Friday, January 11, 2013

A Change of Heart

"i mean i'm always happy with life, but i just search for adventure or new experiences, or other ways to better myself"
-Trevor Teply


So, off of yesterday's topic, change needs to be made. But the real question is what change needs to be made? Better yet, what can you use to inspire these changes. Strap in, guys and gals, because I have some suggestions. Thank you to all of my friends who helped me with today's subject.

Here are some of the things that inspire change in my life:

1.) The movies Elizabethtown and Breakfast at Tiffany's.

2.) The perfect playlist.

3.) Fun experiences with good people. Maybe not always dear friends, but new friends.

4.) Sharing your money, time, or story with someone.

5.) Accepting someone who does the same.

6.) Photography is a huge one for me. It could be a sunset or some grungy-indie chick. Looking at other people and realizing what you covet is a huge process in change.

7.) Ok, this one is pretty obvious, but the website http://love.givesmehope.com/. I have seen grown men cry while reading these.

8.) Pain. Out of pain comes some of the most beautiful changes I have ever seen.

9.) ...not going to lie. I keep thinking of Doctor Who, Buffy, and shows like them. Don't diss. They all have fairly good messages about not giving up and making something beautiful out of the life you have.

10.) My past. Not wanting what I have had in my past (or wanting it, for that matter) is a huge driving force for myself in my life.


Other Suggestions:

1.) " hm...i think failure does the most to be honest" -Nathan Selinsky

2.) "It's based on what is making you unhappy... if I'm upset about work, I look for other jobs. If I'm feeling like a fat piece of lard, I eat better and try and make it to the gym... I usually like taking long walks or having alone time to plot my next move or make life decisions though." -Chris Marez (@djsquirt)

3.) "a new goal. in my case, wanting something better for myself, like fighting, and being completely focused to attain that goal" -Alex "Brown Bear" Johnson

4.) "It's the drive. The drive comes from a "need". That need comes from the thought about "choices". If you really think about it, I left Colorado because my "need" was my boyfriend and my job and the fact that I've lived there for 20 years. I wrote down everything. For me, seeing it on paper hits me harder than my friends saying it, family telling me how things should be, and even myself saying it. When I wrote everything down, I wrote next to it what that change would effect and later look like.
So moving could end my job, school and relationship with Adam. I talked with adam and he said he wants to move here to be with me in 6 months. School is now all online so I figured that out. Job, well.. without having to pay rent my income didn't change.
Next.. my health. I have gained 40 pounds. It doesn't look like much to my family or friends but I feel horrible. I weigh as much as I did when I gave birth to my kids. Seriously!! I weigh 170. Soda is my addiction. My cousin noticed it after a few hours and each hour I had a bubbly drink in my hand. Adam hates that I drink so much soda. What's worse.. I started giving soda to my 2 year old son when he would want a drink and all I had left was my drink. It's not good to start him out that way.
So I wrote it down. "I weigh 170 pounds. this is what I weighed giving birth to a baby. This weight is controlling how I feel about myself. I will not drop any weight if I keep drinking soda and having ice cream every night".
Every morning.. I write it down somewhere. When I can't find a pen, I text it to myself. Every time I want a soda, I write down my weight and I write out why I weigh so much. Best time to make change is when the emotion is taken out of it.
I had to step back and ask myself if moving was an emotional move, or a logical one. I want my son to be surrounded around his family. I was completely taken away from everyone when I was little. All I had was my parents. I wasn't allowed to know these people.
When I was pregnant, the issue of abortion came up. That choice was exteremely hard for me. I kept telling myself that I couldn't do this. My parents already kidnapped one kid thinking I wasn't a fit mother. Next, I was without a job when I found out I was pregnant. That choice would change my life no matter what. If I had an abortion, every "due date" I had would haunt me.(I know myself) And if I didn't, I might need government assistance for the rest of my life. I'd rather make the choice I knew I could live with, so I named him Aiden.
Next, College. College was a huge step for me. I had parents who told me all the time I would fail and to just forget school since it wasn't that big of a deal. I met a woman who became my motherly figure in a time that I needed it most. She told me she would rent me a room and if I went to college, I'd only pay 200 a month. I was paying 900. This encouraged me like no other. Now, I'd never take it back.

There is so much that has driven me to make changes.. But in the end.. It's me. It's my life. And it's my choice. If I don't own my own life, how do I expect to get where I want to go?"-Amber Clark

5.) " 'The caterpillar cannot understand the butterfly'...The biggest thing that inspires me to change is to be unafraid of it, to welcome it, and to know that it's going to be good for me. I enjoy my mind evolving, I think a lot of people resist change because they're afraid of what they don't want happening, well you can't think about what you don't want. Staying positive through everything good or bad is the key to happiness." -Bri Rehberg

6.) "In my life I've realized challenges are there for me to grow as a person. It means nothing to fall down, but it matters how I get back up from a failed challenge. I feel it in my gut when I need to change something about myself and to me it's all about instinct and how I handle things in the moment.
Sunday night slam...Also having a cautiously positive mindset helps me get things done too " -Blake Scurto

7.) "Change! Haha. I just wanted to get this diagram up because I learned about this theory in English last year and I agree with it very much, I just added a bit to it. Anyway. So. Growth happens over time. Change and growth are connected, yes? Yes. In order to grow, a person must be separated from their normal life and brought out of their comfort zone, whether it's as simple as being forced to buy food by yourself for the first time or as drastic as a death in the family. Once separated by this event, the person then matures as they process what is happening and learn how to handle the situation. They then return to their normal life through the process of aggregation, integrating all that they have learned into the whole that is their person. My only change is that everything balances as well, and so for positive events there will also be negative events. This means you can learn a lot from good experiences, but you also learn a lot from negative experiences. The point is not to worry about which experience is currently happening, but rather to move forward. A person who does not continue through the series of growth spikes (the whole set is called a bildungsroman, a term used for a coming of age novel (Great Expectations!), and one spike is called a "slice of life," often the focus of short stories) will be stuck in a state of arrested development, which is why some adults act like twelve year-olds. It's also possible to go backwards, if the balance isn't kept. That's where you get nasty people and characters.

So to grow and change, I work with the events that are presented to me rather than against them. Challenges and blessings are equally beneficial to a person's growth and development. And they are beneficial, no matter how happy-go-lucky out there or how dark they may be. As long as you move forward. Also, a series of positive events could be balanced by a series of negative events, there's no strict order. The balance is kept overall, if not always on a smaller scale. Dwelling in the past can upset the balance also."-Sarah Vogel



Also See below (video provided by Casey Kline):




With Love,

Alaska

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