Me vs.....myself?

2017 has already been a GREAT year...eleven days in and I am claiming nothing but victory and greatness. Success and more success.Better love than you experienced last year. More money than you had last year,more money than you had yesterday. I know this year will be victorious because last year was amazing. You made it to a new year, you made it to new solutions and not problems. Enjoy today. Stop worrying about yesterday and plan for tomorrow. It is your life, just figure it out

Most Valuable Player

So it's been 31 days since I had "time" to write. I have had time to do other things but I have not had time to find the time. I think I was avoiding what was in my head because I didn't want to face or hear what was in my head. Sometimes there is so much noise in my head that I can't focus on anything but peace in order to get the noise out. In order to get the noise out, I have to focus on peace. The peace that is beyond anyone else's understanding. Sometimes I have to find the peace that disturbs others just because I need to find peace for myself.

As the fourth quarter of 2016 comes to a close I think about this year as a game that I was the starting player in. I take this year for simply what it has been an intense game and this year I was the Most Valuable Player. This year I was starting in the game like Lebron James, I mean scoring the most points, finally, I was really in the game, winning in the game and then BOOM life hit me...life happened and I got hurt and I felt like I was going to be out the game forever. It was like I was the chosen one and then I wasn't chosen anymore. If I was in the game and I was playing and winning and I felt valuable I had to come to the self-realization and wonder who was I playing for...if I was playing for myself than I would be losing but if I was playing for the commentators I would be losing simply because I CHOSE to give up. When I felt the most hurt when I felt like I was being taken out the game instead of quitting, I chose to go harder. I chose to work through the pain. I realized in the last quarter of the game that our minds sometimes get in our way. Our thoughts stop us from breathing the best air because we become stuck in our clouds of a mess. Learning to control your thoughts when you fall and when you feel like you lost it all it is the ultimate measure of what makes you the most valuable player. In order to be the most valuable player, you have to be the best performer no matter how hard the game gets. The MVP won't always comes from the winning team. In order to be the best, it means work through the pain...work through the hard stuff. These quarters along with seasons mean more than you could imagine. As the season's change and the weather changes and only SOME things remain the same what is it about your life that should be changing and what is it about your life that remains the same. Most of us suffer from change....all year we know after spring comes summer and after summer comes fall and after fall there is winter...every year people complain about the weather changing even though they know it will change....as the seasons change and our lives change what must remain the same...what must change? I realized just like the season's change I must change...but unlike the seasons my life changes are not predictable.  I have avoiding myself because I can't hear what's in my head clearly. I can honestly say with every UP and down I experienced this year I have been blessed beyond measure.

2016 brought me nothing but joy. 2017 and every year following will be ours for the taking. It is time out for sacrifices and time to be obedient! I refuse to be in this same place and space next year! God, I am so thankful and so honored to be chosen by you. I choose you every day and every day after I pray to be as great as you have made me. Time to stop tapping into all the negative and only dwell on the positive. Learning to search for the peace that entirely is inside of self versus the peace that people will promise to bring. People don't bring peace they bring noise and destruction so you have to constantly provide your own peace and maintain your own peace in order to be happy. In order to be At peace, you must first find what it is that brings you peace. Peace comes from within so how do you determine what your peace is. In order to determine it first you must be it.

#sendtherain

The rain is only a nuisance when you haven't been harvesting seeds! My whole life people have been watering seeds that they have planted in me and now I am ready to watch the rain pour down on these seeds I have been planting in myself!
#sendtherain

Are you ready for what you have been praying for? Are you ready for what you said was yours, already? If you are ready then stop complaining about the storm that you are currently in. We know that storms don't last forever even when they seem like they will. I met a farmer who did not complain about the rain...he said all year I've been planting these seeds and it hasn't rained once...I've been waiting for the rain so that I can reap from the seeds I have been harvesting. There are so many moments in life when people may say something to me and I am literally like I have to write this down or write about it. When he said this to me it made my mind wander...constantly we complain about things because we are not prepared.

Think about your life as a harvest...the seeds have been planted, diligently you have been planting seeds in your life for your purpose...in order for the seeds to grow and blossom YOU have to endure the rain!

Are you prepared to win? Every win is not as glorious as the pictures. Every win is not picture perfect. Every mistake is not a failure. Do you know what it will take to win? HARDWORK AND DEDICATION! It will take you to understand that the storm will not last forever. Just because it is a storm doesn't mean you have to die. There are people who stop as soon as the storm hits, they don't believe that the rain will stop. Those people are faithless...you have been warned that you need to prepare if you are not preparing for YOUR OWN life why do you think somebody else will. The harvest is for you... How many storms have you seen in your lifetime? You have lived through enough to understand that life just keeps on going and the sun eventually comes out. Also, you learn every storm is different but YOU it is all about you. #sendtherain

I am not worried about the storm, I have prepared for the storm.
#sendtherain

“Here’s the lesson: Use your worldly resources to benefit others and make friends. Then, when your earthly possessions are gone, they will welcome you to an eternal home. “If you are faithful in little things, you will be faithful in large ones. But if you are dishonest in little things, you won’t be honest with greater responsibilities.
And if you are not faithful with other people’s things, why should you be trusted with things of your own? “No one can serve two masters. For you will hate one and love the other; you will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.”
Then he said to them, “You like to appear righteous in public, but God knows your hearts. What this world honors is detestable in the sight of God.”
Luke 16:9-10, 12-13, 15 NLT

I am going with this rain/storm metaphor because there is something about the rain and natural disasters that have to be synonymous with real natural life. See God is not a man without a sense of humor. Have you ever seen a storm so huge and destructive and then all of sudden a rainbow comes out! You cannot tell me that problems wont end. Storms destroy homes and then the sun comes out... Tuh...storms destroy lifes and then the sun comes out....the storms will happen....bad things will happen...BUT the sun has to come out! You will come out of  the storm! #sendtherain!


(nuisance means an obnoxious thing, condition or practice.....)

Lets talk about faith!

are you faithful with what you have right now? Or are you too busy complaining about what you don't have? If you can't turn your little into enough and then enough into more how do you expect to be blessed with more. If you can remain faithful during adversity imagine how you will be blessed with your prosperity. 

So many people get caught up in the 'Church' and not in the words from the bible. The actual knowledge listed book by book. We get caught up in the why's and what’s of the worlds that we forget what we need faith for. Believing in God or a higher power is not about believing in what you can't see it’s about believing in yourself. You can love a man who hurts you, forgive a friend who harms you but you can’t trust a promise that someone will love you and protect you. We put so much trust in what we can see and what we can touch or feel yet that is what continuously hurts us but we refuse to believe in the power of love and the power of faith. There are so many pessimists and not enough optimist because life has taught us that more bad will happen then good...but as I get older and the more people who I love and trust hurt me the more I realize that the power of faith is real. There is a promise in the bible that says "Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid or terrified because of them, for the LORD your God goes with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you." Deuteronomy 31:6. Maybe you are not a religious person, or you don't believe in God or even a higher power but if you read books for motivation, if you read books for energy for knowledge...if you read a promise that you know couldn't be broken wouldn't it make you want to know more about why you must be so strong or why you must be so courageous. Now, I love the Lord with all my soul for he heard my cry but beyond all that, as a scholar, I read books for knowledge and I love the bible because it is filled with knowledge. People have often said there are no instructions to life but in that bible, there are so many stories and instructions and guides of wisdom that I refuse to believe that.  I know that this blog won’t be for everybody but it will be for someone who is searching for themselves everywhere but inside of themselves. One thing I have learned about this "INVISIBLE" God is that he is so real and everybody else is so fake. Even if I never get to touch him - the disappointments, trials, and tribulations that I face have nothing to do with him and EVERYTHING TO DO WITH ME AND WHO I ALLOW TO GET CLOSE TO ME! See, we blame everybody including this invisible man instead of the actual people who do the hurting. You think God took those things from you but if you could sacrifice for those things why can't you sacrifice for you. What I have learned is that God is in me...."God is in the midst of her; she shall not be moved: God shall help her, and that right early." I have learned this through pain and failed relationships and failure. I am not embarrassed to say that I have failed because at least I tried. Everything won't be for me, but what is for me will be.  Every time I count on someone and I give all the glory to that person or that thing God shows me that I still don't give him enough glory. I had to learn that it is not the troubles of life that God will keep you from but there will be that God will bring you to to get you through. Now, let’s say you don't believe in anything that is fine, but I would rather spend my whole life doing what is right purposely to find out there is no God instead of doing whatever I wanted whenever I wanted only to find out there is a God. 

#Distracted

Proverbs 4:25
"Look straight ahead, and fix your eyes on what lies before you."

Something that prevents someone from giving full attention to something else is a distraction.

Life is full of distractions...tv, reality tv, social media, friends, relationships... sometimes a distraction can be a good thing and sometimes distractions can be negatively impacting on you. Or you could be using your distractions as scapegoats to keep your mind off what it needs to be on. The other day I was working on a project and I kept doing other things...not other things of significance but just anything besides what I was supposed to be doing and I realized sometimes I love the distractions. People always say 'I work best under pressure' and while that may be true for some - that is not true for me. I usually procrastinate because I am either doing something I just don't want to do AT ALL or because I am afraid of how much REAL work I will have to do (not just that social media work where you only post workout pictures after you had surgery or after you intended to work out but the clothes were comfy instead but that work where there are REAL results).


Are you distracted? Are you distracting yourself? You know there is something you need to be doing but you keep doing the complete opposite? I know...we feed off of our distractions...we feed off the noise...sometimes the noise is better than the silence because the silence makes us face our fears and our problems. You ever met somebody that can't sit alone, that's a person who cannot find their own peace. The silence in the room makes us face what we are trying to avoid, the noise we use to fill up the voids we are searching for. It is time out for all the distractions...that business plan you have been working on...that food truck you have been thinking about...let go of the distractions in your life and begin to focus on you and your future and your success. You cannot dream about success or tweet success until it comes you have to work hard for it! We are not always chosen because we are good, we are chosen because we do our best. Whenever you begin to do less than your best it is reflected in who you are and what you do even what you say and how you say it. If you learn to put the distractions down right now while they are just mere distractions imagine how far you could go. Don't let a distraction turn into a habit that can't and will not benefit you.

Pressing forward!

It is over now. When the worst happens only the best can happen from that point on out. What is "it", It is whatever you have going on in your mind or life preventing you from going forward. Life changes...break ups...divorce....separation...confusion...job loss...life happens...but when life happens what happens to you? Life is all about receiving what it is you are looking for. What are you looking for? Define it. Own it. Go get it!  Some of us so many times say we want something and when we get exactly what we want we are not ready to receive it. Be open to receiving what you are seeking. I am seeking peace, financial security and freedom from debt and I am open to all that comes with it. You have to go through something In order to get to something. Why do I always have to go through something!? I know that is what you are thinking but it's because you were chosen for it, you will beat it. You are the contender. The best is out there waiting for you, needing you to get to your best life.

"I traveled seventy states..." when I first heard Solange sing these lyrics...I'm like where in the U.S. are there seventy states? Solange, my friend in my head, you are tripping - but then I realized that I myself have traveled 278 states of mind trying to figure out who I am and where I'm going. I remember I moved to Georgia 'searching' (traveling physically but not traveling mentally) I remember I went on vacation 32 times in one year... I was traveling physically but not traveling mentally...you can take the girl out the place but doesn't mean she will be in a different space. Your state of mind is continuously changing and as it should be. Life is about evolving and changing. Not remaining stagnant and afraid... if you had a broken device and all the tools you needed to put it back together would you leave it broken or put it back together? Think about that, if you had all the tools you needed to fix what was broken would you leave it broken? I don't know about you but I am tired of leaving broken pieces trailing behind me and I refuse to have all the tools I need but not utilize them.

You are not meant to stay the same. You are meant to grow. You are meant to explore all that life has to offer and you are meant to get it. Stop feeling sorry about what happened in the past and be grateful for what is coming. Because greatness is coming, are you ready? Are you prepared? Get prepared. My favorite quote by Oprah talks about how it is more important to be prepared than it is to be lucky... "I believe luck is preparation meeting opportunity. If you hadn’t been prepared when the opportunity came along, you wouldn’t have been lucky." If Oprah is talking about being prepared versus waiting for luck than you must know YOU have got to be prepared. Think about how many opportunities that have passed you by because you were not prepared in that moment. If you are tired of living in the same state of mind don't just think about changing your physical location but begin with your mental. Where you are currently is not where you will be permanently. You don't have to physically move in location to change who you are but you have to be willing to move to a different place mentally. Our mental state determines who we are, how we treat people, how we allow people to treat us and what we accept from people. In order to receive the most out of life, you have to get into a good space mentally, physically, spiritually and emotionally. Stop allowing the past to haunt you in your present so that you can make it to your future. It is over now (whatever 'it' may have been is over...and I know you never thought it would be over but now that is over and you are still living you do realize that YOU can only stay down if you choose too) you have nowhere to go from here but up.

Gratitude

The quality of being thankful. Thankful- being full of thanks. Thanks - to be appreciative of what it is you are receiving. Grateful - full of gratitude. The holidays are pivotal times in many of our lives...some of us love the holidays so much that we live and breathe the holiday spirit and some of us dread the holidays for they remind us of memories of the past...some memories we long to remember and some we wish we could forget. But only pencils can erase and us human beings cannot. We must learn to be full of gratitude for the memories, for the present and for it all even the bad memories and definitely the good memories.

Gratitude is not about being thankful for a physical present; it is about being aware that someone was thinking of you. It is about being aware of someones presence in your life, it is the confirmation that you matter in someone else's world. Many people talk about how nobody is there for them and they have no support:but first lets point out that many people don't even know how to support themselves let alone support another person. Second, what about all the people who do support you...are you not grateful for them or is there support not enough? I have learned through out the years that with time comes wisdom and with lessons come pain and that pain sharpens that wisdom. The biggest lesson I have learned is the importance of being grateful for what I have and not what I lack. Of course I am happy for all that I have and I don't want to lose it. I don't believe I work hard to lose what I have worked hard to build but unfortunately life can be full ups and downs but it is all about how you handle those ups and downs. Learn to be just as grateful for the downs as you are for the ups. Being grateful will help you become great.

Every year Thanksgiving is the day where we are supposed to be the most grateful. But this year has been full of ups and downs and smiles and frowns and sometimes I honestly have not been that grateful. I have not been that thankful...because I feel or I felt like life is mine and everything in it belongs to me. But life is a gift that I have been given and I must cherish it and just be thankful for life...we spend so much time complaining about what we lack and what we miss that we constantly continue to lack and miss out on more.

Think about all the time you spend talking about what you don't like, following people who you don't like, just giving all your energy to what you dislike instead of giving your energy to what you love and what you desire. I am learning that life is a not a problem to be solved but a reality to be lived.

But in YOUR reality you have to be grateful and thankful for all of the things that you have and all things that God has taken away from you. Gratitude and thankfulness don't just matter when everything in your life is going right....you really need gratitude and thankfulness when everything seems to be going wrong and you want to run away. I am thankful this year for everything God has taken away from me. Now, at first I was mad as hell. But every test teaches you a lesson and I know it doesn't seem like a school house lesson because in school the lesson usually comes before the test... think about it this way...what you thought was the test...was just a lesson preparing you for the real test. Be grateful for all those tears,  be grateful because it could've been worst. Be grateful that what you thought was the end was only the beginning. I am grateful that every time that I think the doors are closing shut on me, new doors open.

I am grateful. I am thankful. I am appreciative. I accept the test because I know all of this is just practice preparing me for the REAL TEST. Be grateful for what you have, be grateful for what you have lost. I am thankful that God took everything that he took from me EVEN though I don't understand why. Be grateful and thankful with me.

Happy Grateful Everyday Day!