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life

Unkind Behaviour

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The best part of having children is that they teach us so much. Kids have this wonderful ability to set boundaries for how people interact with them, and as adults, I think it’s important for us to support this skill set. Not change them to become people who always agree or please others.

The other day, like any other day, I was picking up my son from school and inquiring about his day. He had taken supplies to school that day for an in-class project, and I wanted to learn more about it. I had given him extra supplies to share with his classmates, and I saw that he returned a lot of them. He told me that another student in his class had asked to use some of his supplies, and he refused. I was a bit disappointed with my son after hearing this. But he added ‘why should I share with someone who was mean to me today? I’m not sharing’. I told him that he had more than enough and he could have shared. And my son just replied with a simple ‘no’.

I observed him in that moment and thought, you’re right! If someone is unkind to you, why do you have to show them compassion? They were unkind to you, why should you have to ignore their behaviour to assist them and give them what they ask for? I took that lesson and I tried to apply it to help me with the issue I talked about earlier in my blog about the difficult colleague. ‘Why am I making an effort to support and help someone who is determined to ruin their own life?’ I have tried to help, but if they can’t treat me with respect, why should I sympathize with them? They are grown adults, and their actions have negatively impacted me. Why do I then feel obligated to help them? They can learn to help themselves.

I am truly grateful for the lesson my son taught me in that moment because it helped change something inside me. A light blub turned on in my mind, and I could feel a shift. It helped me see the worth in myself and set a boundary for what I consider acceptable behaviours when people interact with me.

— xoxo Sandy

depression · inspire · inspired · life · love · mom · parent · quote · quotes · selfhelp

Wabi Sabi

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I have lost touch with who I am. I always expect the worst, and I don’t know how to enjoy the present. Last night, I watched the movie Buzz Lightyear with my kids. I got annoyed with Buzz as I watched him. ‘Why do you think you can do everything by yourself, when you have friends who can help you?’ As the movie went on, I realized that I am like Buzz. I always try to plan, organize and fix everything. I put too much pressure on myself. I make my life difficult. God has his own plans, so why do I keep trying to achieve perfection?

Perfection is impossible, so why do I set myself up for failure, and then get angry with myself. I trap myself in a cycle of disappointment and frustration. I need to change, but I don’t know how.  I am so drained, both mentally and physically by the pressure I create for myself. My expectations for myself are unrealistically high. I always say that I am the person in the group who has planned for contingencies, just in case something goes wrong. But it’s exhausting being in my head. I don’t want to be 10 steps ahead. I don’t want to be the go to person. I want to simply be.

I need to embrace wabi sabi. I am not sure if that is the right way to use the term in a sentence, but wabi sabi is about finding happiness and significance in the simple, the natural, and the flawed. It is about accepting yourself and others as they are, without judgment or criticism. It is about letting go of expectations and attachments, and living in the present moment. Wabi sabi is about being perfectly imperfect.

I need to change, and I need to learn how to change. I need to let go and find joy in the flaws. So this is my first step. Recognition. I recognize that I need to be gentle with myself, and allow myself and others to grow and make mistakes. Allow myself to make mistakes.

— xoxo Sandy

canada · life · quote · quotes · selfhelp

Thank You 2016!

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Two Thousand And Sixteen. The words seem so insignificant on paper, yet as I say the numbers out loud, I can feel a paper weight being dropped on my heart. How do I begin to describe the year I’ve hard? As I try to find the right words, I feel confined to the words of the Oxford dictionary. Why can’t language be like light? Infinite.

Two Thousand And Sixteen. Thank you. As I sit here trying to grasp for words that would do my year justice, I feel overwhelmed with emotions of gratitude. This year was tough. Filled with loss and great sadness, but for some reason my mind floats to the happy memories.

This past year, we lost a monarch in my husband’s family. We spent many months going back and forth between work, home and the hospital. While the loss was significant, my memories constantly float to hospital memories that make me smile. I will always remember the look on her face when I entered her hospital room on a day that I said I was busy at work and wouldn’t be able to make it. She was so happy, and for anyone that knew her, she didn’t show much emotion.

My maternal grandmother was diagnosed with breast cancer. Fortunately, the doctors caught the cancer in time and were able to remove it. She underwent radiation treatment shortly after that. Although she gets tired easily and is often in pain, she is still as feisty as ever. You think I have a sharp tongue, wait till you meet my grandmother.

My lung condition also relapsed. This news was a bit tough for me to digest. I had worked so hard to try to prevent this from happening, but it just goes to show, you can’t control everything in your life. Sometimes you just have to accept the cards that you are dealt, even if they are terrible. I remember laying in the emergency room bed, trying not to cry, thinking “please don’t be a relapse”. My condition is rare and easy to misdiagnose. Prior to my diagnosis, I spent many months in and out of hospital with doctors telling me I was having muscle spasms. So when the doctor came to my bed and told me I was good to go home because I was having a muscle spasm I almost started laughing. Muscle Spasm? I asked to see my blood work and x-rays.

The pulmonologist, Dr. Wayneinder Anand, who originally diagnosed me with this rare disease and was one of my biggest blessings of 2015 also ended up being one of my biggest blessings of 2016. Prior to releasing me from his care, he taught me how to read my blood work and x-rays to identify if I was relapsing. So when I saw the results, I knew what was happening. Had he not taken the time to teach me how to read my reports, I would have continued to suffocate and not understood what was happening. My health care would have been in the hands of others. Dr. Wayneinder Anand gave me the knowledge to identify when I was having an issue, and the steps I needed to take to self-stabilize, until I was in the care of another pulmonologist.

When I reflect on Two Thousand and Sixteen I can’t help but smile. This year was filled with trials and errors, laughter, sadness and happiness, but it made me stronger. This year taught me how to be grateful for the life I have. It taught me to make the conscious decision to be optimistic and happy every day. Because when you change your perspective, you change your life.

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canada · family · inspire · inspired · life · quote · selfhelp · Uncategorized

Disconnected

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Recently, I’ve found it difficult to connect with people on a human level. I can’t remember the last time I had a genuinely honest conversation with someone, and i’m growing tired of the superficial conversations I have with people. You know, the ones where we instinctively start to discuss whose life is more difficult. It’s like we’re in a rat race, constantly trying to outdo the next person. When the truth is, we are all just going through the motions of life and the growing pains that come along with it.

If I am being completely honest, I have a great life. I work on my flaws and improve on my weaknesses. I work really hard on growing myself into the person I want to be. However, I feel ashamed to let the world know how happy I am. Why? Because people become jealous and envious that you seem so “put together”. They don’t see the behind the scenes hard work I’ve put into the person I am evolving into. They only find reason to be resentful.

I have a very positive outlook on my life. I focus on the positives, and understand that the problem areas can be worked on. I know that nothing in life is constant and I am okay with that. But I don’t spend each day feeling angry about the pain points in my life. I accept them and roll with the punches, and that works for me. It allows me to stay focused and evolve into the person I want to become.

However, I constantly live in a fear that if I let people know how happy I am that they will find me un-relatable. When the truth is, the only difference between us is the outlook we have on life. I don’t see the grey areas in my life as problems. I see them as opportunities to grow. My approach to the grey areas is to accept them and look for a solution, if there isn’t one, I will sit on the problem until I can find one. When I advise people on how to solve problems in their lives, they find my approach too harsh, or they will give me a list of 100 reasons why the solution won’t work. They make the choice to stay pessimistic, and I can feel myself being sucked into the vacuum that is their negativity. And my outlook on life isn’t negative, so I can’t relate. And in turn there is a disconnect between my world and me.

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Being A Girl

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Sometimes, I feel as though women travel through life with invisible boulders attached to their shoulders. As a woman, it doesn’t matter what we do, we carry the weight of everyones judgments. We are taught that we must dress a particular way, style our hair, always have groomed nails, etc The list is endless, and the expectations are exhausting to meet, yet we continue to try and live up to societies impossible standards.
Aside from the pressures society places on women, I think being born a woman is a blessing – at least thats how I feel about my life. Women encompass a strength that no other species on the planet possesses, and society teaches us to be insecure to try and suppress us, limit us and prevent us from achieving great success.
I used to be a very insecure person. I was always a tomboy. I liked sports clothes, and playing outside more than dressing up. Dressing up was never my thing. However,, one year in summer school I decided that I wanted to wear dresses and tank tops. People would ask me “why are you dressed like that? They weren’t used to seeing me in girly clothes. I felt insecure, and lied that my cousin made me dress more girly. The truth was, I wanted to wear those clothes, but I didn’t know how to break free from my peers opinions of how I should dress. Instead of saying what I felt, I lied and during the regular school year, I went back to wearing jerseys and track pants.
It wasn’t until years later that I decided to break-free from peoples opinions of how I should dress. I felt very lost and felt like I needed to find my identity. I went through a phase where I dyed my hair every colour of the rainbow. My motivation for doing this was to teach myself that the opinions of others didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered in my life was my opinion of myself. During this process, I had many people approach me to tell me they either loved my hair or hated it. Regardless of the opinion I received, I refused to let myself internalize it. Instead I made a conscious choice to only focus on my opinion. The extra noise of external judgments disappeared from my mind, and I felt free.

While I am grateful for having the strength of a woman and possessing the ability to fight for myself. I wish I didn’t have to. I wish I was free to be myself from the get go. I wish society taught me that it was okay to dress and be myself. I wish girls were taught to be free the same way boys are. However, with that said I am also grateful for the extra step that I had to overcome as a woman, because it made me stronger.

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