So I am going through something completely new to me. The weird part is it involves something that I have done many times before but there is one major difference…me. I am different than I have been in the past in the same circumstance. I am a better version of me so I have no fear right…?

I have been going to therapy at least twice a month for over 2 years and I feel like I have really done work on figuring out myself. I think I figured out things I have never taken the time to and genuinely figured out how to like myself again. I don’t have thoughts like I use to where I felt like I wasn’t good enough to deserve things. Thoughts of total anxiety that everyone else had it easier, better and because of it I was doomed to fail. A complete lack of belief in myself is an accurate description. The weird thing is I did all of that and finally felt like all that work made me ready to be in a relationship again….🤔 maybe that was a tad over confident.

The interesting part about all the self awareness is I still don’t know about the things I don’t do well in relationships. So life presented the opportunity for that to happen and to my credit I have not lost my amazing skill to do things incredibly wrong in relationships. That’s right all that rewiring of my thoughts about myself don’t really fix how to handle a relationship. Yes don’t get me wrong it has caused me to be more aware and recognize the flaws I have quicker. Now the trick is learning to actually work through those flaws and be better than I was in the past. I want to be a better listener not just in life but with my partner. I don’t want to push things on my timeline. I have a fear of being left so I push to keep them around and that isn’t ok. I don’t want to have someone feel like I don’t respect their thoughts or ideas because I am quick to cut them off and express my ideas. I want the better version of me to get to meet the better relationship version of me by doing the work. I can let the fears of the past keep influencing my behaviors or I can just let things be exactly as they are and build a real bond. Anyway I am glad to have found myself over the last 2 plus years I just hope I can work through the relationship version of my former self sooner than later. “Don’t let fear make your decisions”. For me this means my fear of pushing people away that I really care about.

Hope this helps anyone who needs it to reflect. Do not fear the things you don’t want to hear about yourself. Listen, think about it and change the behavior. Your relationship self will thank you.

This is my face, thought, overall attitude when I think of turning 40!! Crap, crap, crap where did the years go. Why do I feel like I am 18 still? Better yet why do I act like I am 12 sometimes? What is that ache, pain, bruise…insert whatever you like here that wasn’t there yesterday? When did it get there and why, why does it hurt so bad?

Well it turns out there is nothing I can do to keep this from happening. No matter what steps I take in October I will turn 40. 🤦🏻‍♂️ I want to say it isn’t a big deal and that I am ready for it. I want to shake it off like it is just another Tuesday on the calendar. I just can’t though.

I am terrified of that day for a totally different reason. I hope I have finally taken the time to learn about myself so that those previous 39 years allow me to keep from repeating the mistakes. I don’t know that I have ever liked myself as much as I do right now and I have been what some would say is conceited in the past. This is a recent development and has taken a very difficult 2 years to get to. I dug though and faced flaws that made me really dislike myself. I am not fixed, perfect, normal or whatever description fits but I do like myself for the first time ever. I am going to continue to grow and try to understand things I haven’t in the past. I am going to try to be more empathetic and kind to those around me. I am going to keep trying to be better each day that I get. Because I am actually really excited about being 40, unsure and willing to change.

I know what I want for the first time ever. I am going to do what it takes to make the wants into reality. I am going to do it for me and only me. I get it not a popular phrase for someone with kids. The truth though is the only way they have the life they deserve is if I do my part to make myself good for them. Crazy how that works.

So bring on 40…I think 🤔. The next 40 will be amazing compared to the first and I have had a lot of really great things happen to me. For those that I wronged I am sorry I wasn’t the best version of myself. I will do all I can to make it up to you. If you have my number and want to tell me about how stupid I was, I am open for all criticism. I will take it and be better. For all those who love me and stick with me I hope I leave a mark that makes you happy.

October 22 I will wake up and kick that days ass no matter what! Here’s to figuring out you are good enough.

WHAT DO YOU SEE

I have thought about this post for 2 weeks now.  I decided when I started this blog again I wanted to share as a therapeutic tool for myself.  A tool to help others through similarity in experiences.  In doing that I want to be careful to not offend and be as honest as possible.  To be as honest as possible sometimes can cause hurt and that hurt is a personal hurt if you are truly realizing your mistakes and wanting change.  That is to say a lot of the time if we are being dishonest it is with ourselves.  This dishonesty typically causes other hurt as well but specifically for this blog I want to talk about how that dishonesty with oneself effects your self image.  I wanted to share a little bit of what I have gone through to help repair that self image.

A person close to me has told me more than once “We think we are better actors than we really are.”  Being willing to face those parts of yourself that we don’t like in an effort to be a better person takes nerve.  No one likes to think negatively of themselves or that they could do things to hurt others.  It takes hard work to really unload those dark parts of yourself so that you can be better in the future and not repeat the mistakes of the past.

That being said one of the biggest things that has really effected me is my therapy and its ability to change my self image.  Therapy gets a bad rap in my opinion.  It is almost as if saying you go to therapy means that something is wrong with you.  In my opinion, what could be bad about having someone listen to all your “crap” without judgement and sometimes without rebuttal.  I mean you get to sit with someone, just unload all your burdens, happiness, thoughts, concerns…whatever it may be and no one judges you for what you say.  There is no worry about hurting this person or what they will think of you.  Just open up and be honest.  Its truly empowering and eye opening if you embrace it.

For me therapy started like I assume it does for most in the middle of turmoil.  I have said “I wish I had started it sooner and maybe things that happened wouldn’t have”.  The truth is though if I had I wouldn’t be where I am now.  I have had to repair a broken self image that built up in  through my own actions over the last 20 years.  I don’t really know where the turning point specifically was for my story just yet.  I believe if my therapist doesn’t already have the plan to get there we are building the plan.  I just know that for a very long time no matter what happiness was around me, I was not happy with myself.  I made terrible choices that reinforced how bad my self image was and lead me farther away from who I want to be as a person.  The “rap” sheet is longer than I am proud of and something I can only hope to make right someday down the line.  I didn’t take care of myself mentally.  I allowed myself to think negatively about myself in all situations in life.  I didn’t appreciate the great parts of life that had happened to me.  The hardest part for me was breaking through that defeated self image I had of myself.  It took time, specially a year and a half of therapy now, to break through that self image.  It took admitting things to myself that I did not like, embracing the things that I did like and learning to love myself.  No matter if there were people who loved me and truly believed in me in my life, my self image was broken.

I have now created tools that I use daily to help remind myself that I don’t want to feel that way about myself anymore.  I learned the tools in therapy and they have all helped me greatly improve my self image.  It is something we all struggle with and the solution may sound simple but it is a hard thing to do.  We are our own biggest competition.  I have found though if I take care of myself mentally other areas of life come easier.  When I falter mentally the other areas falter as well.  I have had to face many things I do not like about myself and admit to myself terrible things from my past.  I have also been able to recognize situations for what they really were.  I have been able to really decide what I want from my life.  I have been able to learn what will make me happy.

I have 3 amazing kids and have some amazing people in my life.  I have to be the best version of me though or that doesn’t matter though.  Without that version of me I affect so many others negatively and that is not what I want from my life.  I for the first time in a long time value myself and that is something I only learned through therapy and the hard mental work.  The goals have changed and the outcomes will change as well.  I can control that and will continue to improve my self image through therapy and the tools it has taught me.  It does not make me less.  It does not make me a weaker man or a bad person.  I have been told numerous times its the actions not the words.  If you think you can’t take action because of what you would have to face you are wrong.  I urge anyone who thinks they are stuck in a pattern that can’t be broken to know that you are in control of that pattern.  It may be a huge mountain of “suck” to climb but you can do it.  I was at the bottom of a very steep mountain, my legs are tired from the steep climb but my view right now is one of the best I have ever had.

Here is a link to a helpful site

https://www.goodtherapy.org/

I say the word lens and most people think of a lens in a pair of glasses, on a camera, or in a telescope.  A lens is used to allow us to see different things in the world.  People have come in contact with one of these devices at some point in their life.  What isn’t thought about is the lens we view ourselves with.  Created in the mind, there are numerous reasons why and how they develop.  I did not study this, I am not the expert but I was given homework to discuss how I was able to crack one of my lenses from one pretty smart person.  Being the competitive type how could I possibly say no to this.  First thing you may or may not be asking is “homework?”  No I am not in school.  Not in the physically enrolled sense of the word but in the never stop learning sense of the word…school is always in session.  So I thought lets discuss this personal matter and see where it leads.  Now obviously the goal of this isn’t to hurt anyone else so certain details I won’t be sharing.  I am going to try to the best of my ability explain how cracking my lens has completely changed how I view myself and in turn how that has changed my life.

To the homework at hand, the topic was “how did I crack my not good enough lens”.  So after a great weekend with my oldest 2 kiddos, I decided make a cup of coffee and lets get these thoughts down.

Lets start with the issue which was my lens.  In my mind over the years my behaviors had created a lens or way that I saw myself and others in my life.  I had created a belief that I was never going to be good enough.  I had numerous times failed at different things, large or small, it didn’t matter but each failure reinforced in my mind that I would never be good enough.  People fail its absolutely normal, the problem for me was it kept adding to the not good enough view of myself each time I failed or felt like I failed.  At some point the failures created what became a normal to me or an expected outcome so to speak.  No matter what I said I wanted to do or set out to do I had already convinced myself I would mess up.  At some point there would be something I couldn’t handle, a failure, a pressure, a road bump and I would revert to seeing myself through this lens.  I would repeat previous behaviors that caused me to be someone I ended up not liking.

The other side of this lens was it also affected how I viewed everyone else.  No matter who I met, they always had it better or were better than me.  I gave away the power in almost every relationship I had because I automatically believed I wasn’t good enough in any relationship I started.  In my mind I had always had it worse than anyone I met…literally anyone.  This is a terrible way to start a relationship and led to me making terrible decisions in my relationships that hurt, deceived and left damage I may never be able to repair.  For me this is the worst part of this lens I had created.

I had never been able to handle situations differently and was determined to prove that I was right about not being good enough each time and at great cost.  Without the ability to see myself with a different lens it was a continuous cycle with the same negative outcome.  I could go for a while at different points without any major feelings of not being good enough.  Inevitably though there would be a trigger that led me to seeing myself this way again.  The pattern would then be repeated and I had proven to myself that I was indeed not good enough in my mind.  The truth was that I really had just made a decision that caused harm to either myself or people I cared about.  I hadn’t reached out for help, or tried to handle what happened to me differently.  If had been able to crack my lens sooner, I would have been able to handle what happened to me differently.  Instead I deceived, manipulated or lied to fix a certain outcome which would then again prove to myself I wasn’t good enough when it was discovered.  I created a lens convincing myself I was never going to be good enough and then let behaviors reinforce that lens.

So the moment things changed for me.  Well strangely enough it took more destruction for me to have this moment of clarity.  A few months ago I had been doing anything I could to avoid really looking at myself and trying to fix myself.  The details aren’t important, I don’t want to hurt anyone or cause any issues.  What happened is at my lowest point I had someone say to me “What do you want?  What do you really want out of life?  What is it that is going to make you happy?”.  Seems pretty simple actually but I had never really thought about what I wanted.  Sure I lied to people and gave examples throughout the years of what I thought would impress them.  I have had numerous conversations with people laying out life plans, detailing what I thought they wanted to hear from me or what I thought would make me fit in with them.  Some of it were things I wanted but didn’t think I would ever really achieve.  The truth was I had never really considered what would actually make me happy because I didn’t believe I was good enough to make it happen.  So facing stress, lots of serious consequences from terrible decisions I had made I decided to break myself down and thought about what I needed to be happy.  Again this probably sounds really simple but what I hadn’t done to this point was crack that view of myself so it wasn’t a simple thing.  I wasn’t happy with myself and didn’t like what I found.  The bad choices had piled on, I couldn’t see digging out of it and honestly just thought at some point I would make an ultimate bad choice.  This is where it gets hard…I had to retrain my thought process about myself.  Despite the bad choices I had made and the trouble it caused, I had to start telling myself that I was in fact good enough and deserved to be happy.  I had to realize that even if I lost everything, the outcome didn’t determine how I felt about myself I did.  I determined how I handled whatever would happen next.  I had to start doing things differently than I had in the past.  I had to stop repeating the behaviors from my past.  I had to face that no matter what happened I was good enough and could get through it.

I started believing in myself and I set small goals.  The first one was to actually change things like eating habits, spending habits and doing things that made me uncomfortable.  I took on the Whole 30 diet which completely changed my view of food.  I saw benefits from not spending money on eating out all the time.  I lost weight and had real clarity about how much weight and food had affected my view of myself.  I had to make changes in schedules and understand that the temporary changes were just that… temporary.  In the long term it would be worth it to do the harder things now.  Strangely enough for me doing these things started creating a new mindset for myself.  It helped me start liking me again.  I accomplished things and I was proud of it.  I realized that I was my hardest critic and the thoughts of being judged by others were my own internal thoughts not what people really thought.  I stopped caring what people thought about me and started caring about what I thought about myself.  The irony of that is that when you care about what you think of yourself, you make better choices most often.

I know I have a lot of things to accomplish and clean up from the past behaviors.  The difference now is I know I determine how to handle those things.  They don’t determine who I am and I am good enough to have the things in life that make me happy.

The lens didn’t break right away.  Its a process…a long hard one that I haven’t completed yet.  The big lens or view of myself, I am chipping away at still.  I broke through part of it when I cracked the not good enough lens.  There is much more to go though and I now feel like I am good enough to be happy with myself.

The best explanation I have received about a lens was what follows:  picture a windshield…when a rock hits it driving down the road it doesn’t shatter…instead it makes a small divot.  From that divot though the windshield will eventually crack all over and break.  The same is true with our own lens.  You have to keep working at it…make a small indention, keep at it and it will eventually break.  Throw those small pebbles at your windshield…crack your view of yourself until it breaks.  You get a new windshield and things will be a lot more clear.

Empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings of another.  Not to be confused with sympathy the feelings of sorrow for someones misfortune.  Empathy has been argued to be determined at birth.  Some people possess a great ability to have large amounts of empathy and some people don’t possess it at all.  It is a vital part of building and maintaining relationships.  Is it really something that you either have or don’t have though.  There is proof it can be something learned though.  It is simply a choice just like that many choices we are faced with daily in life.  If you choose to be empathetic and put yourself in situations more often you will learn the behavior and in turn develop empathy.

So why all the talk about empathy you ask…well for me empathy is something I have been lacking for many years now.  When I was much younger I had some sense of and thought about how others felt.  As I got older I definitely made the choice to show it less and less.  I tricked myself into thinking my sympathy for someone meant I cared about what they were going through when in reality it was just me acknowledging they were going through something.  My focus was always on how whatever event happened would affect me.  Wrong thought process for me as it led to me making choices that hurt other people.

As my life has changed I focused more on being right and having someone see things my way.  I cared less about how the person felt and listened less.  Needless to say instead of learning from my mistakes I was doomed to repeat them without even realizing it.  My lack of empathy lead to a need to prove I was right.  Maybe not the case for everyone showing a lack of empathy but specifically for me it caused a very skewed lens to life.  So just like many other choices my choice was clear…continue to live life this way or make the change.

So my lack of knowledge about empathy lead to reading articles, talking with my therapist about it, talking with people close to me and really trying to figure out where/why the change happened for me.  This is my conclusion…it doesn’t matter when or why it happened my lack of empathy is something I want to change.  I stopped being empathetic and made choices that caused a lot of issues in life that I don’t want to repeat them.  I hurt people that didn’t deserve getting hurt, changed lives in totally different directions and I don’t want to do that anymore.  The choice for me is deciding to learn about empathy and start using it in my life actively.  Its a choice you have to make much like eating right, working out, be polite, or any other choice you face throughout your day.  It is something that I want to be better at and just like anything else you want to be better at you have to put in the work.  So today’s share is a little more heavy on the content but it is something I wanted to share.  I am going to work much harder to be empathetic and make choices with others in mind.  I hope you have a great day and life is well for everyone and anyone that reads this.

Below is a link that I read that while short has some awesome information I came across when reading about empathy.  Enjoy

http://www.instituteforwellness.com/2015/08/28/three-steps-to-greater-empathy/

First Day of School

Meet The Teacher

First Game of Baseball Season

Oh my what a week….

The events came fast and furious this week.  Knox transitioned to a new class at daycare,  meet the teach for the older kids, the first day of school, baseball practice and the first game of the season!  Not to be outdone though next weeks schedule has soccer for Millie on Monday, baseball for Oliver on Tuesday, soccer for Oliver on Wednesday then games on Saturday!  I am sure most families can relate as typically this time of year is when the routines get into full swing with all the family activities.  It is crazy how fast they grow and so awesome when they start participating in activities.  I am amazed by each of them how much they change and learn.  For me spending time with them helps me refocus on whats important for me.  I know that I have to keep making the changes in my own self so that I can continue to be around to see what amazing people they become.

The week went really well and the kids did amazing.  Millie started her 3rd year of Gate Academy in the 5th grade.  It is the gifted and talented pilot school in Allen and she has done great.  The decision about her going was tough to make but she has really excelled and loves her school.  Oliver started Kindergarten this year and most of the summer said he didn’t want to go.  The closer we got he came around and was really excited.  He was nervous on day 1 and other than one little moment where he bumped his chin on his desk right as class was starting he did great.  Knox is changing so much and is a little chatter box.  He is really into repeating any question you ask him then answering it.  It is really cute because you can say something like “What does a cow say?” and you get “What does a cow say daddy?…mooooo!”  It is so awesome!  He also has the greatest belly laugh ever.  When he really gets going it can brighten anyone’s day.

We also started sports this week with Oliver starting our 3rd season with the Rowdy Rangers (baseball) and 3rd season with The Sharks(soccer).  He is such an awesome little athlete.  I coach on both of his teams and love getting the time with him each week.  I mean what dad doesn’t like sharing sports with his son.  Millie is starting soccer again after playing as a little kid.  Her first practice is tomorrow.  She said she was nervous and worried about failing so we had the long talk about failure is the only way to learn and pushing through it will make her better in the end.  I am excited to just be a parent for her soccer season.  I have coached her in soccer when she was younger and coached Oliver so it will be cool to just be the parent on the sideline for this one.

The greatest part of all the running around and routine is just seeing them happy, sad, nervous, excited or whatever emotion comes into play.  Life gets busy and its easy to just push through it without really noticing the changes your kids are going through.  You just go sometimes as a parent and then you get caught thinking wow how did we get through that.  Sometimes though if you stop and really watch them, enjoy the moment with them then you realize life is nothing but moments and choices no matter how old we are.  For me its about being the best possible person I can be each day moving forward.  My kids are amazing reminders that I have to be the best I can be.  They are always watching no matter how busy we are.  If I am not the best version of myself they see it, learn the behavior and maybe they wont have the confidence they need in life to be the best they can be.

Hope everyone has had an amazing week and whatever moments you face this week you are the best you that you can be!  Until next time…

          This was me back in June of 2017…if I am being honest it was the worst version of me that I can remember.  I wasn’t honest, wasn’t empathetic and was on the verge of crashing my entire life.  I looked back at this picture after taking a picture recently and the noticeable difference is the weight but thinking back on who I was for me is the biggest difference.  I don’t want to be that person ever again.  He wasn’t a good person and hadn’t been for a while.  Parts of him good yes, but the important parts were lacking.  Everyone’s rock bottom looks different I suppose and the details of it don’t really matter, its just about deciding to get back up and climb through the shit you created to get back to the version of you that you really want to be.  For me it is going to be a long climb and probably will suck for a while.  The alternate choice though is much worse.

Like I said I started this blog a while back and I lost site of why I started it.  I wanted to share about my life and hopefully learn more about myself in doing so.  Well I didn’t do that and instead used this as a platform for other reasons.  I recently had a great conversation with a very important person for me and realized that I just needed to refocus this little blog and use it for what I wanted to in the first place.  Its about me and sharing my life so that I can learn from failures, smile at successes and maybe occasionally say something funny.  I mean I think I am funny sometimes!  I haven’t even started to jump into the #dadjokes.  That being said I thought the first share for the new blog should be about this picture and the recent one.  So here is the recent picture I took at work after completing the Whole 30 diet.

The Whole 30 diet is a diet that last 30 days.  The concept is to eliminate dairy, grains, legumes and sugar to reset your body.  It is so you can identify things that might have had a negative impact on your body and to reset your system.  We had discussed it during training at my new job and the competitive side of me said “lets do it.”  I wanted to make a change and thought maybe this is the change I needed to make.  So it was agreed upon and we picked our start date…one person was about to leave for vacation for a week so we waiting until they returned to start.

I couldn’t believe it when I saw this picture.  I knew that I had lost some weight and my perception of food had changed but was that me?  I know it is ironic that I am holding a cookie cake in a picture where I have lost a bunch of weight but we were celebrating the end of the crazy diet, and a really good work week as a team.

I looked back at the picture from right around a year ago and I was shocked.  The even bigger thing for me…I can’t remember the last time I followed all the way through with something I said I would do for me.  The diet was hard because I have always eaten really badly.  People tried to tell me but I had never really listened.  I have always been a “I know the right way” kind of guy and it has cost me in the past.  This time I just followed the guidelines the diet said to and didn’t try to pretend like I knew a better way to do this.  It was really eye opening and still a week later all I want to do is keep pushing to be the healthiest I can be.  Let me say this, I am not a pro at it now either but my views of what I eat have completely changed.  I haven’t felt this good physically in a long time and that cookie cake in the picture did not taste anything like I remembered.

Its a small victory but it was needed.  I am excited about eating right now and its pretty funny because if you knew me in the past you might be surprised by some of the things I consider to taste good these days.  Hit me up about some Steve’s Dried Mango hahaha….

Hope everyone is doing well in life and finding the happiness you deserve!!  Until next time.