Hi y’all! Honestly, I think I’m posting this Monday Motivation for myself (heavy emphasis on the “motivation.”) This is just a gentle reminder that we are human, not robots; we can’t show up and give 100% every day, because we will not always be functioning at 100% capacity. So if today is a low-capacity day (or even more, if you’re in a season like this), know that your “widow’s mite” of effort is enough; you are giving all you have to give today, and that is enough. You are enough. Have a great week everyone.
Happy Monday y’all! Can you believe that we are already halfway through November? I’m not sure what race November entered, but it is clearly focused on winning.
Some of us (myself included) may have chosen to finish the year “locked in” and focused on achieving goals that will allow for us to start 2026 in a better frame of mind. Some of my goals are centered around healing my mental, emotional and physical health. While healing mentally and emotionally sound wonderful, sometimes it can be quite messy and uncomfortable. Suppressed emotions and negative self-beliefs are sometimes buried deeply within us, and despite being well-hidden, their tendrils weave their way throughout our lives and affect our daily behaviours and habits. Then, even when we identify them, their roots can be quite tenacious, which makes it hard to uproot them and replace them with positive, healthier versions.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that healing isn’t always scented candles and aesthetic journalling. Sometimes it is uncomfortable, messy and hard. But it is worth it. You are worth it. Let us step into this new week with the conviction that we are all worth the work, challenge and discomfort of healing.
As a self-proclaimed bookworm and lover of cute stationery (although lately most of my reading happens on a Kindle), I think that I have a unique perspective that enables me to take you, my readers, on an interesting adventure. It involves a trip into the mind of a bookworm heading into a safe haven, ahem, bookstore, and may help non-bookworms to understand what it’s like for us. For the non-bookworms, consider this a friendly sneak peek into our minds, so that when you find yourselves accompanying us on this journey, you will be slightly better equipped.
Imagine, if you will, that you and your bookworm friend/relative/significant other are coolly, calmly, and collectedly walking in some kind of shopping centre. You both spot it: a bookstore.
“Oh look, a bookstore!” The bookworm pauses; a quiet internal calculation rapidly occurs (available time and funds, bookstore quality and range etc). Then the decision is verbalized with feigned casualness:
“Let me just wander in and check them out. I think I need some *insert stationery item of choice.”
Do not be fooled by the casual tone. This has now turned into a mission. Prepare yourself.
The bookworm then enters and browses while exercising a certain level of restraint, in order to maintain the facade of casualness. Then they “suddenly” remember the book (or books) they were interesting in getting:
“Let me just check to see if they have xyz book I’ve been wanting…”
Hopefully the book is available and they experience the sweet bliss of success. Even though they already know they want the book, they may still spend some time skimming the blurb and appearing to deliberate before holding on to it. This is merely a step in the process. If the book is not available, kindly wait patiently as they enquire about it; they may also browse the section to see if there are any books that are similar to it.
If you thought that the initial success of getting the book they were looking for would end the mission, you are sadly mistaken. It merely serves to strip away a bit of the casual facade and energizes the bookworm for further browsing.
Also, if your bookworm has added other books from the same section to the pile, be forewarned: they are now even more excited than before, and it’ll only get worse from you. My humble suggestion is that you prepare to lend assistance and offer to hold something.
“Oh look! They got new books. I’ve never seen this one before; it looks interesting,” and just like that, another book has been added to the pile. The adventure continues.
More casual browsing may ensue. If there’s a discount or sale table, you’re out of luck (but your bookworm is highly fortunate).
“Is that a discount table? Let’s see if they have anything I’d want to read. Oh I used to love to read these kinds of books. Maybe I should get some. And I’m interesting in learning about xyz and this book about it is on sale!” Just like that, a few more books have joined you both.
Eventually, your stationery-loving bookworm will find their way to that section of the store.
“I do need new pens. Oh this stationery set is so cute! And look at these markers! I can use them in this very relaxing-looking adult colouring book. What an elegant notebook! It would make a great journal. Oh I can use this folder for xyz. Is this white-off shaped like a paw-print? I do need white-off.” Yikes. You’re shaking your head at this point and wondering how this happened.
At this point, it is possible that your bookworm may look at the assortment of books and stationery items they have amassed with a sheepish expression. They may feel a bit embarrassed at having gathered all of these items, depending on their level of self-awareness and excitement. However, do not be misled. If they really liked these items, they probably will find a way to purchase most, if not all of them.
After a final evaluation, the bookworm heads to the cashier and may be engaged in a monologue to either justify the purchases or express their joy (or both). At this point, you may find the path of least resistance to be acceptance, and even supporting your bookworm’s joy (and offering to help carry the bag). So ends the adventure.
To the bookworms reading this post, feel free to share in the comments if you can relate to this adventure. For the non-bookworms, I hope that you find this post helpful. To everyone, regardless of their reading preferences, I hope you find this post at least mildly amusing and somewhat witty. I certainly enjoyed writing it. Whether or not I may have just awakened a desire in myself to visit a bookstore, I will not say. I suppose I’ll journal about it in one of the many cute notebooks that I may or maynot have bought on similar adventures. Who can say? I certainly won’t be confirming or denying anything *casual shrug.*
Happy November y’all! (She said, nearly halfway through the month , whoopsies ). While thinking about the intentions and goals I wanted to set for November (which I did closer to the beginning of the month, I promise), I thought I’d try centering them around 3 words ✨️. Those 3 words represent the overarching themes of my goals; the essence of what I’d like to work on, pay attention to, or have more of, this month. Somehow, 1 theme seemed like it’d be both too much and not enough, so I’m trying 3 words this time, and I’ll let y’all know how it goes in December (hopefully closer to the beginning of the month ). If you chose any words to focus on this month (or if you want to), feel free to drop them in the comments, I’d love to hear from you! Anyway, I hope that November is good to all of us!
Hey y’all! I really want to say “Happy Monday,” but I’m really struggling with the concept of “happiness” and “Monday” being so closely linked today 🥲. But it’s okay if I (or we) feel like that; I doubt we could wake up feeling perfectly motivated every Monday. We can, however, choose to slay every Monday, so here I am with this reminder for all of us (myself especially 😀). Every day, we wake up with gratitude (or try to), we pray, and then we go out there and do our best #slay…such is the Unicorn way 🦄. Have a great week everyone.
Happy November! Maybe that greeting seems a little late, but I’m thinking that it still counts, as we are still in the first week. I had visions of posting a well-thought-out, curated greeting graphic on either November 1st or the 2nd (for the latest), but life, and my mind and body, had other plans. I also had visions of doing the most productive monthly reset to ever exist, but I had to stick a pin in that too. As a girlie with type-A tendencies who has been actively trying to get her life together, even temporarily letting go of those plans was difficult.
I’d like to say that I had no choice, but fortunately I did. Unfortunately the choice was along the lines of either I pause and take care of myself now or my mind and body will force me to pause indefinitely, soon. Over the last few days of October, I had a lot to deal with (well, a lot more), and I started to feel disregulated. Thank God that I’ve been learning from my experiences so I recognized the signs (increased doomscrolling, procrastination, sleeping problems and physical anxiety/stress symptoms and decreased motivation, discipline and patience). So, instead of starting November with an explosion of productivity, I chose to begin with a gentle, but deliberate amd guilt-free pause.
So I’m here to share what my unplanned, but much-needed self-care start to November looked like. I’m hoping that my little testimony here can help someone feel less guilty about taking some time for themselves, or maybe even provide ideas of activities to help. In deciding on activities for my self-care day, I tried to include things that involved physical, mental, emotional and spiritual care.
Physical care: comforting foods (and eating when I was hungry), rest, stretching, the best “everything shower” ever (followed by face and foot masks) and soft, comfy clothes.
Mental and emotional care: slowness, easy creativity (colouring), reading a cozy novel, journalling, tidying space (just a few minutes so it looked less chaotic).
Spiritual care: meditative prayer, music, nostalgic movie (Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella is still top tier) and mindfulness (really being present in all the activities).
Initially, the temptation to believe that I was setting myself back by not forcing productivity buzzed around my brain like a mosquito. But, as the day flowed and I relaxed into it, I realized how much I needed it. The irony was that the next day, I was able to do a productive reset and prep for the week far more easily; it was much less of a battle than I anticipated. I was able to begin the week, and even the month, in a better way than I imagined possible, given my initial capacity (or lack thereof).
So this is my testimony and reminder to all of us (because this is a lesson in progress for me). While there are times that discipline requires us to push productivity through difficult periods, there are also times when a pause actually increases it. We don’t have to wait until the cup is actually empty to refill it. Actually, I don’t think we should; the fuller the cup is, the more (and more often) we can pour. Discipline and productivity weren’t thrown out over the weekend: I still ended up with clean clothes and food prepped, with the additional benefit of greater efficiency. I still ended up reviewing October and setting intentions for November. So even as some of us might want to push to finish 2025 focused and productive, my humble suggestion is that we begin our efforts with full cups. Start from a place of self-love, with a mind, body and spirit that is being cared for, and we will ultimately go further, faster and even better than we thought we could.
Hey y’all! It’s Monday again…and I’m not sure how I feel about that fact. I suppose I’m experiencing a complex mixture of gratitude for life and the anxiety of “What tomfoolery and/or stress will I have to deal with today?” Nonetheless, it is a new week in a new month, and we have new opportunities for…anything really. I just wanted to drop this reminder to all of us while we may be planning and setting our monthly goals and intentions that the best place to start, is love. We can’t bully ourselves into growth (trust me, I’ve tried). It’s difficult to lock into focusing on improving ourselves when we are running on E. So, my unsolicited advice to you (and me), is to reset and rejuvenate and nourish yourself first…and let your internal dialogue be compassionate and respectful. This would also make it easier for our external interactions to be compassionate and respectful to others too (we can’t pour from empty cups, now, can we?). Have a great week everyone!
When you’re prone to anxiety, sometimes an ‘L’ (a loss) can seem not just unfortunate, but disastrous. This is especially true if your anxiety is flavoured with negative self-talk, and a dash of catastrophizing (like mine is, sadly). Part of my attempts to rewire my misguided brain this year have involved a reframing of what I like to think of as mini-episodes in a series entitled When Things Don’t Go Right, Or, When Life Hands You Unwanted Lemons (maybe ‘L’ also stands for lemons?). I’ve struggled with an unfortunate tendency, exacerbated by the pandemic, to overthink myself into disastrous thoughts whenever something big doesn’t work out, which is not exactly conducive to an overall state of calmness and flexibility, you know? I also struggle with extremely negative self-talk whenever I unwittingly make a mistake or a choice that leads to things not going well. Neither of these are helpful or healthy ways of thinking.
If you’ve read this post: A Book Series That Inspired Self-Cheerleading? then you know about the simple statement that has inspired and helped me on my journey to more positive self-talk. But what happens when I didn’t do something well? What do we tell ourselves when we accidentally make a mistake? Consider this to be the flip side of “Well done, me!” Sadly, when things haven’t gone well in the past, I’ve told myself some pretty awful things: how could you do that? You should have known better! Why didn’t you do xyz instead of ABC? Look you’ve made a mess of things! Yikes.
That kind of approach to self-talk post-mistake is not just unhelpful, it is harmful. It is even worse when the reason things didn’t work out actually had nothing to do with me…as if I somehow expected to be able to control my environment (how unrealistic is that?). So I’ve been actively working towards gently reframing life’s losses, mistakes and obstacles. When things don’t work out, I try to say something like: welp, now I’ve seen what doesn’t work, so now I know what might work better the next time. So, I now have knowledge to guide me to make better choices.
I’ve also realized that sometimes the obstacle resulted in me choosing a path that turned out to be better for me, or someone else. Maybe I got held up at one place so I could run into that friend I haven’t seen in a long time and have a much-needed conversation. Maybe that unexpected traffic kept me back from a potential accident. I’m not omniscient, so I don’t know.
Additionally, exchanging the shame spiral for an attitude of what can I learn from this frees my brain up for more constructive thoughts. Instead of beating myself up, I can examine what led to my procrastination or unfortunate decision, so that I can work towards doing better the next time. I can figure out if and how the obstacle can be avoided the next time. It’s also far easier to move on to and be present in whatever happens next when I’m not spending time mentally and emotionally beating myself up.
Even in this thought process I think that it’s important to still acknowledge the emotions that bubble up, like sadness, frustration or disappointment. I think it’s natural to feel this way. I’m not necessarily advising that we Pollyanna our way through life. I prefer to acknowledge that I feel disappointed first, and then move on to reframing. I’ve had too much tension, stress and sadness stored in my body, and I think that in order for the reframing to work for anybody, authenticity is needed, and that includes allowing ourselves to hold the emotions without either stuffing them down or wallowing in them.
Now, I’m sharing this here, not because I’ve mastered it, but because I’m hoping that maybe my journey can help someone else to feel a little less alone in their struggle. I am still very much in the midst of learning how to reframe L’s as lessons myself. Just this week, I allowed myself to become extremely flustered and spiral into negative self-talk and a little catastrophizing because I was late to an appointment…due to circumstances that were completely out of my control. In the end though, I learned a lesson in calming my anxiety (and my appointment went well). It just further reinforced the message of this post to me, and I hope that this message brings you hope and encouragement as well:
In life, there will always be L’s; it is up to us to decide what they mean.
Happy Monday y’all! (I still feel weird saying that, but I guess from the perspective of getting a fresh start, it can be happy…ish ). This week’s #mondaymotivation (and future blog post) is a quote from Snoop Dogg! I viewed a clip of him comforting a contestant on The Voice who, sadly, none of the judges chose, and he dropped this pearl of wisdom. It hit me hard (in a good way, not a train wreck way), and I thought I’d share it. Life will hand us L’s, but it’s up to us whether we accept them as losses, or take them as lessons. My hope is that we will choose the latter. Have a great week!
You know how sometimes intellectually you know something, but it takes time for that head knowledge to become heart knowledge? I’ve been told, and on some level, I believe, that God is a loving Father, but I suppose I never contemplated what it actually meant. Isn’t that true for many of us though? We’ve been hearing truths that are deceptively simple, like “God is love,” “For God so loved the world…,” etc; statements that seem simple but are not just profound, but life-changing, if we truly take them in. Well, I recently experienced the power of truly taking in 2 “simple” statements: God is a loving Father, and God takes delight in His people.
It all happened when I was contemplating a story from the life of my patron saint, St. Thérèse of Lisieux, aka “The Little Flower,” or, as I like to call her, “big sis.” In her autobiography, The Story of a Soul, she wrote about her “Christmas miracle” and how God gave her the grace to overcome her childish wilfulness. But in meditating on the story, the part that stood out to me was when I imagined her father’s delight in seeing her joy at receiving her gifts. Although I’m not a parent, I know what it is like to feel the happiness of giving someone a gift that they absolutely love. I also have nephews and nieces, and work with pre-teens and teens, so I drew from all of these experiences, although they can’t truly compare to those of a parent. But then I suppose the Holy Spirit illuminated my mind and heart, because I began to wonder: is this how God feels about me?
When God looks at me, at all of us, does He experience:
🩷 The excitement a parent feels when they have a surprise they know their child will love?
🩷 The love they feel when their child laughs or enjoys something?
🩷 The pride of a parent when their child accomplishes something, or bravely tries something they were afraid of?
🩷 The delight of a parent seeing their child becoming their best selves?
🩷 The heartbreak of a parent when their child is suffering?
🩷 A parent’s desire to rush in and “save the day” but they decide instead to pause… because they know that the child will develop some necessary skill, virtue or internal strength from helping themselves. So, instead they guide the child, or stay nearby to support silently, ready to jump in if things go wrong?
🩷 The anger when their child is treated unfairly?
🩷 The mixture of emotions when their child is crying and begging for something that either won’t be good for them, or that they aren’t ready for yet. They have something better for the child, or they’re preparing the thing for the child (or the child for the thing), but the child doesn’t know that?
Does God truly delight…in me? That’s wild, but…true. And if that is true for me, then it is true for all of us, because we are all His children.
Now I know that with my very limited understanding, I cannot ever understand the vastness of the mind and heart of an eternal, infinite God. I also know that our earthly parents are human and the way they parent is flawed, and for some, sadly, abusive. But biblically, God does in fact use parental love, as He intended it to be, to help us understand in some small way, the way He loves us, so this reflection isn’t far-fetched.
I’m still wrestling with this whole idea, if I’m being honest. But could you imagine if we all lived our lives resting in this truth? How much more confident and worthy would each of us be if we truly believed this? How much easier would it be to trust and surrender even in the difficult moments of life?
So my hope and prayer for us all is that we accept, take in, reflect on and allow these deceptively simple statements to weave themselves into our very beings. Let them soak through all the layers of self-doubt and false narratives of unlovableness and lift them off of us like the most powerful stain remover ever. When we are anxious and gripping onto the wrong things for dear life, may these truths helps us to let go and surrender to a God who is truly…a loving Father. May we be unashamed of our innocent joys, because we know our Father delights in us. Finally, may these truths free us to really explore and step into our best selves.
Shespeaksandwrites 