Fitting Into Yourself

Photo Courtesy of Lorena Gonzalez

We watch people go for their dreams and think to ourselves, I’d be too afraid to take that leap.

Fear has an amazing way of keeping so many of us stuck in relationships we don’t like, in cities we want to move away from, in jobs we can’t stand, not having conversations that need to be spoken, and ultimately not living the lives that we would like to live.

If I am honest, the truth is that there are many things that I would like to do that I am too afraid venture out into.

Don’t get me wrong, personally I’ve dared to take leaps on more than one occasion and each time I landed in financial ruin and left my loved ones scratching their heads trying to figure out my brand of crazy.

As a 35-year-old single mother it is not socially acceptable for me to take career risks that would be acceptable of a young single 18-year-old man.

For some reason it is more acceptable for young people to want to find themselves but if a forty-five year old man who is a husband and father of two wakes up one day and decides he wants to quit his job and sell everything he owns and has his family travel the world most people would call him crazy.

People who don’t want to work a nine to five, for forty hours a week at a job that doesn’t fulfill them are deemed by many as lazy.

Most of us never stop to think about why we get up everyday and go to a place that we hate.

Who decided that was to be our source of income and why did we accept it as truth?

It’s deemed easier to get up and work a job you hate for income, than it is to search for your purpose and earn an income from your talent to the world.

Far too many of us accept it as truth that it isn’t possible to have a job you love that pays well.

When people say they want to start writing books, start growing a crop for sell, painting, singing, designing clothing, opening their own exercise gym or anything that takes them out of the traditional nine to five they are deemed as abnormal.

We even scoff and say things like “you must have money to make money”.

Some of even take steps to make sure they know there isn’t enough resources, and that they can never do it.

Many of us our quick to recommend they take a “normal job”.

But there was a time when people had a craft of their own and a trade of their own that they brought to the table and that was a “normal job”.

They did more than file documents or sell products that most people don’t need or work in a system that ties their hands from doing a job the way they feel that they should do it.

Many of us dream of being entrepreneurs but we are afraid of not having a regular paycheck.

Our fear of not having money is used as a way of keeping us on the treadmill of the nine to five workforce because we don’t know how we will earn money if we dare to start our journey and be a trailblazer into uncharted territory.

Most learning institutions teach us how to work for someone else, not how to work for ourselves.

So week after week, we go to a job we don’t like and many of us go there for income that doesn’t cover our bills and moreover we go into debt, all out of fear.

We think anyone who is making it big must have done something illegal, immoral or unethical to get there.

Because here we are working 40 hours a week and all we got was a dollar raise.

When our friends try to start a small business of their own many of us don’t support them.

We are afraid to trust them with our money so we give it to the “professionals”. Better to lose our money to a big conglomerate than to invest it in someone we know personally.

In America the number of people with degrees surpasses the number of positions that require a degree and no one wants to talk about it.

Because we were told by universities who were in the business of selling us a degree that we need a degree in order to make it and now when their isn’t enough fruit in the way of jobs we are still telling our kids to go to university to get the degree so that they can at least have a chance at being underemployed.

Don’t get me wrong I’m not opposed to higher learning, nor am I opposed to working a traditional nine to five. However, I do think we should question why we judge people who choose to live their dreams instead of living their the way society tells them they should and not because they want to.

Some people are happy working a nine to five for someone else and there is nothing wrong with that.

But then there are other people who want to have their own construction company even if it means they have to work 70 hours a week to do it and to that I say they are not wrong for that either.

I posit many of us have been conditioned to believe that living out our dreams is for someone else, but not ourselves. We have been ingrained to believe this so much so, that when someone we know personally tries to break out of that mold they make us uncomfortable.

This is because the people who we know personally are most like us. And if they can make it then what is keeping us from doing the same?

Sadly, dream crushing has become so normal it’s hard to share a dream out loud.

Voiced dreams are often met with great resistance. Share a dream and the naysayers will swiftly speak up and smack it down.

I have seen firsthand where adults go into elementary schools and tell kids they should give up their dreams of making it big and have more conventional dreams.

We steal dreams from youth because we have been conditioned to believe that dreams are for the Bill Gates of the world, but not for us.

But dream crushing doesn’t stop in the workforce.

Additionally, we are afraid of being alone so we settle in unloving relationships. Many people are convinced to stay in painful relationships because “a good partner is hard to find”.

The idea of someone choosing to either be in a healthy relationship or no relationship at all is strange to many people.

Far too many people think that surely a man or woman must have something wrong with them if they love themselves enough to only tolerate a healthy partnership.

And another crippling fear that keeps us from our dreams is that many of us stay in a place we don’t like because we are so afraid that if we move that perhaps we won’t like the new place.

Ultimately, we stay in the known we don’t like out of fear of the unknown.

There are people who have never left their hometowns out of fear.

Their only point of reference to the outer world is the stereotypical depictions they see portrayed by the media.

And thus we live our lives afraid to quit our job and start our own business because we might go broke, all while disregarding the fact that everyday that we go to work we feel broken.

We are afraid to tell our kids its okay to want to be an author or a painter because we’ve been told those jobs don’t pay much money.

Sadly, I think many of us secretly hope the people in our lives fail when they try to buck the system and do what makes them happy.

I think that many of us hope they fail because deep down we know that if they succeed, it means that the only thing that keeps us from our happiness is our fear of failure. And if they can make it that means that we could have made it and our unhappiness is self-made.

If our friend loses the weight by persistently making healthy choices and we didn’t it means it was possible for us to lose the weight also, and thus perhaps the excuses we have been spouting aren’t valid.

We secretly want them to fail so we can keep lying to ourselves and remain uncomfortably uncomfortable.

When our friends business starts turning a profit we put a fake smile on our face while secretly wondering “how can someone do what makes their soul happy and succeed while everyone else plays by the rules and works at a job they hate”.

It really sticks in our craw for someone to start a small business and succeed when we tried selling Mary Kay that one time and no one in our family would even place an order.

But what we don’t see is the times when that person sleep on their friends couch or in their car in an attempt to fulfill their dreams.

We don’t see the times they bathed in the bathroom of a gas station.

We don’t see when no one would help them because they felt they should have known better than to quit that job.

We don’t see all the times they were rejected, their silent hustle, their tears, the times they doubted and their sweat.

Those people earned their success, they worked for it.

They believed in their dreams enough to walk them out while everyone else laid in the bed only dreaming.

For some reason we don’t cheer until they make it big, but even then as I previously mentioned we secretly resent them for showing us that if only we had toiled to break free the way they did we too could be in a position that we love also.

If only we weren’t too afraid to sell everything and move to Africa like our soul told us to.

If only we had the strength to leave that abusive relationship with the knowledge that we don’t have a wide variety of job skills and may not be able to afford to make ends meet without the help of our partner.

And if only we weren’t afraid to keep trying to make a business work even if it meant we saw it go down in flames.

It would be nice if society applauded those who march by the beat of a different drummer. But in our world most of us possess the herd mentality. We don’t like to think outside of societal traditions, instead we do what we believe most people do and never question why any of us are doing it.

Anyone who goes outside of the norm and chooses to do what makes them comfortable often makes us uncomfortable.

How dare they act on their dream of moving to the country and owning a farm and not eating food grown commercially!

No one else is doing it!

Most of us do not live in a society where being an individual is cheered upon, therefore for many of us individuality isn’t easy. But I say be an individual any way.

The majority of parents hope that their children will be normal and fit in with everyone else. I hope my kids fit in to themselves.

Love,

 

Renata Nicole

© Renata Pittman Smith and RenataNicole, 2017. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Renata Pittman Smith and RenataNicole with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

 

 

 

 

The Blessing of Failure

“Rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.” – J.K. Rowling

 

Photo Courtesy of Crystal Thomas Ashford

 

I can attest to the aforementioned quote by J.K. Rowling, that rock bottom is a solid foundation like no other.

Having life strip away everything that is unnecessary and leave you with the bare minimum puts you in a place where you can start afresh far better than you can from any other station in life.

I know without a shadow of a doubt that it wasn’t until life humbled me and allowed me to fail time and time again that I ironically gained traction in my journey on the road to success.

With each loss I discovered unnecessary parts of me that I had not realized were present until they were removed from me.

I had toyed with the idea of being an entrepreneur for several years.

But I was always too afraid to take the risk.

I mean what if I failed?

What would people say?

How would I recover?

So I never did it.

I allowed my fear to prevent me from venturing out on my own.

That was until I decided to do it – afraid.

I decided to invest all I had into myself and my business venture.

So I didn’t talk about my plans with anyone unless they were an expert on the subject. Because, I didn’t want to risk people who lived in fear to sow negative thoughts in my mind or talk me out of it. So I did my research, talked to experts in the field, studied the market and I took the risk.

I pulled all my resources together in attempt to start a business of my own and guess what?

– I failed.

The result of my six month business venture was $58.00 in income which was easily overshadowed by overhead costs. Six months of hard work, six months of trying, six months of being told no, six months of putting more in financially then I ever received out and I was blessed with $58.00.

So with relatively no income outside of child support and three teenage kids looking to me for provision I had a decision to make.

I had to determine how I was going to provide in a job market where I was told I was overqualified. So when I was turned down for the positions that I was fully qualified for, I did the only thing I knew to do. I took three low wage paying part-time jobs and I put them together.

With the help of my friends and family, child support and my three part-time jobs I was able to make ends meet. There were times when I would go to bed at night not knowing how I would provide food for my kids the next day but every single day I woke up and God made provision for us.

I can honestly say I know what it is to trust God for provision of my daily bread.

Prior to that time no one could have told me that I had the physical ability to stand on my feet for 12 hour days.

I suffer from chronic pain that makes it hard for me to go about my day.

But there is something about knowing that I am responsible for three kids that made me push through the pain.

And no one could have told me that I could work 16 hours in a day at two different jobs. Moreover, the concept that I would have to run to the bathroom and vomit due to exhaustion was inconceivable prior to me living that reality. But there is something about knowing that your kids need to have food to eat and not knowing any other way that isn’t illegal , immoral or unethical that some how miraculously gives you the strength to stand.

No one could have told me that I would see all of my needs met in ways that seemed to signal that divine intervention had certainly played a hand in taking care of me, but I lived through it. I have seen things occur in my life that definitely boggle my human mind and I can’t settle with viewing them as simply a small thing, when I know that if the money would have come one day later I would have been in a deeper hole.

Things definitely arrived for me just in the nick of time on more than one occasion.

As I was working part-time I would submit application after application and go on interview after interview just to be told, “no”.

I began to question if I was going the wrong way. I wondered if all the nos where life’s way of telling me to give up.

But I don’t think that was it at all.

The failure of my business, the failure to secure a job that would provide adequate pay, the struggle of working three low paying jobs in an attempt to make ends meet, the feeling I got when all I could afford to give my kids for their birthday was a cake, not being able to afford to provide the life my kids were accustomed to when their father and I were married, were the times that shaped and made me into a stronger version of myself.

Due to my knowledge that I have failed and survived before, I have become brave enough to try again.

I’ve leaped only to hit the ground hard and ultimately learn that while it is indeed very hard that it cannot break me.

So I’ve decided to use the lessons of my failures to help me to take the leap of faith to try again.

Because ironically the greatest lesson that my failure taught me is that I cannot fail.

Even when it seems, I’m going the wrong way I will ultimately end up exactly where I’m supposed to be.

Indeed I am my own limit!

Nothing can come between me and my destiny but me!

I recognize that by taking another leap that I could fall even lower than I did the last time, but whether I fall again or soar, I have decided to leap nonetheless.

I can’t say that I despise failure because I love the lessons she teaches me.

Just because I haven’t mastered how to win doesn’t mean I’m going to stop playing. I’m still in the game all the way up until the time the final buzzer sounds.

The way I see it is that I still have breath in my body and my dream has yet to come into fruition, so that means it’s my responsibility to keep on going.

Am I afraid? – ABSOLUTELY!

But I’ve decided to do it afraid.

I’m reading books on all types of topics to expand my mind. I’m sitting at the feet of people who have gotten to where I want to go and consider myself blessed just to be able to have direct access to them and for their willingness to give me advice. I’m stealing whatever time I can from the act of being lazy and diverting it to the action of honing my craft.

I have a vision in my head of what I will achieve and like a dog with a bone I’m not willing to let it go.

But there are some things that I will let go of.

I will let go of bad habits so new ones can unfold.

I will let go of negative thoughts so new ones can take hold.

I’m allowing myself to be comfortably uncomfortable trying new things.

And the result is that I’m hearing no’s again but I have the courage to keep asking.

I’m being told close but no cigar, so I’m determined to get closer.

I’m having the phone hung up on me, so I keep dialing.

I’ve ended the day without achieving my daily business goals and I used the sting of that failure to light a fire under me to overachieve for the next day.

I look at my check register and wonder do I have what it takes to make it or will I fail like I did the time before. Then I tell myself that my destiny lies beyond those numbers.

I have to tell myself to stop worrying about the people who are betting against me and to remember that what I think of me is all that matters.

I remind myself that as long as I don’t give up that I will achieve the results that I hope to achieve.

I am taking the lessons of my yesterday and I am applying them to my today.

For I have a choice, I can give this my all or I can not do it at all. There is no half stepping, no partial effort, it’s all or nothing and I want it all.

It is possible that I may fall all the way to the bottom. But we already discussed the benefits of being at the bottom at the top of this blog entry.

If I hit rock bottom I’ll still be breathing and that means I’m still in the game.

Yes, when you’re at the bottom people will judge you, but guess what they’ll judge you no matter what your station is in life.

Also you can’t learn how to truly appreciate what you have until you experience not having.

For almost three years I felt like a hamster on a wheel. I was running at top speed exerting a bunch of energy and I never seemed to get any traction.

And now I stand with the glimmer of hope that this time I can make it. I’m gaining ground and I like it.

It is my firm belief that this time I can achieve my goal but I am going to have to put in the work to earn it.

When it comes to our dreams in life no one is going to give us anything we haven’t worked for.

With that said I am going to keep trying to achieve my dreams and keep reaching for my goals.

I’m investing in me.

Before my failure I thought that obstacles were meant to destroy me.

It wasn’t until someone explained to me that life doesn’t put obstacles before us in the hope that we would fail but to the contrary, it does it in the hopes that we will succeed.

Because, much like a trainer sets up exercises for an athlete to enhance their ability, so does life set up exercises to advance us.

Life gives us hindrances and obstacles with the hopes that we will become stronger.

We need that strength for where we are going.

For that reason I am thankful for kids who ask why we live in an apartment when their friends live in a house.

And I give thanks for the guy who told me he didn’t want to continue seeing me because I was struggling financially.

Not because it made me want more money or because I’m some sort of glutton for punishment, but rather because I knew I was trying my best and from those comments I learned that only I know when I am doing my best and even if those I care about see me as a failure I have to know who I am for myself.

I have grown to value the eye rolls, scoffs, rejection and judgment as much as the love, kindness, support and care that I received from those around me.

I tell this story not as someone who has achieved my dream.

No I’m telling my story in the face of everyone and I’m saying it may not happen this year or even this decade but I have a dream in my heart and if I die before it manifests I want the world to know that I died trying.

Far too many of us become paralyzed by our fear of failure. But I’m here to say I failed and yet I am still in the game. I encourage you to try even if it results in failure because failure is indeed it’s own blessing.

© Renata Pittman Smith and RenataNicole, 2017. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Renata Pittman Smith and RenataNicole with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

When You’re Just “Too Proficient”

I was working as a teacher’s assistant  when I first heard the comment.

“Renata, you’re just too proficient.”

I smiled when the lead teacher said it.

I was so proud that I was good at my job and was being acknowledged for my abilities.

While working as his assistant I had the uncanny ability to provide him with whatever he needed and have it in place before he even realized he needed it.

At the time I didn’t have an inkling that being too proficient would be my downfall.

I would hear “Renata, can you hand me the….”

And before he could finish the sentence whatever he was asking for was placed in his hand.

He would smile and say, “You’re just too proficient.”

It made me feel good knowing that I was able to make his job easier.

Fast forward to a few years later when my supervisor pulled me to the side and said, “You know what you do? – You intimidate people. You are simply too good at what you do and it intimidates people, so they don’t want to work with you. There is absolutely nothing you can do about it, just be aware that when you are too good at what you do it makes other people intimidated.”

I didn’t know at the time that those comments carried as much weight as they do until now.

This blog post is for all the people who are too proficient at their craft(s).

This is for the people who excel at what they do, but instead of being told congratulations they are told, sorry we don’t have a place for you.

I don’t know how many people can relate to this, but I am certain I am not the only one.

So I am going to continue to tap my keyboard until I have finished expressing my thoughts on this matter.

It has been two years since I came to the realization that my problem was in fact that I am too good for many of the things that I seek in life.

If that statement sounds arrogant then to you I say with the utmost respect – this blog post is not for you.

No, this blog post is for the people who know what it is to be one of the best, if not the best, only to have people tell you time after time that you that you are not what they are looking for.

Hearing those words can make you doubt your abilities but something inside of you keeps saying “I know I’m good at what I do”.

For almost a year I had been toying with the notion of diminishing myself so that other people would feel more comfortable around me and I would be viewed as less  intimidating.

I actually tried to “dumb myself down” the way that I had been advised to do.

-It didn’t work.

It didn’t work because I cannot pretend to be someone who I am not.

Interviewers saw through my facade and kindly rejected me.

– “You’re overqualified”.

That is what I was told.

I think I could have handled it better if I only heard it in my professional life.

But when I heard it in my romantic life it just compounded the problem.

– “You’re just too good for me.”

I wanted to believe that it was just their kind way of saying that I wasn’t the one, but no, I knew that it meant far more than that.

Yes, sometimes people lie and say that to protect your feelings when they aren’t interested in you, but I knew deep down in my core being that their words were true.

I was, “too good” for them in the same way I was “too proficient” for certain positions.

I have a tendency to settle for people, places, situations and things that I know I can do better than because I am afraid to try to go where my soul cries and says I belong. And yet, I wanted to be accepted by someone, somewhere.

I feared rejection from what I really wanted so I tried to fit in where I didn’t belong.

But life doesn’t work that way!

You have to get in where you fit in.

In attempting to escape rejection from where I felt drawn, I experienced rejection from where I settled.

When you don’t resonate with people, they will reject you.

It doesn’t mean that there is anything wrong with you. But it does mean you are not the right fit.

Sure you can go about fitting square pegs into round holes, but it is far simplier to fit the round peg in the round hole and the square peg in the square hole.

And yet far too many of us get caught up wondering why are we round instead of square or not appreciating that we are square instead of round or God forbid feeling distraught that we are rectangular, triangular or oval!

We wonder why we aren’t something instead of embracing what we are and connecting to that which we are designed for.

Round pegs look around and all they claim to see is a world full of square holes.

Never mind the fact that it is uncomfortable trying to jam themselves into the lives of square holes – they just want to fit in no matter the magnitude of discomfort!

Sure the round pegs might see a couple of round holes here or there but from their point of view it seems like they are too far away and perhaps they wouldn’t even want to get know said round peg, so round pegs decide you know maybe good ole square hole will do.

After jamming their way in and filling totally uncomfortable eventually round hole looks over at the square peg or perhaps the square peg looks over at round hole and says “look this here isn’t working for me”.

And this leads to the painful process of the round peg being removed from the square hole where they both end up with scars.

We fail to recognize that if we are not the right fit for them then logically they are not the right fit for us.

When a round hole is rejected by a square peg, the round hole has a tendency to think there isn’t a place for them in this world.

For example in my case, I remember getting mad when I heard I deserved better because as I saw it better never came.

I was tired of waiting for better and I tried time and time again to settle.

But as I stated earlier what I settled for eventually rejected me.

I knew the entire time I deserved better than what didn’t fit me and that which did not fit knew it as well.

Thankfully, I have finally arrived at a place where I recognize that if someone doesn’t want my services because I am “too proficient” then I should go where my services are wanted, needed and desired.

I used to cry when I didn’t get a position I thought I wanted.

Now I thank God for redirecting me.

I have faith that the reason things didn’t work out the way I hoped is because there is something better coming.

I sincerely don’t get upset any more.

Those people know their work environment far better than I do. They know whether or not I am a good institutional fit.

Them telling me no isn’t a signal for me to give up and think that there is something wrong with me. No it is a signal to keep refining myself, honing my craft and becoming my best self.

I have spent far too much time out of my life trying to get people who don’t accept me, to accept me.

And so it goes with my dating life.

If someone doesn’t want to date me because they don’t think they have what it takes to make me happy, I will no longer try to convince them that they can.

Those people know themselves better than I do.

So I will take their word for it.

If they say I am too good, it’s because I am.

I will not wait for them to rise up to my standard because all it will do is bring me down to their low level.

No, I will seek people, places, situations and things of my caliber.

No more trying in vain to tone myself down so I can be accepted.

Like others who are deemed as “too proficient” I shine far too bright to sink into a crowd.

When you are too proficient there is just something about you that informs people of your greatness without you even uttering a word.

I used to think my shine was only valid if others gave it a nod or congratulated me on it.

No, I shine because I have no other choice but to shine.

I will be honest tonight I was thinking about billing myself as less than what I am because I was tired of being rejected.

I thought perhaps I will just try one more time to downplay myself so I can fit in somewhere.

I held that moment up until I watched Eleanor Powell dance.

Watching her dance made me realize I will not hide my light under a bushel in an attempt to make someone else accept me.

Nope, I’m going to live my life, like Eleanor Powell danced.

For those of you asking yourself who is Eleanor Powell, I am more than happy to introduce her story to you.

Eleanor Powell has been credited as one of the best American dancers to ever grace the silver screen

She may not be a household name like that of Fred Astaire but it isn’t because she wasn’t as good as him.

Truth be told, the reason she isn’t as recognized as Fred Astaire is because she was “too proficient”.

You see Eleanor was dancing at a time when it was thought that the role of a woman dancing was to make her male partner look good.

Back then women weren’t supposed to dance as good a man, they were supposed to make the man’s performance shine.

But when it came to dancing, Eleanor Powell made herself shine, because she could dance equal to and better than a man.

When watching her dance with the great Fred Astaire many people couldn’t take their eyes off of her because her skill, grace and precision were so dynamic.

As you can view in the clip provided, she was able to dance as good as, if not better than the great Fred Astaire.

And that was the problem.

After working with her in Broadway Melody Fred Astaire decided to never work with her again.

His reasoning, he stated was that “Eleanor Powell, one of our greatest talents, is a bit too powerful for me,” he said. “I love Eleanor Powell, but she dances like a man. She’s a remarkable dancer, but she has a mannish style, and she’s a little big for me.”

Her great dancing ability made it hard for her to find work.

Because she was just “too proficient”.

But that didn’t stop her from dancing.

While she was only featured in 14 films there was no denying her ability.

In his autobiography Steps in Time, Astaire remarked, “She ‘put’ em down like a man’, no ricky-ticky-sissy stuff with Ellie. She really knocked out a tap dance in a class by herself.”

So after some reflection I have purposed to live my life like Eleanor danced.

No more “ricky-ticky-sissy” stuff even if it means I have to shine solo, I’m going to shine.

 

Thank you Eleanor!

Love,

 

Renata Nicole

© Renata Pittman Smith, Renata Nicole and RenataNicole, 2016. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Renata Pittman Smith and RenataNicole with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

 

All Too Familiar No

Photo Courtesy of: Jamie Kathleen Haughaboo

There is something about being told no that can leave us feeling depleted.

When you have what you consider to be a bright idea and present it to someone only for then to inform you that they don’t think your idea is any good, it has the potential to stop many of us dead in our tracks.

Especially if we view the person as an authority on the subject matter.

There no can cause us to think that we don’t have what it takes to stand toe to toe with others or to be seated at the table with those who are at the place where we are so eagerly would like to pull up a chair.

But then we hear stories of people who were told no several times and then they finally hear that one yes that affirmed them.

There are always rumors of people who go from the bottom to the top, but those people are far and few between.

Nevertheless, those people give us hope.

But as I think of those people, I also think how can I be certain that I have what it takes to make it to the top?

I mean for all the people I hear of who made it, I know hundreds more who didn’t.

So am I one of the few people who will make it or am I one of the hundreds of people who will give up.

The truth is I don’t know. But I am going to die trying to achieve better.

I have to.

I owe it to myself to keep trying.

Because giving up on my dreams simply doesn’t work for me.

If I die a dreamer, I die a dreamer.

For, I would rather die a dreamer than die hopeless.

I arrived at this conclusion after literally being rejected over a thousand times in one year in an attempt to achieve one of my dreams.

So the way I see it is that when it comes to being told no, I am a master. For surely, I myself have become all too familiar with hearing the word no.

It was about four years ago when I realized that when it comes to my life that I have to stop settling.

I didn’t know how to stop but I knew I had to stop.

I didn’t know that decision would lead me on a path to hearing no repeatedly.

I am not confident that had I known from the beginning how hard this road would have been that I would have journeyed it.

It seems as if my whole life fell apart after deciding that I had to love myself enough to no longer settle.

But as they say, sometimes when it seems things are falling apart they are really coming together.

For example, it was at the height of me hearing the word no that I began this blog.

Who would have thought hearing the word no an overwhelming number of times would have propelled me to begin a journey of finally realizing that I have to love myself?

To that I say thank God for no.

I give thanks to the word no despite the fact that there was a point when its utterance caused me to jettison myself down to rock bottom.

I felt like life was never going to get any better.

No, I take that back. I knew that life would get better, but I didn’t want to go through the process of waiting for it to get better.

I am all for the mountain top experiences but I didn’t feel like enduring the pain that it would take for me to finally reach the pinnacle.

I was like those people who try to lose 50 pounds in a month. I didn’t want to eat right and work out and lose the weight in a year or two… No I wanted success right now!

I was also making the mistake of thinking that no meant never.

There I was sulking, feeling pitiful for myself and telling my sob story to anyone who would listen to it.

I became someone I didn’t know and didn’t want to know.

I think in many ways I lost my mind.

I am glad I lost whatever it was, because I am now clearer than I have ever been in my entire life.

I can now clearly see that all that rejection was not a judgment on who I am as a person, but at the time old me couldn’t recognize that.

Old me failed to see that no one in this world can define me, but me.

I was in such a poor mental state that I thought that if I went out on a date and it wasn’t a match that it meant that I wasn’t good enough.

I failed to see the obvious – it simply meant that it wasn’t a match.

My self-esteem was in such a bad place that I didn’t know that I was supposed to be trying to see if the person was compatible with me, not if I was good enough for him.

If I went on a job interview and was declined an offer I thought it meant I wasn’t good enough for the position.

I didn’t know it meant that there was a position that was out there that would allow me to better utilize my education, skills and experience in a way that would allow me to excel and grow in a positive environment.

When people betrayed me and hurt me I thought that said something about me, I didn’t know it was a reflection of who they were.

I was unaware of the fact that I am in transition and while in transition I am simply learning who I am and who I am not. I am learning what I want and what I don’t want.

Now is not the time to give up, now is the time to push forward.

I have learned that the reason I am being told no isn’t because I am not good enough, I am being told no because I am in the preparation period of receiving what is best for me.

Hearing yes prematurely would ultimately cause me more harm than good.

I see that now. However, there was a time when hearing the word no made me feel like something was inherently wrong with me and that I would never get things right.

I thought my life was some sort of cosmic joke.

I had to get a grip on myself.

The pity party had to end.

Thankfully, I was surrounded by friends and family who were there for me and who helped me to make my way through my darkest hours.

I wish this was a blog about how I have reached my mountain top.

But the truth is that I haven’t even reached flat land.

I still am in the valley lows.

But the thing is that I am no longer in the doldrums.

I think there is a time and a place for everything and that our experiences are necessary for our ultimate expansion.

So while I don’t regret my time being stagnant, I must tell you that I celebrate the moment that something inside of me clicked and I decided to let each no empower me to keep looking.

The reason that I was in the doldrums was because I allowed myself to become paralyzed with fear.

I was in such a bad place that I let the idea of hearing no keep me from even trying.

I would sit there on my couch in fear of everything.

But some how I got off of that dat burn couch!

Now a closed-door has become a signal that I am being pointed in the right direction.

I know it seems cliché but I truly had to become thankful for closed doors.

I had to work to overcome my fear of having a door closed in my face.

There are times when I think ‘what will people think of me’.

But I have come to a place where I realize that people are going to think what they want to think and for the most part people are far too self-absorbed to give much thought about what is happening in my life.

So if I fall in front of the world and the world laughs at me, I know I will have fallen trying to climb the highest mountain and I find comfort in that.

I have yet to even come close to reaching the top of my mountain, but I won’t stop climbing.

My door hasn’t opened but I have had windows open left and right.

I know what it is to be scared.

But I have learned to make it moment by moment.

I know what it is to not know how I am going to make it or how I will have my needs met and yet those same situations caused me to learn not to live in fear because I have not lived a day with my needs unmet.

There are times when I have been afraid to have hope, because having hope always puts me at risk of being let down.

No one wants to experience the pain of disappointment.

But who was I kidding, I was already disappointed.

I had nothing to lose so I may as well have hope.

The way I see it is that if I die without fulfilling my dreams and I never see anything that I want materialize how is that much different from being negative and still not seeing it manifest?

I would rather try and fail than not try and always wonder.

Like I said I wish this was a success story blog, but I surmise that some how in many ways it is.

It is my story of how I decided that I can hear no until my dying die, but I am not going to allow that word to measure my worth.

People can continue to reject me and it’s okay because I accept me.

I accept me flaws and all.

I will continue working to improve myself.

Not because I am not good enough, but because as long as I have breath in my body I plan to continue to cultivate myself into something better than I was before.

Ultimately I am the greatest benefactor of my growth process.

So, people can continue to tell me no and that I am too much of this and not enough of that.

And I will still be here, still standing, still breathing and still mountain climbing.

If I die never having reached the top I am okay with that.

What I am not okay with is me dying without trying.

This isn’t a platitude without any substance for I can truly say that I am thankful for all the times I heard no.

It was in hearing no that I was saved from being in toxic relationships with people who did not mean me well.

It was in hearing no that I was rejected for employment positions that I thought I wanted but through redirection I was placed in the presence of amazing people who I don’t think I would have met otherwise.

I can genuinely say that those encounters were well worth the no, for the value of those encounters is priceless.

If I told you that hearing no that much was easy I would be a liar.

My truth is that I spent a lot of time on my couch as I became familiar with no.

I would think this is too hard. Nothing is working, I can’t get any traction.

I felt like a hamster on a wheel. I was doing a whole lot of moving but I wasn’t going anywhere.

I was upset because I made the mistake of thinking that those no’s meant I would never hear yes.

Also, I wanted someone to come and save me.

Ironically, I think what was most bewildering to me were the people who would come into my life and offer to help me without me asking for any assistance only for them to disappear from my life.

I would sit there confused wondering what was the point of them interrupting me just to leave?

I felt like God was mocking me.

I thought to myself, ‘I was doing just fine at making it the best I could only to have someone dangle hope in front of me for the sole purpose of snatching it away’.

But I have learned God was not mocking me.

Those people let me know that there was no one coming to save me, if I was going to make it, I was going to have to make it.

I recall at one point being so disillusioned I actually got upset at the idea that once I finally do make it that people would come into my life and want to be apart of it.

I thought ‘if you don’t want to be here when I am struggling then when I make it no new people better not show up!’.

I was mad at people who I don’t even know and who aren’t even apart of my story because they weren’t there for me when I felt like they should be. – Yep I was crazy.

And I was mad at people for not being who I wanted them to be for me.

There they were, being who they were and I was mad that they weren’t who they weren’t.

Quite frankly, I was just mad.

Thankfully, I came to my senses.

I am now at a place where I hold no ill will towards the people who promised to help but didn’t. Because truth be told they offered me a much-needed glimmer of hope.

I smile at the thought of the people who will come when I reach my mountain top because I now realize they couldn’t possibly be here for me now, because they are busy mountain climbing there own mountain.

And I forgive the people who couldn’t be who I wanted them to, because the truth is it was never their job to be anything more than who they are. I accept them for who they are and I thank them for being authentic.

I also am thankful for those people who are here with me right now while I am in my valley cheering me on.

But oddly enough I am especially thankful for the hope danglers. This is because when I reflect back it felt good having hope. They helped me to see that being hopeful made me happier than being negative, so why should I let hope go just because they walked away from the table?

This quest of mine is between me and the divine alone.

The reason that I haven’t heard yes isn’t because I am not good enough.

I haven’t heard yes because the time has not yet come.

I am not prepared for yes.

If yes came before I was ready then my dreams would surely crumble before me.

So what do I do in the meantime? – I enjoy the meantime.

Yep that’s right I enjoy the struggle.

I embrace the lessons, I learn through the tears and I trust the process.

I don’t like grief, heartache and depression, because they are painful.

But I learn far more through the hard times than I do during the good times.

Does it hurt me when my hopes are dashed? – Not like it used to.

Because now I realize that it is simply redirection and not rejection.

But you want to know what hurts more than having hopes dashed? – Being hopeless.

Truly, all these closed doors are simply helping to direct me to an understanding of what I do want and what I don’t want.

Hearing no, doesn’t mean you give up on your dream.

Hearing no, gives you redirection on how to achieve your dream.

When things fell apart for me I thought I knew what I wanted.

Now I realize that if I received what I thought I had wanted I would never have uncovered the beauty of who I am and begun to unearth my true potential.

Thank God for no. Because it was all those times I heard no that has helped me as I journey on my way up.

So don’t be afraid of no.

Love,

 

Renata Nicole

Renata Pittman Smith, Renata Nicole and RenataNicole 2016. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used provided that full and clear credit is given to Renata Nicole with appropriate specific direction to the original content.

 

 

Diamonds Aren’t Rare!

 

Don’t let the title fool you, I have nothing against diamonds.

I just want you to know they aren’t rare.

A few years ago I read an article about a man who was walking through a diamond mine along with several other visitors when he says he noticed something sparkling against the sunlight.

He walked over to it and retrieved a high value diamond.

I recall reading that park officials said several other people had walked past the same area on multiple occasions for quite sometime and no one had noticed that there was a diamond in plain sight.

It wasn’t until the sun hit it just right that the right person with a keen eye noticed what was right in front of all of the people who were passing by.

The man had paid his admission fee to enter the park and so the diamond was his to keep.

I have often thought of that story.

I thought of all the people who walked right by that diamond and never noticed it.

I thought of how it wasn’t until the right person, at the right time, with the right eye under the right sunlight came along that the diamond was noticed.

Here is the thing – that diamond was a diamond before anyone noticed it.

Upon reading the story I immediately drew a comparison between that story and how just because no one notices you doesn’t mean you aren’t valuable.

When I went to do an internet search so that I could reread the article that had previously caught my attention I discovered several other articles on people who had also discovered valuable diamonds and not only that I learned more about the diamond industry.

When most people think of diamonds they think of Africa.

But diamonds have been known to be unearthed not only in Africa, but in Asia and North America as well.

My point is that diamonds can be found in multiple places.

Just like high value people can be found in multiple places.

We like to think there are no good people in our town, county, borough, municipality, city, state or country but you’re there and you are of value so what makes you think you are the last?

I am not saying it is wrong to look elsewhere I am just saying that when you think compatibility is rare you can easily start to believe that it isn’t within reach.

I had a long-held belief that quality people were rare.

This led me to believe that finding a romantic partner who is of high quality and who would be compatible with me was going to be a tough feat.

I was afraid to hope for love.

In an attempt to prevent my hopes from getting dashed I even tried to convince myself that my desire for a romantic relationship was synonymous with seeking external validation.

But who was I fooling clearly they are not one in the same.

The real reason I wanted to suppress my desire for a relationship was because I feared it wouldn’t happen.

I have decided that I would rather die trying to obtain my heart-felt desires than being afraid to hope for them.

Prior to doing my self work, my thought pattern was askew.

Much in the same way that many people think that diamonds are rare, I thought a good relationship was rare.

But I am now convinced that was simply my perception becoming my reality.

For instance, I know people who have a hard time making friends, but I make friends with ease.

Why?

Because I don’t see it as a hard thing to do.

If I am forming a platonic relationship with someone and I don’t think they are worthy of my friendship I simply don’t entertain them. I don’t worry about being without a friend because I know that it easy for me to make friends and that someone better will come along.

And yet there are some people who are desperate for friendship.

But it doesn’t stop there. There are people who find a new career with ease and then there are others who struggle.

Just like there are people like me who struggle to find romantic love alternatively there are people who seem to not only attract it but also seem to be the embodiment of it.

What if I am right and the reason I struggled finding a relationship was because my perception had become my reality?

For example, I myself have driven just north of a diamond mine on several occasions while traveling through the state of Arkansas without even knowing it.

At the time I didn’t put much thought into diamonds.

I simply figured they must be extremely hard to find because the price of them is so high.

Imagine my surprise when I learned that it is a myth that diamonds are rare.

Diamonds aren’t expensive because they are hard to find.

As a matter of fact the supply for diamonds actually exceeds demand.

So, if  diamonds are in large supply then why are they so expensive?

Diamonds are expensive because of a marketing strategy developed by the DeBeers organization.

According to my research prior to DeBeers successful advertisement, rubies and sapphires were more popular gemstones.

With the help of Hollywood, DeBeers successfully convinced people who” diamonds were a girls best friend” and that every engagement ring should include a diamond.

While I realize many of the tactics utilized by  DeBeers are not admirable, I still think their ability to change how the public perceived diamonds should be noted.

I actually find it quite interesting how someone set the standard for how much something was worth and everything else fell in line.

Much of the credit/disdain for the way most people view the value of diamonds goes to the DeBeers company.

DeBeers did a lot of work obtaining, producing, advertising, unearthing, recreating, harvesting, restricting and displaying diamonds.

However, I have read article  after article all explaining that DeBeers created an artificial scarcity by stockpiling diamonds but only selling them in limited quantities.

So all of this diamond research got me to thinking.

What if quality relationships aren’t rare?

What if it is really my limiting beliefs that cause me to see little evidence of them?

What if it really is my scarcity mentality that causes me to believe that it is going to be hard for me to find someone?

And what if it was my false belief that all men cheat that caused me to experience infidelity in all of my relationships?

I have nothing against diamonds but me knowing that there is an artificial scarcity created through marketing helps me to realize that they are more readily available and attainable than I previously thought.

So what if a good career, good finances, a positive life, healthy friendships, a loving family and romantic relationships aren’t as out of reach as what some of us conceive them to be?

I began thinking about how it is popular in today’s society for us to refer to a “good woman” as a diamond.

But just like diamonds aren’t rare I know that despite all the jaded men walking about who will disagree with me, good women aren’t rare.

I have decided to believe that just like good women aren’t rare, good men aren’t rare either.

It is simply perception becoming reality.

Now do I have evidence of this?

Nope, but “faith is the substance of things hoped for with the evidence of things not seen”.

With my new belief system in tow lets talk a little bit more about diamonds.

Many of us are familiar with the phrase “diamond in the rough”.

It’s a phrase referring to the people who have yet to go through the work, perseverance, pressure and transformation to become secure in their insecurities so like an unpolished diamond they come across as unrefined and rough around the edges.

Understand that the formation of diamonds takes place through high pressure and high temperatures over time and require some polishing thereafter.

But a diamond is still a diamond.

To further expound on that analogy I don’t think that only some of us are like diamonds I think we all are like diamonds.

In the sense that we all are of value.

We are either a diamond in the rough or a polished diamond, but we are all diamonds nonetheless.

I reassert that a diamond is a diamond.

People might say it is a cubic zirconia, but a diamond is a diamond. It doesn’t matter whether people realize it or not, because it is what it is. You never see a diamond telling people its worth. A diamond simply exists.

If someone tries to buy a diamond for less than its value, no jeweler worth their salt would ever let the sell take place.

The point is that you have to know your worth.

Don’t let anyone else define your value!

If someone isn’t smart enough to know your worth then they aren’t on your level in the first place and they don’t deserve you.

Never undersell yourself and never settle.

Always go for the highest bidder.

If someone submits and offer that doesn’t feel right – it ain’t right!

Hold out and wait!

Trust your internal guidance system on who deserves your energy and who doesn’t.

Invest in those who invest in you.

Believe that someone of mutual quality will come along at the right time, under the right ray of sunlight with a keen eye and notice you.

And if you ever have a moment where you catch yourself telling someone your worth recognize that is the precise moment you need to fall back because you have already forgotten your value.

So be a diamond and let the people who can’t recognize you kick rocks

It has taken a lot of soul-searching but I have begun seeing myself as valuable.

Not because I am in high demand or because of any advertising strategy.

But because I am finally starting to have a shift in my thinking where I am accepting what I know in my soul to be true.

I have value!

Those diamonds that were discovered never had to beg anyone to notice them they simply existed.

If someone came along and noticed them great and if no one did they were still great.

The vast majority of people believe that they will only ever be able to afford to buy a cubic zirconia.

They believe in the myth that diamonds are rare so they aren’t even looking to have one of their own.

And even if they do see a diamond they don’t believe that they are in line to obtain something of quality.

So when it comes to identifying a person who loves me I might have to spend some time alone in the jewelry shop window but I have full confidence that someone will come along when the time is right.

Furthermore, when I started to see myself as valuable I decided to no longer deal with people who wanna put me on a rent to own plan.

You know the guys who say they aren’t ready for a relationship  now (with me) but maybe they will be. In other words if I stick around until after they decide they can’t find someone better than maybe just maybe they might settle for lil’ ole me.

Forget that!

No more trying to become something I am not in the hopes of getting someone to finally love me.

Come ready to emotionally invest in me at full price or don’t invest at all.

If someone’s “emotional credit” is bad they need to shop elsewhere.

Thankfully I realize that the same sense of confidence I have in platonic relationships I need to bring to all my other relationships.

When it came to love I used to feel the need to mark down my prices.

Let’s just be honest I am pretty sure I advertised myself on clearance with a bright yellow sticker on more than one occasion.

There I was with a big old sign saying please pick me I am desperate for someone to please pick me!!!!

My low self-esteem and self-hatred led me to settle out of fear that no one would ever love someone like me.

Sadly, there I was a high value person who was so insecure that I sold myself at bargain basement prices.

I may not be rare in the sense that I am a good person but I can assure you that I am rare in the sense that I am a designer’s original.

And we all know that a designer’s original is sold at full price!

Don’t allow people who can’t recognize quality to have you thinking that you are as they perceive you.

Think of all those people who walked past that diamond before the man noticed it. They didn’t see the diamond for what it was but it was still a diamond.

It ain’t your fault that when it comes to love that some people believe they can only afford to give love, care, and honesty at Dollar Tree prices.

The reality is a lot of people can’t see your worth cause they can’t see their own.

They are the emotional equivalent of wealthy people who are penny pinchers. They gotta lot but they only give a little.

Forget those people!

Let them take that Ebenezer Scrooge type of love elsewhere.

And don’t do as I did falling prey to the sly people who can see your worth but realize you don’t so in an attempt to keep you from seeing your value they try to bring you down to their level by price haggling.

You gotta have an energy about yourself that lets them know that when it comes to your heart, time, energy and devotion that this here ain’t a yard sale and they are shopping at Tiffany’s and you demand mutual love, kindness, care, trust and respect.

Don’t fall for anything less.

I think a lot of us are walking around seeing ourselves and behaving like we are lower quality than we really are – don’t do it!

We think other people are of high quality but not us.

I spent decades not seeing the greatness that I am.

I now know that the right buyer will look at me and see me for who I am. They won’t price haggle and they will fall in love with me for who I am – the way I am – flaws and all.

For the first time in my life I get it!

Anyone who doesn’t love me as I am is just a window shopper and we don’t even open the case for window shoppers!

You are worth what you believe you are worth, you command the market!

Renata Nicole

© Renata Pittman Smith, Renata Nicole and RenataNicole, 2016. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Renata Pittman Smith and RenataNicole with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

A Leap of Faith

I am one of those people who believe that our dreams often hold significant meaning.

And with that said one of my ongoing childhood dreams is that I am going up a flight of stairs when suddenly I go to take the next step only to find that the next step is missing.

I am able to see more steps ahead of me, however in order for me to reach the steps I would have to take an enormous leap that for all intents and purposes seems impossible.

In my dream I would turn around and look behind me only to notice that the steps behind me have enormous gap as well.

Realizing that I was too afraid to leap forward and too afraid to leap backwards I would be paralyzed with fear.

As a child whenever I would have this reoccurring dream I would often just dream that I stayed there on that step crying, afraid and traumatized until I woke up.

I always hated that dream.

It was something about being stuck, too afraid to go back and too afraid to go forward that just made me feel trapped. In my dream I would be so afraid of falling that I couldn’t move.

I think what made that dream particularly bothersome is because in both my waking and sleeping life I have a fear of heights.

While in my waking life I work to overcome my fear of heights in the dream world the fear is exaggerated. I often dream of strangers pushing me off cliffs and other mishaps involving heights.

But if you know me I am all about overcoming my fears.

So in reality while I will always have a reverential fear of heights, I have flown on planes, experienced my fair share of roller coaster rides (despite suffering from motion sickness), visited the Grand Canyon and driven across high bridges in the state of Texas which is known for having enormously high structures as well as looked into taking a hot air balloon ride so I can challenge myself to live fearlessly.

However, despite my willingness to overcome my fears in my waking life in the dream world heights are something I dread.

Nevertheless, I had the dream the other night and for the first time that I can ever recall I dared to leap.

Not only did I leap, I did the impossible…. I landed.

I took a leap of faith forward and I landed!

As someone who believes that dreams have deeper meaning I instantly knew that not only was I going to have an opportunity come my way but that I was going to have to overcome my fear and take it. And when I did I would be successful.

So of course I woke up from the dream knowing to that surely transition was coming.

I was afraid of the idea of change and assured that I would be okay all at the same time.

I didn’t really know what the transition was but I knew transition was coming.

The dream occurred about a week ago but it wasn’t until about two days ago that I identified a leap that I need to make.

It’s time for me to go back to actively pursuing a career that I truly find fulfilling.

I have previously blogged about how my change in my professional life affected me but I don’t really go into much detail.

I could easily argue that it is because my website is public and that I don’t want that part of my life made available to potential employers.

But that couldn’t be the reason because for over a year now I have been sharing intimate details of my life story with the world.

I have been making myself vulnerable before anyone who cares to research me.

So I may as well put it out there.

I may as well address my real fear now.

My real fear is that I am going to apply for yet another position only to be rejected yet again.

My real fear is that I am going to go on another job interview just to be told that I am overly qualified, or alternatively that I don’t have enough qualifications yet again.

I find it very interesting how I allowed hearing no to prevent me from even trying to look for something that would truly satisfy me.

I settled in a job position that I know that I am overly qualified for because I no longer felt like hearing sorry but your application has been rejected.

A while ago I noticed a similarity in my dating life and my professional life.

I noticed that every time I would go out on a date with someone new I would be told that I wasn’t the person they were seeking, in the same way that I would be turned down after a job interview or application.

I mistakenly thought no one wanted me.

Which I now can clearly see was an exaggeration.

For example I am able to find employment and at times I work three different jobs to make ends meet.

But I am having a hard time finding employment in my chosen field.

Previously, I started a business only to watch it fail.

I am glad I heard no and I am glad the business failed.

Because that rejection and failure made me a better person.

I now know that I can survive failure and that hearing no will not break me.

Also, it caused me to identify opportunities for growth that I didn’t know existed.

It humbled me in areas that I needed to be humbled.

It was most certainly a blow to my ego when I came to the realization that in a years time I had applied to over a thousand jobs only to find myself in an entry level position.

As the mother of three I took whatever work I could find as long as it wasn’t illegal, unethical or immoral.

That led to me eventually settling in a position where I absolutely love my coworkers however I am not using my education, skills and abilities to my fullest potential.

Everyone asks “what are you doing here?” and I simply shrug my shoulders.

I shrug my shoulders or give some lame excuse all because I am too afraid to say the truth.

I am here because I don’t think anyone else will have me.

I have decided that I no longer what to live my life afraid.

I want to live my life boldly and victoriously.

So I have decided to take the leap of faith much like I did in my dream.

Prior to blogging tonight I put in an application for a position that I know that I am fully qualified for that would be both challenging and rewarding. I plan to continue applying for more jobs that fit that specification.

I have a renewed sense of belief in myself.

I decided that sense I am not willing to settle in my love life I can no longer settle in my work life.

I have to be okay with having employers reject me the same way I have to be okay with having men tell me that I am not the woman they are seeking.

Also, I have to be okay with declining job offers that I know are not going to fulfill me the same way I have to be okay declining relationships that are not going to fulfill me.

I recognize that my love life and my work life are not the same thing but they do parallel in many ways to include the fact that my low self-esteem allowed me to settle for less than I deserve in both areas.

Fortunately, I have been working on my self-esteem and I am ready to take the next step.

I decided that I deserve better than the life I have been settling for.

I will admit that a part of me is afraid that I will leave my current job only to realize I don’t like my new coworkers or that I am not intelligent enough to do the work.

To that fear I recite the quote “everything you want is on the other side of fear” and find strength and a sense of inner peace.

I have to believe that the reason I didn’t get those jobs is because they are not the job for me and that God has something out there better for me.

I shouldn’t have given up aggressively pursuing a better career.

Somewhere along the line I went from actively pursuing employment on a daily basis to sporadically looking once a month.

At one point I would look at the jobs and just break down crying because I felt like no one would ever hire me.

I reached that place after driving 5 hours one way for job interviews and job fairs only to be told I had too much education and too much experience.

It was upsetting because as I have previously blogged, in my romantic life I was simultaneously hearing from men that I deserved better, I was too good for them or I came to the realization that the terms for a relationship that they were laying down wasn’t ones I was willing to pick up.

The thing is both the men and the potential employers were right.

I was too good for those jobs and I was better than the type of relationship that those gentleman were offering.

But in both instances I didn’t accurately interpret what they were saying to me.

I took it to mean something was wrong with me.

I didn’t realize it meant to keep looking.

The higher your education and experience the less jobs there are available in the job market for you.

Also the hiring process for higher paying positions tend to take longer as potential employers work hard to vet potential candidates to ensure that the money they invest in a candidate doesn’t go to waste.

And when you want a relationship partner that is going to treat you well you have to accept the fact that everyone doesn’t have the time, energy or capacity to do give you the type of relationship that you seek.

If you are willing to settle for just any type of treatment it is easier to find a relationship partner but the quality people require a good vetting process and while there are many qualified candidates the majority of people you come across will not be in a place to give you a healthy relationship.

When potential employers tell me I am overqualified it is because they feel as though they cannot afford to pay me what I am worth.

And when men tell me that I am too good for them it isn’t that they are bad men it is that they are not in a place to give me the emotional investment that I am seeking.

Previously I thought it meant no one of substance wanted me at their company.

I was internalizing things when I should have been thanking them for the redirection.

I was being so negative about my career search that despite having employers call me back after rejecting me just to assure me that I did nothing wrong in the interview process and encouraging me to keep doing what I was doing, I simply gave up.

I didn’t like being told no.

Because, I had falsely perceived no to mean I wasn’t good enough.

But I have come to a place where I firmly believe that there is an employer out there with a position that would benefit both them an myself fully.

Just like there is man out there who would benefit from interacting with me as much as I would benefit from interacting with him.

I love my current job but I am most certain that not only am I settling I have also grown quite complacent.

While I have learned so much from my current place of employment I know in my soul that it is time for me to take a leap of faith and start looking elsewhere.

God  blessed me with an amazing supervisor and a positive work environment but I know it is time to go.

Most certainly there is a part of me that thinks no one will ever hire me outside of my current employer which I assure you isn’t true.

It may take some time but I know that it is time for me to go.

Because just like I wouldn’t feel right settling in a romantic relationship I can no longer settle in my professional one.

It doesn’t really matter how long it takes for me to find a new position.

What matters is that I keep looking, I keep believing and that I get off my current step and take a leap of faith.

Sometimes we get stuck emotionally and we are afraid to go backwards or forwards and we just sit there. We can do like I did and make excuses for why we are there but the truth is it’s often fear. I have fears just like everyone else but the thing is that I have learned that I would rather try and fail then to fail to try.

I am taking a leap of faith and I hope you do too.

Renata Nicole

© Renata Pittman Smith, Renata Nicole and RenataNicole, 2016. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Renata Pittman Smith and RenataNicole with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

 

I’ve Gotta Plan

Four days ago I accepted my truth that I have been wasting time.

Getting out of the bed to face the day was an ongoing battle.

If I had nothing planned to do for the day I could easily lay in the bed for a good 10 to 14 hours. Not necessarily sleeping but definitely not working to achieve anything purposeful.

I am not sure if it was simply laziness, depression or a combination thereof, but I can tell you that the fire in me was most certainly out.

I mean I went to work, spoke with friends and did things with my kids but the sense of purpose was gone.

I was waiting on a break.

To be honest I was cynical about a break coming.

I talk and write about a break coming but somewhere in myself I wasn’t believing it.

Truthfully, when someone would tell me they thought things would get better for me – I cringed.

I would cringe because it seemed like every time I had an inkling of hope it would get dashed.

So for the most part I had given up hope.

Career and relationship expert Mel Robbins explains that the major reason that we don’t get what we want is because we have accepted where we are.

I can not speak for anyone else but I know that for me I had given up and started to go beyond being content with the scraps that I was receiving to actually being complacent.

Sadly, just getting by and having just enough was being accepted by me as normal.

To make matters worse I married that complacency with self-doubt and blamed God for my results.

As I have written before I have a bad habit of believing for other people but when it comes to believing for myself there is a disconnect.

But don’t fret I am working on it.

Thankfully, I have been blessed that my entire life I have been surrounded by positive teachers. Life has found a way of sending some of the best motivational teachers and speakers into my life.

For example, I went to school with Les Brown’s nephews. So at the age of 14 I had the opportunity to listen to him speak for free because he had come to speak at his nephew’s graduation who happened to be graduating the same year as my sister.

At the time I didn’t know who he was, but he impressed upon me that I could achieve greatness.

This is just one example of how I cut my teeth and was nursed on some of the most positive teachings out there, without even consciously trying.

But despite all of the teachings flowing through my mind, there I was laying in bed feeling broke, busted and disgusted and I realized that I was literally wasting my life.

I had allowed myself to believe that the reason that things were not working out the way I wanted was because God didn’t want them to.

I figured I tried and door after door had closed upon me.

I tried doing right and treating people right and I still had received what felt very wrong.

My line of thinking was I tried, so clearly the failure wasn’t on my part.

I was lying to myself.

God, the universe, life wasn’t failing me.

I was failing me.

I was sitting there waiting for life to happen to me.

I had forgotten the words of Henley that “I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul”.

And I had forgotten that “I have dominion on this earth”.

I had effectively given my power away and was laying in bed waiting to die.

When the phone rang or the email came and it didn’t carry the break through that I was looking for I thought to myself that God didn’t want me to have it.

Never mind the fact that I am not trying my best.

Never mind the fact that I am allowing fear to paralyze me.

Never mind the fact that I am sitting there in a bed of pity.

Joyce Meyer says “you can be pitiful or you can be powerful but you can’t be both”.

Joyce Meyer is right.

Sure I have had setbacks, hang up, bang ups, let downs and break downs.

But who hasn’t.

I have had people betray me deeply, I have lost loved ones to death in tragic ways, I have experienced a major health crisis and financial ruin and am still going, this is proof to me that I am made out of the stuff of champions.

So what was a champion doing laying in the bed waiting on life to happen to her?

I was waiting on life to pick me up.

I was playing the role of victim instead of a victor.

In my past doing a good job, treating people right and doing what I thought was right got me very far.

And so of course I thought that the same things that had brought me blessings would work again.

My line of reasoning was quite simple – I am a good person, so good things are supposed to happen to me.

But I have reached a new level.

While I do receive miraculous blessings which I am confident are stemmed from the goodness that I have I sown; I have also accepted that for me to get to where I am going it is going to require me to put in the work.

Because like my children – my dreams, my purpose, my destiny aren’t going to come easy. No they are going to be brought forth through labor pains.

Here I am spiritually pregnant and dreading labor.

I have to do the work to break her forth, because if I don’t nourish this dream inside of me I will miscarry.

Life isn’t going to hand me anything without me doing the work to get it.

For I know too much to continue to be treated with kid gloves.

Life has knocked me down and I waited for someone to pick me up.

I gave half-hearted attempts.

And when I couldn’t stand to my feet I blamed it on God’s timing.

Don’t get me wrong I do believe that for everything there is a season, but I can assure you that I have not given this thing called life my all.

I have been wasting time.

I was literally laying there as time continued to move.

That’s when I decided it was time I go back to basics because clearly what I was doing wasn’t working.

I started back listening to motivational teachings the way I used to in my past and while listening to motivational videos I ran into a theme.

Every teacher I would listen to would continually echo the same thing.

They all reminded me that I was wasting time.

24 hours – 1440 minutes – 86,400 seconds. That is how much time we all are given each day.

I believe time is relative. When I enjoy what I am doing, it speeds by and if I don’t, it drags by.

For the most part I had been living my life on cruise control. I let things happen to me and I sat idly by. I decided that it was time that I discipline myself when it comes to my time and how I am going to spend it. Every second – of every minute – of every hour – of every day counts. And I am going to count on myself to make sure that my life happens for me rather than to me.

I just figured it was about that time!

I am pretty familiar with the whole concept of having goals. When I was a teenager my uncle drilled into my head the importance of having goals and plans for my life.

But something was missing.

I had a goal but no real plan.

Thankfully, while I was laying in bed waiting for life to happen to me I was also reading a copy of Napoleon’s Hill’s Think and Grow Rich that a friend had sent to me.

Napoleon Hill is big on writing out a plan.

This echoed teachings that I had learned from Earl Nightingale to dedicate a period of each day writing down ideas. His thought is that if you write down your ideas that eventually your mind will become conditioned to become an idea making machine. He explains it doesn’t matter if most of the ideas are bad it is about becoming an idea maker.

And when you think about it as Napole0n Hill says, “one sound idea is all that one needs to achieve success”.

So I proceeded to devise a way to achieve my goal, for the Bible says “to write the vision down and make it plain.”.

It was as if everything came together and I knew what I had to do.

The funny thing about planning on what I am going to do is that I don’t have much time to think about my bad habits.

When I execute my plan to exercise, there is no time to eat the bag of chips.

When I read positive literature as planned, there is no time to think about negative experiences from my past.

When I plan on how I am going to achieve my goals there is no time to lay in the bed thinking about how my life is a mess.

And I think it was the combination of the motivational videos, the feeling of something has got to change, feeling accountable to those around me and reading Napoleon Hill’s book among other experiences that lead me to become a daily planner.

I know for people who plan their day regularly this doesn’t seem like much but for me it was monumental.

I was a go with the flow kind of girl.

Sure, I planned things out in my career life but not for my personal life.

I was disciplined at work but lackadaisical when it came to myself.

And I was going to have to start caring more about myself.

I had things that I need to get done but for the most part I hadn’t really planned the execution.

So earlier this week I pulled out a planner that my daughter bought me last year that unfortunately I had never used. I immediately realized it was a monthly and weekly planner which is okay for jotting down things to do.

But my laziness was going to require a daily planner.

I had gone so far into the doldrums that it took quite a bit for me to muster up the willpower to spend a few moments of my day doing the simple task of planning the next day.

It was a sad place to be but it was where I was.

On the top of my list was planning my spiritual time.

For me that consisted of 30 minutes listening to motivational teachings, 30 minutes reading something positive and 20 minutes meditating.

I chipped out how much time I will spend sleeping, working, relaxing, socializing, driving, grooming myself, cleaning and cooking.

For some this may seem excessive.

But the excessive amount of sleep that was taking place in my household by me was getting me nowhere.

I mean sure I had some excuses – I am a single mom, I have chronic pain and I am a bit depressed.

But I decided forget the excuses!

There is no way in the world I came to this earth to lay in a bed and watch life go by and only engage here and there.

I had laid there in that bed long enough.

It hasn’t been long since I made the change but that one change of planning out my day did something inside of me that makes me proud to be me.

It caused me to live on purpose.

I have a list of things to do.

And I hate leaving anything undone when I have agreed to do it (even if I am the one doing the asking) because its my goal to “let my yes mean yes and my no mean no”.

Sure no one else sees the list, but I do and my conscience won’t let me consciously let myself down.

So I got a plan that I have got to plan.

Love yourself enough to know that if there is anything you want in this world you are going to have to work for it and believe it is yours for the taking. If you don’t know what your dream is think back to your childhood and remember what you wanted to be before people told you that you couldn’t or that you had to be something else and start there.  Write your dream down and start making a plan on how you are going to get there. Everyday work with definite purpose that you will achieve it. And know that ironically while you have a plan that life doesn’t go as planned. That is why I took my dream, vision, goal and plan and handed it over to God. I do my part and rest in the faith that the Father will do His.

Renata Nicole

© Renata Pittman Smith, Renata Nicole and RenataNicole, 2016. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Renata Pittman Smith and RenataNicole with appropriate and specific direction to the original con

The Dream, The Belief, The Journey

Photo Courtesy of: Stephanie Cave

Making the decision to be my unique self meant that I was doing things differently than everyone else.

Anytime we are striving to be ourselves we are working to achieve our purpose.

Thus, I am going down a path that others cannot relate to because it is my path.

Mine and mine alone.

Doing what I feel in my soul to be right means that it may not make sense to anyone else.

There are times when I have been called crazy by my friends and my family.

But I have the confidence in myself to know that I am not crazy.

Different? – Yes

Crazy – No

I made the decision to do things the way I felt in my soul to be right.

I question things and I choose to look behind the veil when others say why question it, lets just do as we are told.

Sometimes I get scared when I try to do what I think is best for me.

There are times when I have to press through with tears streaming down my face because I wonder if it will ever happen.

Especially when I can’t find someone to stand in agreement with me.

It isn’t always easy facing your fears when friends, family and loved ones cannot hear the small still voice inside of you telling you that you are going the right way.

And then there are the thoughts.

Oh you know the ones I am talking about.

Those thoughts of fear that tell you to give up.

The thoughts that tell you that this is too hard.

The thoughts that tell you that maybe someone else could do this but not you.

You are not good enough!

You are not smart enough!

You simply don’t have what it takes to achieve your goals!

You have to understand that that is fear talking to you. And as they say “everything you want is on the other side of fear”.

And to accompany the thoughts of fear are the words of the naysayers.

The people who laugh at you for trying and failing.

The folks who openly judge you whenever you come around.

The ones who ridicule you for daring to dream.

Those who roll their eyes at you and whisper when you walk into the room.

You have to recognize that many people want you to fail because your success makes them uncomfortable.

Your success means that the status quo of doing the bare minimum and going through life and accepting whatever comes and not putting in the work to strive for better isn’t the way to succeed at life.

Additionally, it is as Paulo Coelho in The Alchemist 

“If someone isn’t what others want them to be, the others become angry. Everyone seems to have a clear idea of how other people should lead their lives, but none about his or her own.”

So why listen the words of others regarding your life when they do not even know what they are doing with their own?

We listen because apart of ourselves believes the negative things they are saying.

I challenge you to stop believing the negatives.

Get to a point where the negative things they say no longer resonates with you and you are able to easily remove yourself from the chatter off the masses.

And you get to the point by deciding what you are going to believe.

Realize that you cannot control what other people say or do and you cannot control your thoughts.

People are going to talk and people are going to judge.

Random things will pop into your mind and you will not have an inkling where they came from.

But the good news is you can control how you feel about what is said about you and the thoughts that enter your mind.

You get to decide if you believe the voice telling you that you are worthless.

You get to decide if you cosign on the notion that you are a failure.

See when you cast out negative thoughts and replace them with positives ones, the voices of negativity get quieter while those of a positive nature will start to echo.

Be your own champion and your own biggest cheerleader.

I use positive affirmations, but here is the thing about positive affirmations – You need to reach a point where you believe the words that are coming out of your mouth.

Me saying statements without any form of belief is just me rambling.

When you speak positively about yourself do it with some level of faith, even if it is the faith the size of a mustard seed.

I dare you to believe in yourself.

Be your own advocate!

You have to come to a place where when people tell you that you cannot achieve the dream that is deeply embedded in your soul that you are able to dismiss it as rubbish.

Your purpose is here for you to fulfill, don’t let the naysayers keep you from it just because they are too afraid to fulfill theirs!

And then we have the hard times.

So let’s talk about the hard times.

Sometimes we step out on faith only to find ourselves falling flat on our bottoms.

I subscribe to the belief that the man that falls and gets back up has achieved far more than the man who has never fallen. This is because the man who has never fallen has never tried to push himself beyond his level of comfort and familiarity.

It is hard when you go through dark periods of your life.

You start to think that trouble will never let up.

And it is even worse when hope gets dangled before you only to have it dashed.

I know what it is to see light at the end of the tunnel and get excited only to find out that it is the headlights of a train flashing before me.

But I had to press through and keep going.

I know what it is to be tired and say this thing isn’t working and want to give up.

I know what it is to lay down my body and think that if I do not wake tomorrow that is fine with me.

But you must faint not and keep on striving to achieve greatness.

Keep hoping.

Keep believing that the dream of something better and greater than what you are currently doing isn’t just a dream but a reality that you are destined to walk into.

Stop listening to those who tell you that you can’t!

Sometimes you will feel as though you have no one to talk to who understands where you are at.

That’s the thing about trailblazing, you are doing a new thing so while some might be able to relate on a certain level they will not fully understand your journey because your journey is your own.

When I find myself in a position where I can’t find anyone who understands me I take this as a signal that I need to spend time alone with myself and to take some time out to talk to God.

I am aware that everyone doesn’t believe in a higher power and to them I say it is at this time that you need to be alone with yourself and dig deep within you and listen to the voice within you that you know to be true.

I encourage you to love yourself enough to continue pressing through and believing that life has more to offer than just getting up, going to work, paying bills and dying,

Life is more than eat and drink.

So LIVE!

I have heard people say that if you do things a certain way life is easy and you will always be happy.

I am not saying that they are wrong (perhaps they truly know a route I do not) I am saying that it has been my own personal experience that sometimes life is painful.

Sometimes life is filled with grief so heavy it can knock a grown man down to his knees.

I don’t have all of the answers, but I know that giving up is not the solution.

I know that listening to people who tell you that you can’t will only result in you walking away from your purpose.

You are going to make mistakes.

You are going to turn left when it would have been better to turn right.

You are going stumble and fall in the same hole repeatedly until you realize how not to stumble.

You are going to run when you should walk and you are going to move when you should stand still.

But that is because you are learning, that is because you are expanding and stepping into your purpose.

I previously used the word “should” but I want you to know that life has a funny way of using even your mistakes to bless you.

So be of good cheer and know that ultimately YOU CANNOT FAIL!

Now don’t mistake my statement that you cannot fail as a call to sit idly by and wait for success to fall in your lap.

That statement is a call to movement not one for you to be stagnant.

Recognize it to mean that if you are doing what you believe to be right and are trying your best that life will bless you even in your mistakes.

And while I do not recommend it, I have witnessed life to be so amazing that even when we go in what we call the wrong direction in purposeful defiance that even then our mistakes can be used to make us prosperous.

Life has a way of working everything out in such a way that your failure will be your success, if you just believe that your call to greatness is true.

The thing about the journey to greatness is that it is just that – a journey.

We like to believe that things just suddenly happen overnight.

But there is the quiet years that no one really knows about.

There is the hard times, the blood, the sweat, the tears, the feeling of loneliness, the loss, the grief and the heartache of feeling like maybe you will never make it. The work of casting out the thought that maybe you should turn back and give up and be like everyone else.

Dreaming that you can be better than you currently are is the initial step, believing you could actually achieve it is the next, doing the work it takes is the journey.

Love yourself enough to dream, to believe and take the journey to greatness. I will not lie and say it is easy. But I will tell you it is worth it. You have a purpose and I encourage you to fulfill it. Some people are going to laugh – ignore them. You are not going to get it right one hundred percent of the time – learn from your mistakes.  You may go through periods where people turn their back on you, they have a right to do that but please don’t turn your back on your dreams. If you have given up, you are still breathing that means your dream is still attainable – attain it!

Renata Nicole

© Renata Pittman, Renata Nicole and RenataNicole, 2016. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Renata Pittman and RenataNicole with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

 

That Dog on Hole!!!!

Photo Courtesy of: Crystal Thomas Ashford

I felt nothing but anxiety running through my body.

I was under stress and had tension knots so bad that it hurt to turn my neck.

I was carrying around so much stress that my entire back from the nape of my neck all the way down to the base of my spine had an intense burning sensation.

I couldn’t think straight, I didn’t eat right, I wasn’t taking care of household duties or finances, I wasn’t spending time with my kids like I used to and all I wanted to do was sleep.

But how could I sleep when my mind was running a mile a minute processing one negative thought after another?

I had convinced myself that I had tried everything but that nothing was working.

And so since I had tried everything only to experience what I deemed to be failure it followed that the dog on hole I had found myself in clearly wasn’t my fault.

I mean surely it must have been God’s will for me to be experiencing set back after set back.

For most certainly isn’t God ultimately in control. I have read the Book of Job and I am pretty sure that author made it crystal clear that God is in control.

I was certain that the reason that things were not going as planned was simply because the God of the Universe had a different plan, a plan that included me not getting what I wanted.

For surely the fact that my life was in shambles couldn’t have possibly been my will for my life.

Oh but that line of thinking is the lazy man’s way out.

Here is the thing I am not one to try to lay claim that I have a precise understanding of the role of God in the lives of man.

For even I know that Erykah Badu was most certainly correct when she sang the line “the man that knows something knows that he knows nothing at all”.

I am aware that there are a variety of views on the role of God in the lives of man.

And while there are a plethora of views on God I will name a few of the camps that I believe many people fall in.

Some people believe there is no God

Some people believe that there is a God but He is not concerned with our daily affairs.

Others believe there is a God, we are connected to God and He has given us full dominion and that we are the sole creators of our experience.

There is the camp of people who believe that God is in control of everything.

(Some people don’t use the term God, they say Source, Universe, Creator, may even refer to God as She or use a large variety of other terms).

Then there is the camp I reside in.

I was raised in a Christian household and attended worship with a variety of denominations within the Christian faith, so my school of thought is based on the paradoxical premise that God gives man free will but that man’s will cannot override God’s will.

I explain my belief system to give a better understanding of how I believe I erroneously arrived at my claim that God simply wanted me to suffer.

You see, I was using my belief that nothing can override the will of God to convince myself that if I was suffering in my life it was because God wanted me to suffer.

In essence I had convinced myself the entire universe was conspiring against me.

Now, I am not the Creator so I don’t have all the answers, but I have come to the conclusion that my idea that God wanted or needed me to suffer was not true.

Does God allow suffering? – Yes

Can God use what man deems to be bad and bring goodness forth from it? -Yes

But in my particular situation was it God’s fault that I was struggling or was there something else going on?

I argue that in my situation there was most definitely something else going on.

The truth is I hadn’t really tried everything and I most certainly had not exhausted all efforts.

Yes, I had tried harder than I had ever tried before, but I had not tried my hardest.

And to be honest I didn’t want to apply myself more than what I was doing. Simply because that meant more work.

You see, I was afraid of failing and I was being lazy. I wanted things to simply fall in my lap. I wanted it to be easy.

Sure, I would say to others that I had exhausted all avenues but deep down I knew I hadn’t.

For had I done everything I could to succeed, I am most certain I would have succeeded.

You see, there were times that I didn’t ask specific people for help because I was afraid of what they would think of me.

And there are the times that I thought this is too hard so let me go  pull the covers over my head and try to sleep my problems away (this time was far more frequent then I care to confess).

But my all time best excuse was when I decided that God simply didn’t want me to have my dreams fulfilled.

That was my scapegoat. I was failing because God wanted me to fail.

I was lying to myself.

Blaming God, or even society for my lack of success was far easier than owning up to the fact that I was responsible for my lack of success.

My point is not to argue God’s role in the life of man, I believe that is for each man to decide for himself.

My point is that I realized that in my particular situation I wanted the easy way out and I was mad because this time what I wanted wasn’t going to be easy. Life was harder for me than it had been in the past and I didn’t want to apply myself. I wanted to be lazy and have success fall into my lap. I was so used to blessings coming to me easily that when the time came for me to put on my big girl panties and really try at making life happen for me I gave up. I would cry when things didn’t work out and then I would gather enough strength to halfheartedly try again because I didn’t like hearing the word ‘no’ so much.

I would whine to my family and friends ad nauseam about my problems saying that it would get better in God’s timing.

Yeah, see that argument would be great if God hadn’t already given me the tools I need to make things better for myself.

I wanted someone to walk up to me and just hand better to me.

My old way of doing things wasn’t working.

It wasn’t working because I needed to do something new.  I needed to face my fear of failure and try harder. I needed to stop being afraid of being told no. I needed to fully apply myself. I needed to take responsibility for that dog on hole I alone had dug myself in and use the strength God had given me to dig myself out.

If I truly believed that God gives us free will and that God was good then it was high time I started asserting my will and stop blaming life, other individuals and God for where I was at.

I was the one who made poor choices.

I alone was the one who had fallen into complacency.

You see there is a reason why there are few at the top.

Getting to the top takes effort, and initiative and most people give up when things get hard.

For me to achieve my goals in life I was going to have to stop waiting on someone to come and save me from my problems and realize that I was already provided with every ample tool to save myself.

I am abundantly blessed and for me to sit there with my arms folded and my bottom lipped poked out was ungrateful.

I would find myself crying wondering why God wasn’t helping me because I failed to realize that God was the one who was keeping me from falling deeper in the hole I was so dead set upon digging.

For someone who was so quick to say that the reason I was experiencing what I deemed to be failure was due to God not wanting to see my dreams fulfilled, it is mighty peculiar how all my needs were met and that I was able to find blessing after blessing throughout each day.

Mighty odd how I asserted that God didn’t want me to have what I wanted yet I was so blessed that daily strangers who didn’t know me would kindly offer me assistance.

Many people say that at their lowest point everyone leaves and there I was at my lowest point and yet the list of people who came to assist me in some shape or form was amazingly lengthy.

So if it wasn’t God who was causing me to suffer then who was it?

I was tempted to blame the way our society is set up.

Okay lets just be honest I did do that….

But I knew better.

I was responsible for my life.

I dug the hole.

It wasn’t the town I was born in, it wasn’t my family members, the color of my skin, those people who don’t care for me, the fact I was a woman in a “man’s world”, the city I had relocated to, my marital status, the number of children I have or the fact that I attended public school.

Nope it was good ole Renata being too lazy and too afraid to try harder than I had been doing.

Could others assist me? Sure, I believe that we can and should assist one another.

But I was going to have to do the work. Because ultimately I am responsible for my life.

Therefore, I was going to have to organize my life.

My health was failing so I was going to have to eat better and exercise more.

I was depressed and wasn’t spending the amount of time I wanted to with my kids.

So I was going to have to make the time.

I was depressed and I didn’t feel like cleaning up.

I was going to have to get up off that couch and clean up.

My finances were in a wreck.

I was going to have to create multiple streams of income.

Sometimes we don’t get what we want. And maybe it is indeed because it is God’s will for us not to have it at that time or that God knows that what we want simply isn’t what is best for us. But I subscribe to the belief that God gives us our dreams.

And if God is the dream giver then wouldn’t it be God’s good pleasure for us to achieve it? And lets just say we die trying to achieve our ultimate dream with it going unfulfilled wouldn’t the God who gave us that dream bless us along the way as we try our best to achieve that dream?

Now I don’t know your belief of God, but I don’t even think that for the sake of this argument it even matters.

If you want something you have to dig deep and do the work it takes to get it.

Nothing worth having is going to come easy.

While living in Alaska I learned first hand that when a car gets stuck in snow it doesn’t do any good to just try to push down as hard as you can on the accelerator.

This means I wasn’t going to get unstuck by just throwing everything at the wall and seeing what would stick.

Because what you need to get a car unstuck from snow or mud is traction. And I can promise you spinning your wheels as fast as you can is no way to get it.

Nope you need to accelerate slowly.

So that meant I was going to have to make forward movements but think about them and make a concerted effort to slowly make the changes so that they would be beneficial in my process of moving forward.

I keep a plastic shovel in my car because I know that if the car gets stuck it helps immensely to try to dig some of the snow out of the way if at all possible and create a new path.

Thus, to get out of that dog on hole I was going to have to use the tools of knowledge that God had given me to remove the negative thoughts and ideas from my mind and replace them with positive ones.

Another step to getting out of snow is that if you have it available you need to place something under the leading edge of the wheel so the tires can grip on the item allowing you to slowly drive the car out of the snow. For this reason people use an old coat, car mat or blanket to try to gain traction or they put down sand or even better kitty litter.

Like the aforementioned examples I was going to have to apply something to the leading edge of my guidance system. The thing that I decided to rely on to increase my traction was faith. Because walking on fear, doubt, stress, worry and anxiety had failed me.

I decided to love myself enough to stop blaming everyone else for why I was stuck. I loved myself enough not to beat myself up for the hole I had dug myself in. I loved myself enough to stop lying to myself and saying that my fate in life was to suffer when deep down I knew otherwise, but most of all I loved myself enough to decide to do what was right and to get the heck up out of that dog on hole!

My suggestion is that if you find yourself in a hole (and if you live long enough you most certainly will) once you have tired yourself from spinning your wheels and have had enough of blaming everyone else and getting mad at yourself for where you are at, love yourself enough to be determined to keep doing the right thing until you gain traction and get up from out of that dog on hole!

Renata Nicole

© Renata Pittman, Renata Nicole and RenataNicole, 2015. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Renata Pittman and RenataNicole with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Do it Afraid

Just Between the Trees
Renata Nicole

I hate the idea of surgery. I mean I am not even big on going to see doctors. So the notion of someone cutting a part of my body is not something I care to put much thought towards.

In all my life I have never had surgery. Over the years I have been told that I might benefit from having surgical procedures done to remove certain organs and that it would help reduce my pain and increase my quality of life.

I have yet to muster up the courage to do so. It is rather sad how I live with aches and pains that would most likely be eliminated if I allowed surgeons to simply remove certain organs from my body.

The same way I sit in physical pain because of my fears is the same way I have sat in emotional pain due to my fears. I would hold on to people, places and things that were yielding great pain in my life all because I was afraid of what my life would be like without them.

I would stay in toxic relationships with people because they provided a familiar pain. I would stay doing a job I didn’t find satisfaction from and left me feeling drained because I was afraid of losing financial stability. I wouldn’t move to a new location because I was afraid of how different the new place would be.

A couple of years ago I reached a point where I started doing things afraid. I started following my dreams despite my fears. I made a decision that if the only thing keeping me from doing something I strongly desired to do was fear then I would do it afraid.

I knew spiritually that I had no reason to fear, and so I just started moving forward. The more I would walk towards my dreams the less afraid I became.

I have learned to rarely discuss my dreams with people. This is because I have found that I was guilty of allowing other people to talk me out of things. I would be afraid to do something and then I would ask others what they thought about my dream. Not because I wanted them to support me, but because deep down I wanted them to discourage me. I was afraid and so I would use their negativity about my dream as an excuse not to do what I strongly desired.

I was good for saying things like I would move to “XYZ” but “So and So” said that it wasn’t nice there. I wasn’t asking their opinions because they were experts or because I truly needed their advice. No, I asked their opinion because I was scared and deep down I wanted them to talk me out of it.

And best of all I could blame them for me not fulfilling my dream. I was failing to take personal responsibility for my life. I was using others to run away from what I really wanted. 

For example, I have known in my gut that a relationship was toxic but then I would call my friends and hope that one of them would talk me into keeping the relationship because I didn’t want to do the hard work of letting go.

The pain that I currently have in my body prior to any surgery is familiar. The pain associated with surgery is unknown to me. I know how it feels to do what I am currently doing. I don’t know how it will feel to do something new.

I have found myself afraid of what life will be like without certain people or in certain places. But my desire to fulfill my dreams is far greater than my fear of the unknown or my fear of letting go.

I have let go of things that I still reminisce about, I have moved away from places that I long to visit, and I have let go of people who I miss so deeply it causes my soul to ache. But I knew that I had to close those chapters if I wanted to move forward to the next chapters of my story.

Not letting go of people, places and things when everything in you is telling you to birth your dream is as sad as me holding on to organs that doctors have suggested are holding me back from a healthier life.

Cut out anything or anyone that is hindering you from fulfilling your fullest potential. I know first hand that it is hard, I have shed countless tears saying my goodbyes to people, places and things I desperately wanted to cling to.

However, like my organs – the people, places and things stopped bringing me satisfaction like they used to (and to be honest some never did). Then they started making me uncomfortable and causing me pain. Finally, I found that they were slowly killing the dreams inside of me.

I have seen people after surgery who were in great pain. They often described the pain after surgery as excruciating. But if the surgery went well then once they healed they would tell me they were glad they had the surgery.

I can attest to often having initial pain after letting go of people, places and things that were familiar. Somethings and people that I let go of took me longer to heal than others. But I am glad I let go and moved foward.

Following a dream is not always easy. It is scary letting go of the familiar and walking into the unknown. But going towards your dream helps you walk into your purpose. It helps you to become who you are meant to be.

I know it is hard to let go. And there may be times when you will think it was better when you were being mistreated, living unfulfilled and/or unhappy then it is walking down this unfamIliar path. However, I truly believe our dreams are our navigation device to our purpose.

Never allow anyone to talk you out of your dreams, not even yourself. If you have a dream, love yourself enough to work towards it, even if you have to do it afraid. Just like I will love myself enough to have surgery to improve my quality of life and reduce my unnecessary pain.

Renata Nicole

© Renata Pittman and RenataNicole, 2015. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Renata Pittman and RenataNicole with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.