Personal Growth Archives - My Saltwater Skyline

Category: Personal Growth

November 29, 2020

Self Talk: A Thank You Letter To Myself

We all go through our internal struggles with ourselves. Our self-doubt, questioning everything that we do, whether we are good enough, pretty enough, brave enough. We are in a constant state of ‘talking ourselves down from a ledge’. Trying, from a place of concern for our own best interest, to keep ourselves ‘safe’. But, I think it’s time we cut the crap and start realizing that we are doing more to limit ourselves than we are to protect ourselves. It’s time to listen to our own self talk and realize its impact on us.

What would happen if we stopped holding ourselves back?

What do we honestly believe, at our core, will happen if we put ourselves out there into the world? Is there anything so terrible that we can justify keeping ourselves small, tight in our safe little cocoon, because we are afraid. If you have been reading my blogs and following along with me on my journey you will know that this is a process that I am working through daily. Trying to understand what has steered me through my life up until now (I am slowly realizing it was mainly fear). What can I learn from this and where do I go from here? What I have realized is that instead of chastising myself for every small doubt or complaint, it is time to look back at how far I have come and offer some kind and encouraging words to myself instead.

We are so hard on ourselves, no wonder we struggle to make a change. It is almost impossible to picture yourself succeeding at something if you cannot practice positive self-talk. If you were working for a boss and they spoke to you the way that you speak to yourself in your head, you would be mortified! But, somehow, we tolerate that nasty voice that keeps putting us down. There are two sides to this. Firstly, that voice is actually NOT you! It is years and years of listening to society’s views on how things should be. The good news about that is it is within your power to STOP listening RIGHT NOW! Don’t believe a word they say! You are capable!

November 19, 2020

Live In The Moment

Have we been focusing on the wrong things?

What if we have been living with blinkers on? What if we have been so preoccupied with what we are looking forward to that we actually spend most of our time feeling unhappy instead of learning to live in the moment? We all go out every day, to work, to put food on the table. Then we count down the days until the weekend. We even have a hump day, a beacon to signal that we are halfway there. It’s almost over! What a way to live!

I understand that people carry many reasons why they have this unhealthy mindset. Reasons like not being happy in your job or feeling like you’re missing out on family time. But that’s not the reason I’m writing this blog. The reason I’m writing this is because I believe that we need to change our mindset on our daily life. Find reasons to be happy in the NOW!

I believe that whatever the current situation, we can choose to Be Happy, or Not to Be Happy.

There are lots of different ways that you can inject a bit of positivity into your life. Learning to live in the moment might mean you have to change your mindset. You might find that changing your mindset leads you on to better things in life, and that’s great, but don’t let that be the purpose of the exercise. The point is to recognize joy in any moment, or essentially what you’re doing is wishing your life away. In case you’re wondering, yes, I believe that living life with a more positive mindset brings with it a whole new range of possibilities! Maybe another blog post?!

November 9, 2020

Christmas Kindness: Our Chance to Share the Love

With just over 6wks to Christmas I thought that’s a good amount of time to spread that love! Our hearts are full at Christmas time! Full of love and the spirit of giving. Why not share the love and kindness just that little bit further? Let’s find ways to bring joy to those beyond our fold. Let’s spread the love and kindness this festive season! Together we can come up with some fun and inspiring ways to share the joy. I have included some ideas in this blog, and in my Freebies page you will find some fun ideas to print out and stick up around your neighbourhood or school. Share them with your community! Then take action. Let’s make this a Christmas to remember!

How can we show love and appreciation in our community?

There are many people that contribute towards our daily lives. There are people behind the scenes that go unnoticed but, without them our lives would not run as smoothly. Like the bus driver that gets your kids to school safely, and on time, each day. Or the person responsible for taking away your rubbish every week. There are people that teach our children. There are people that feed our hungry. So often these people are not recognized for their efforts. What can we do to make a difference?

How about we start with a list of people that we can make that extra bit of effort to show our appreciation for. If you want to add anyone in a particular industry, please add them in the comments! We want to include all of these amazing people!

October 29, 2020

Why Should You Dream Big?

People talk about ‘your dreams’ all the time.

I mean ALL THE TIME! But, what are your dreams really? And what significance do you place on them? When I was a little girl I wanted to write. I mean, I loved anything to do with words. You could often find me walking around holding a book out in front of my face so that my peripheral vision would ensure I didn’t walk into walls. I read, I wrote, I loved poems and plays and English class. And then, reality struck like a bolt of hard-core lightning and I gave up on my dream.

That awful thing called ‘growing up’ started to happen to my perfectly innocent and fairytale-induced life. No, seriously, I am a major romantic! I think at one point I genuinely believed in fairies. Why wouldn’t you? When you are young you want to believe in the beauty of life. You want to believe that love conquers all, that there is gold at the bottom of the rainbow and that unicorns exist.

October 19, 2020

Being Alone: Is It a Good Thing?

Does being alone equal being lonely?

There is a vast difference between being alone and being lonely. Loneliness is a feeling of separateness, a feeling of emptiness that can be overwhelming. Being alone doesn’t need to feel like this. In fact, being alone should be a time to reconnect with yourself and reassess your priorities. A time spent entirely on your own life questions, goals and aspirations.

I love spending time alone because I find life can become too ‘noisy’. There is so much going on around us every day, in society and in our own homes, that we sometimes need to take a break from it all. We forget that we are more than the 9-5. More than the School Lunch Prep and the Birthday Party planning. Spending time alone gives us an opportunity to remember our own wants and needs. It’s self-care at it’s finest.

What if you don’t like being alone?

For many people being alone brings on negative emotions. When this happens you need to ask yourself why that is. Why are you afraid to be alone with your own thoughts and emotions? To me this is an indicator that there is something that you need to work through. There is a reason why you don’t want to hear the thoughts in your own head.

Let me ask you this. Do you find your own self talk often turns towards the negative? Do you rip yourself to pieces because of the way you spoke to your in-laws or the fact that you just can’t seem to give up the junkfood? Or, are there things from your past that are troubling you, that flood into your consciousness when you are left alone? Does time alone leave you thinking about all the reasons your life isn’t what it should be? Do you come down hard for all your shortcomings?

October 9, 2020

Finding Your Why

Life Altering Change starts with Finding your Why

Let me start with the process of soul searching that I found myself going on as I started the process of finding my why. You would think your why would be obvious, and in some ways it is, but it requires a deeper level of questioning. A ‘big picture’ kind of thinking. On the surface my why is easy, it is my family! Family time, as much as I can get of it! When you think about the shortness of this life experience and the way we spend our time, the percentage of it that is spent with the one’s we love is a sad statistic indeed! So, yes, a big chunk of my why is family. After all, they are the ones we do it all for! They are the ones that matter at the end of the day. They absolutely should be our why!

But, my why also goes deeper than this. It goes to the core of who I am and what matters to me as a spiritual being. One of the main reasons that I started this blog, was because I believe that many of us feel misunderstood and alone. We have a message in our hearts that we want heard. Or, we don’t quite know what our message is but we know it’s there waiting to be uncovered. We feel like we are walking this path alone.

We are here to guide each other through this life

I wanted to share my personal experiences and lessons on personal growth, to be there to let you know you are not alone. To walk you through the questions and struggles and help you realize that every step forward, no matter how small, is growth!

I believe that when we have a nagging inside us, a voice that needs to be heard, that we need to sit up and pay attention, that it’s time for a change. It’s time to reassess our priorities and where our heart is at. One of the greatest tragedies in this life is the masses of us that are not honest with ourselves and our true identities. That haven’t learnt to understand their Why.

October 1, 2020

Exploring your Creativity

Do you struggle to see yourself as creative? Is it time to start exploring your creativity?

This is something I have struggled with most of my life. With a super creative family I have often seen myself as the one that got the ‘raw deal’ in the creativity department. I have agonized over the beautiful paintings, sculptures, hand-made clothes or woodwork that my family seemed so proficient at. Nothing I ever did could meet the standards they had set. In MY eyes! They always recognized my creative side, it was me that didn’t see my own value! A sure sign that I needed to start exploring my creative side.

We are all different and we express our creativity in different ways.

While I could get away with a half decent pencil sketch, I was terrible at painting and useless at molding anything into a recognizable shape. Lol. What I’ve come to understand now is that there are different types of creatives. My parents and sister are the hands-on kind of creative. They are the ‘artists’ in the family. They are good at painting, woodwork, pottery, you name it! I was never good at these things and it bothered me! I wanted to be able to create things with my hands like they did. But, my creativity is just different to theirs. My mind works differently, and I see the world in a different way. I don’t have creative hands, I have a creative mind. A storyteller’s mind.

September 22, 2020

The Value of Connections

In the world as we know it, do we even recognize the value of connections?

The internet is overflowing with useful and useless information. We are faced with split second choices on what offers us value. Constantly. I mean constantly! I cannot tell you how many times I have started reading a blog or watching a video only to click away with a heavy sigh realizing I have wasted precious moments of my life. Now this might sound mean and that is not my intention. We all have different motivations and what works for some might not work for others. That is one of the beautiful things about life, there is a place for everybody.

But, we can also get stuck searching for ‘our tribe’ and get lost along the way. My very long-winded point here is I don’t want you to feel like my ramblings are a waste of your time. I want you to feel like you have landed on the page of someone as real as you are, who understands that your time is precious. Don’t get me wrong, I’m gonna ramble! That’s what I’m here for! But I hope my ramblings will include words that make you feel at ease, understood and hopefully inspired to live your best life.

So often we look at what separates us instead of what connects us.

I want us to see those similarities and remember we are part of one big family. The world would be a different place if we all learned to see each other more as ‘the same’ rather than as ‘different’. We all love, we all hurt, we all dream and we all hope. If we could recognize this in each other what a difference it could make! Imagine if we didn’t hide our emotions. We would immediately know if it was time to back off or time for a cuddle. But, we have been suppressing our emotions for so long we don’t even know how to read each other anymore.

Having emotions at all is almost unacceptable. In the work place we act like robots, our shields well in-tact. By the time we get home to our families we are so tired of the façade we literally break down and our emotions are released like a flood. But, the truth of the matter is, if we showed them more we would more easily accept them. And, accepting our emotions is the starting point for being able to express them.

September 13, 2020

Manage Your Emotions in 5 Easy Ways

I’ve been thinking a lot about our emotions lately.

Our emotions are there in every waking moment. But, they are so much a part of you, do you ever stop to consider how you manage your emotions? Or, do you tend to shrug them off if they don’t suit you?

Our emotions, or our feelings, are our ‘guiding light’ through this life. They warn us when we might be about to get hurt and they excite us when something major is happening for the positive. Although they are super reliable, they are not always convenient. They force us to sit up and pay attention. In a world full of ups and downs this is often not welcome and we tend to close ourselves off from our emotions.

Do you hide from your emotions?

You might have seen a post I put up recently on Instagram asking this question. I think that too often we just ‘don’t want to go there’. We don’t want to discuss the suggestion to move to another city. We avoid making that appointment with the Doctor to check out a niggle. Or, we would rather walk away than have another argument with the kids over who gets to sit in the front seat! Emotions can be overwhelming and exhausting and sometimes we’d rather just walk away.

Is walking away the best way to manage the situation?

In some situations it might be the best thing to do, to walk away. It could be the difference between letting something blow over and having things go so far that there’s no coming back. Sometimes walking away is the right thing to do. But, what you need to avoid is letting your emotions stew inside you. That is unhealthy. That turns to bitterness, resentment and anger and can start to work like a poison on your heart and soul. There is a fine line that we need to learn to recognize. We need to learn to assess our emotional state and reel ourselves in when necessary. Let’s look at some ways to manage our emotions.

September 3, 2020

The Power Of Words to Shape Us

I love words. The way they captivate us, work their magic on us.

We all love words in one form or another. We love books, poems and quotes. They inspire us, make us laugh, put life into perspective and so much more. But, do words have the power to shape us into the person we grow up to be? I want to share some of the words that have influenced me in my life. I have chosen some thought provoking quotes, poems and a special blessing that I absolutely love. I’ll start with some quotes.

I believe that quotes can have a major impact on us.

Some of them are so profound they stay with us throughout our lives. People search the internet for those wise words that will either shift their perspective or give them that plain old kick up the butt they were looking for. We turn to those we deem wiser than ourselves to help us find clarity through their words. I marvel at the impact these quotes have on people every day around the world. It is something that I find really inspiring. The power of words is fascinating and exhilarating! Wars and hearts have been won by words.