman, getting ready for an important event. The night was good. Actually it was better then good. It was phenomenal and I was excited to share it with my tribe. Again that peaceful content feeling surrounded me. I went to sleep happy, content and more importantly knowing I was LOVED. Perhaps I have lost some of you by now, I know I have lost myself many times through writing this wondering if everything I am saying is important and that you reading this and find a little nugget to hold near and dear to your heart. Hoping that I am not rambling, and getting straight to the point. Here are eighteen little nuggets I have learned from turning eighteen and seeing adulthood. 1. I cannot control what others do, what others think, how others respond. I can control how I react, how I speak, and furthermore how I love. 2. My family loves me. No matter the stupid things I do, that they will always love me. And that I will always love them. 3. Boys will come and go. Boys will break my heart. Boys will cheat and lie. Boys will change. God does none of those things. 4. Breath. Just breath, and everything will fall into place. One piece at a time. 5. My demons, my struggles do NOT DEFINE ME. 6. I am an OVERCOMER 7. I am STRONG 8. I have friends. My friends are my tribe. I have the best tribe out there. 9. Understanding things like a child is not such a bad thing. 10. Be open, don't be closed off. Closing off the ability to cry shuts off ones humanity. If one does not feel Joy, they are unable to see the happy moments. -Lacey Dodd. ( I most likely jumbled up her words but they stuck with me) 11. " Shanara, I don't know why you are trying to make everyone see you as a failure. You are not, and not matter the lengths you go to make others see you as a failure I will not let you fail." - Chris Holz ( Senior Year, English teacher) 12. I am healthy, wealthy, and strong. 13. " Shanara, you are NOT like everyone else. STOP trying to be AVERAGE 14. "Shanara, breath, don't over analyze the routine you've done it a million times. Go out there and do what you practiced. -Jackie&Sarena Mezzacappa 15. I became a Christian. 16. I started a Youtube Channel. It is not an overnight wonder, but it is MY wonder. 17. Lost weight. Gained weight. Gained healthy habits, became who I am. 18. Beautiful. SHANARA............. I cannot simply wait around to be motivated, I need to start the motivating. HAPPY HALLOWEEN MY FRIENDS! I hope you guys enjoyed stocking up on candy and getting your weeks worth of exercise from opening the door from those darling little Elsas and Minions. If we are getting creative we may run into a family of Star Wars impersonators. Either way Halloween has come and is almost gone, depending on when you are reading this. For the past few weeks I've been lagging on the postings. I just really had no clue what to talk about. Plain and simple. I wish I had a better, much more eloquent backstory to not being the on top of the writing curb. However, I am able to write today.
The last few weeks i've been really down and just in the funks. Sleeping in until 1pm, and just being down in the dumps about myself. So I decided to get some motivation. I've found that in the times that motivation is lacking, that is the time I need to get my cutie booty in gear and start hustling. I cannot simply wait around to be motivated, I need to be the motivator. So I came up with with some things I have found helpful when I'm low. They are called the Three F's To Success. Faith, Family, and Friends are my keys to success. Now these are not unordinary ideas, and are most likely found in many self-help books. Regardless or not I've seen these help me when I feel that I can no longer go the distance. ( I hope you noticed the Disney reference when Hercules says that he can go the distance) Faith. Faith is very important to me. It is most likely more important to me now than it ever has been. It's not just a faith to the man upstairs hoping that my prayers (more like complaints) reach those pearly gates. It's remembering that Poppa loves me and has the best for me no matter what I can see right now. It's having Faith that no matter what that Poppa hears me and knows exactly what I'm thinking without even batting an eye. Family. Family. Boy, have I taken my family for granted or what. I'm sure we all have at one point or another. Whether or not it was intentional or simply claiming to be too busy to text our parents,grandparents,cousins,etc. Lately I've been staying home or taking my little siblings out on dates. I've even gotten in touch with my cousins who live out of state. At the end of the day family is important. No matter how far away I love my family. Friends. Friends. They are the gifts from above. I deeply love my friends. My friends are truly amazing and they have my hearts. They keep me grounded and even tell me when I'm being a pain in the butt especially when I don't want to hear it. My friends motivate me, give me advice, they also allow me to cry and be myself. I am able to be me, not who I think others want me to be. Simply me. True friendship saddled with honesty is the most valuable gift I could have been given. These are just a few steps that I've found to helpful to my success. You see each point I mentioned has an important key element to living successful, healthy, lives. Faith, knowing that I have a Poppa above loving and wanting my best. If He is for me then who can be against me? Family, blood or given these people can and will always be support system. No matter the circumstance I know that they have me, and that no matter what I do they love me, and I love them too. Friends, sisters and brothers given from the angels above. Those who give me sanity and those who I am able to run ideas through or even open business. Success is in the eyes of the beholder. Now it is time for you to decide your success. Shanara. |