Obstacles

Today was the first day I felt I was going to have a panic attack in a long time. I have been doing really well lately with managing my anxiety and feeling calm and at ease, but today I almost got pushed over my limit. A million things seemed to be happening at once and I didn’t know how to deal with it. I know it was an overreaction, but most panic attacks come from overreacting. I felt like I was going to burst into tears, I had trouble breathing, and I felt like I had lost control over everything.

I immediately went to my special place in town that always calms me down. It’s the gazebo out by the lagoon close to my university’s campus. I stretched out under the awning on the bench and counted twenty deep breaths, what I always do when I meditate. It helped a little, but it took awhile for me to calm myself down. I still felt tense as I gripped the steering wheel driving back to the office.

I don’t see this as regression, but merely a reminder that I constantly have to keep myself in check. Getting your stuff together is a daily process and struggle, and today tested that for me. That’s what I see it as – a test. It also made me realize that I may need extra work.

I haven’t meditated in a couple of days, so this could definitely be a cause of this issue I was having today. I definitely plan on taking some time for that in the morning.

Tomorrow is a new day.

- Kelsey

The journey, not the destination

I've realized lately that once in awhile, you have to be okay with feeling a little lost.


This came to mind when I had a bit of an epiphany a few days ago. I realized that the internship I've been doing all summer has taught me one very important thing: This is not what I want to do with my life.


Needless to say, that thought terrified me. My mind immediately went into a whirlwind of questions like "Is this really what I'm meant to do? Am I in the right field? What am I going to do with my life?" Questions that no 21-year-old wants to ever consider.


But I think it's a good thing. It's better to realize this now than to get stuck in a job later on that will never fulfill me. At first I was scared, thinking "Well, is it back to square one now?" But it's not. I know I'm in the right field. Now, I need to figure out how to utilize my passions into a career for myself.


At the end of the day, you shouldn't be afraid to question what you're doing and what you want to do. Just know that one day, you will discover what makes your heart sing.


This next (and last) year of school is going to be a game-changer for me, I believe.


- Kelsey

fear and anger

I guess you could say that fear and anger are two of my biggest vices, especially these days. I wouldn’t say that the textbook definition of “vices” applies fully to these, but they definitely affect me more than any other emotion and are the most detrimental to my psyche.

It’s absurd how much fear can hold us back. We’re all afraid of something … A lot of people are afraid of being honest, afraid of telling people how they truly feel, afraid of rejection … the list goes on and on. One of my biggest fears is telling people how I feel. It’s hard for me because I’m afraid, honestly. I’m afraid of how people will react to what I say, regardless of what it is. I’m afraid of the outcome. And it’s holding me back and keeping me from doing things that will make me the happiest.

One of my favorite lines from a John Mayer song I love is “If fear hasn’t killed me yet, then nothing will.” Preach, man. That’s exactly how I’ve been feeling. Fear certainly hasn’t killed me yet, so I must be all right. And if it hasn’t killed me, then you’re probably just fine. Trust me.

The thing is, most fears are irrational. You can’t spend your life being afraid to tell people how you feel, because if you never do, how will you know? How will you know that what you’re feeling is real? More importantly, how will you be able to live through your life with no regrets if you can’t push aside your fear to try something? Possibly one of my favorite quotes of all time (by Louis E. Boone) is this:

“Don’t fear failure so much that you refuse to try new things. The saddest summary of a life contains three descriptions: could have, might have, and should have.”

I couldn’t be a bigger proponent of these words. It’s so true. If you live your life in fear, you’re going to die with a lot of regret in your soul. Regrets are mistakes you didn’t learn from. That’s scarier than any fear you could have.

“No fear is the ultimate joy. When you have the insight of no fear, you are free.”

I’m working on being more honest with people because of this. It’s a daily struggle, but with patience and time comes virtue.

And then there’s anger. I have had so much anger for a while because of feeling mistreated by others, and it’s so tough to eliminate from your life. The thing is, anger is like poison for your soul. When you’re angry and react in an angry way to others, not only are you giving them complete power over your emotions, but also you’re giving yourself more heartache than them. That’s an awful way to live.

“If we really understood and remembered that life was impermanent, we would do everything we could to make the other person happy right there and right now. If we spend twenty-four hours being angry at our beloved, it is because we are ignorant of impermanence.”

Life is too short to spend it angry. Anger is inevitable, but learning to control it and not give the power to anyone else is necessary to live a fulfilled life.

I’ve discovered something lately that has helped me tremendously with fear and anger. Meditation. I’ve begun meditating every morning when I wake up, and I can already tell it’s changing the way I handle my emotions. It makes me calmer, it brings some serenity to my otherwise hectic life, and more importantly, it gives me a sense of clarity. It’s teaching me how to control my thoughts and turning negative emotions into positive ones. I highly recommend giving it a try; it’s completely worth it. In my opinion, we should do anything we can to help keep our minds at ease.

Just some food for thought, anyway. :)

- Kelsey

You are in control.

Something I want to talk about today: being in control of your life and cutting out the negative aspects.

I think it’s interesting that so many people complain about having negativity in their lives and being miserable all the time, when they seem to forget one tiny factor of this world.

You are in control of your own life.

Obviously, there are some things that we go through that we can’t help. It’s okay to feel down and out when bad things happen in your life, but a lot of miserable feelings and sadness can be so easily avoided if you know how to deal with it.

Honestly, there is no excuse for keeping a lot of negativity in your life. The thing is, people seem to forget that they are in complete control. You CAN control the things in your life that are negatively affecting you. If something in your life is bringing you down, cut it out. Have a toxic relationship with a “friend?” You’ve got to cut them out of your life. It’s unhealthy to keep people around who bring you down. Keeping positive and uplifting people surrounding you can make your world immensely brighter. Learning how to cut people out of your life is one of the most vital and difficult life lessons you will ever learn, and the sooner you allow yourself to do it, the better.

I realized recently that some people in my life were toxic, so I’ve been cutting them out of it a little bit at a time. It’s easier to do with people who aren’t very close to you, but it’s hard to do when it’s someone you’ve been friends with for a while. I still haven’t figured out how to do that fully, but luckily I haven’t encountered many problems like that with people close to me.

But there are some other things in your life that are much easier to cut out. For instance, I realized that staying on Facebook constantly was keeping me down, which may be hard to believe. But every time I log on, something manages to make me angry or bring me down. I either see posts that frustrate me, posts that make me feel bad about myself, or sad things going on in the world. So, I decided to deactivate it for a while. I haven’t logged on for roughly 4-5 days and I’ve felt much more relaxed and positive because of it. The phrase, “out of sight, out of mind” comes to mind when I think about this.

Keeping negative things in your life is detrimental to your wellbeing. There are so many aspects of this world that can bring us down, and it’s up to us to flow along with it or go against it. I highly recommend the latter.

We deserve better

You know, I think one of the most important but most difficult lessons to learn throughout our lives is that we deserve more.


Now, I don't mean you need to live your life day to day with a sense of entitlement. There's a fine line between thinking you're entitled to everything and acknowledging that there are certain things in life you truly deserve.


There are lots of different facets to this idea, but the main thing I want to stress is learning that you deserve to be treated better by your peers. And not just your peers in general, but your friends, family, coworkers ... assuming you're not a complete jerk, of course.


I consider myself to be a pretty good friend to most people, especially to those I care about the most. I'm not perfect and I can't always be there for everyone, but I do all I can to be the kind of friend I want others to be for me.


Because of this, lately I've realized that I have friends who just don't treat me the way I deserve. It just kind of hit me, honestly. I deserve to be treated the same way that I treat those close to me, and while I don't believe in having expectations for the most part, I can't help but expect certain people in my life to treat me a particular way. So it's disappointing, obviously, to realize that's not so.


The main problem with trying to think this way stems from insecurity. Those of us who are highly insecure have a hard time admitting to ourselves that we should be treated better, because we don't always feel that we deserve it. At the end of the day, you have to know that you are better than you think, smarter than you know, and deserve to be treated like a human being.


Honestly, everyone deserves to be treated with respect and to be treated kindly. If everyone treated others the way they would want to be treated, the world would be a better place.





- Kelsey

Learn to say no

I have a few friends who will literally do almost anything for anyone. They'll always drop what they're doing immediately to help someone else. I think that's a great trait to have; however, it can be really damaging to your relationships.

The thing is, with any type of relationship, you have to set boundaries. And more importantly, you have to learn to say no. People will take advantage of you if you don't implement these two factors into your relationship with them.

I think it's really important to let people know that although you care about them and will willingly help them when they need it, you can't always drop what you're doing for them. You can't let someone keep creating inconveniences in your life and walk all over you. People WILL take advantage of you, whether you want to believe it or not. Even those with the best intentions, because they know that you aren't capable of saying no to them.

And also, it's worse to always say yes to someone you don't even genuinely consider a friend rather than simply saying no. You're given them a false impression of what your relationship is with them. I know it's scary to be honest with people, but you can't lead people to believe things that aren't true. 

Don't blame anyone but yourself when someone you can't say no to sucks the life out of you. You did it to yourself.

- Kelsey

The secret to confidence

I'm gonna let you guys in on a little secret that I learned not too long ago about confidence.

Fake it ‘til you make it.

Yeah, we’ve all heard that before, so it’s no new discovery. But I always used to think it was a ludicrous statement; I mean, the thought that you can gain confidence by just pretending to have it? Ridiculous. How does being someone you’re not make you feel better about yourself? It sounds like a recipe for unhappiness, ultimately.

But it’s totally true. I decided to give it a shot probably my sophomore year, possibly even entering my junior year of college. I’ve been horribly insecure my whole life, ever since I was in elementary school. It got even worse in high school. I never believed I was pretty and I always felt insecure about my body and overall appearance. I also dealt with emotional insecurities to top those physical ones. As I entered college and began making new friends, I started changing on the inside as well as the outside, and I knew that I had to gain some kind of confidence to get anywhere. I knew deep down that I was a worthy person and that I deserved happiness, but it was hard to let myself be truly confident.

So one day, I decided that I was going to start pretending to be confident in myself. Even though I wasn’t completely comfortable with myself yet, I knew that I had to appear confident if I wanted to improve as a person. The thing is, confident people get treated differently. When you appear as if you are confident in your abilities as a person, others start to see you as someone they can rely on who is capable of completing any task required of you. It helps you in your professional life as well as your personal endeavors. So I acted like I felt good about myself. I spent a fair amount of time with my appearance, dressing well and making sure my hair and makeup was always done. That always makes me feel more confident anyway. I tried letting myself be more vocal about my opinions and thoughts, and I basically just started walking around like I knew I was an attractive, capable person who was completely confident in their abilities. I never acted conceited, but I would make a point to never demean myself around anyone. I desperately wanted to give off the appearance that I was confident.

And you know what? People started treating me differently. I’ll never forget one day I was talking to a good friend of mine, trying to encourage her to feel better about herself because she was in the process of losing weight and had done amazing so far, and she said, “You’re so confident … I just don’t know how you do it.” Another friend of mine told me I was one of the most confident and fierce people that he knows. I had never been told things like that before, and it absolutely blew my mind. Here I was, the most insecure girl in the world a few years ago, and now someone’s telling me they wish they had my confidence.

Little do they know that I was faking it the whole time.

But here’s the funny thing – once I started faking confidence, people treated me differently. And once I got treated differently, I actually gained some REAL confidence. Who would have thought?

I’m not done with my journey to being 100% comfortable with myself, but I can tell you that I have come a long way. When I was in high school, I would try to cover all my “flaws” instead of embracing them – I’d get spray tans to cover my horribly pasty skin, I’d dye or highlight my hair when I felt insecure about being a redhead, and I’d constantly wear a full face of makeup to cover my acne-covered skin. And I’d also never speak up about my thoughts because I didn’t think they were worth hearing. I was afraid of what people would think about me.

 I haven’t gotten a spray tan in a year or two and I don’t really plan on doing it again anytime soon. Sometimes I go out without any makeup on, and I think my hair is my best physical attribute. And you know, even though my body isn’t perfect, I will walk proudly to the pool in my swimsuit because at the end of the day, I care more about having fun than worrying about what I look like all the time. (That’s not to say I don’t care, because I most definitely do … sometimes too much, I will admit). And now my friends know me as the one who speaks her mind, is opinionated, and more importantly, the one who doesn’t care what people think about her.

It still really blows my mind to think about these changes I’ve made, all thanks to faking my confidence. It’s really helped me improve as a person, because whenever I start to feel down about myself, I’m reminded of how different I used to be and how much better I am now. I’m proud of the changes I’ve been able to make in my life.

Who would have thought that faking it would have eliminated some of the prior fake-ness in my life?

- Kelsey