The Choice is Always Yours

Life is full of choices. Every decision you make paves the way for your journey. By thinking you don't have a choice, you get stuck. Stuck in this position of thinking that you can't to anything to change the situation you're in. People who often think they don't have a choice start playing the victim card. They begin to believe that they are unable to do anything about the situation, as if they were doomed from the beginning (Kaiser 240). For example, math has never been my strong suit in school. For the longest time I would barely get by in math class and walk out frustrated. I consider myself a pretty smart person, and the fact that I couldn't pick up the concepts in math really made me upset. But since I've been in advanced math classes majority of my life, naturally nobody believed me. I was certain that I was just always going to be bad at math, that no teacher, no amount of studying, and no amount of Khan Academy was going to help me. I now know that I just have to work a little bit harder than everyone else to catch up. I had to make the decision to help myself.

But things like this happen to everyone, not just people who are bad at math. Everyone has areas in their lives where they feel stuck. But even while we are in these periods, we are constantly still growing. "The goal is to look at your life as ever expanding, constantly presenting you opportunities to become more of who you really are" (Kaiser 241). If you see your life as ever expanding you will realize that in every situation you have more choices than you originally thought. I'm still in the process of trying to work this concept into my everyday thinking. Especially with school, chats, and theater. It can be scary at first to realize that your choices steer the direction your life goes. But remember there aren't any "wrong" choices, every choice you make will help you learn more about yourself and what you need. New choices=new results. 

Question: How do you decide when you need to make big choices? Do you follow your gut? Do you ask a friend?  

KAISER, SHANNON. SELF-LOVE EXPERIMENT: Fifteen Principles for Becoming More Kind, Compassionate, and... Accepting of Yourself. PENGUIN BOOKS, 2017.

Celebrate your struggles

Many people believe in the mantra of "Everything happens for a reason", yet those people still get frustrated when negative things happen to them. The idea of celebrating the struggles that you encounter throughout your lifetime are discussed in Principle 7. Kaiser builds on the idea that things don't happen to you, they happen for you. The things that happen to you, and the things that will happen in the future, are part of a bigger plan. It's the idea that the good, and the bad things that occur to you shapes you into the person you are (Kaiser 255). As I talked about previously, people tend to only focus on the negative events in their life and while it is important to let those things go, it is also important to realize their purpose. If things in our life were always perfect, would we really appreciate them as much?

Many people who go through struggles have the mindset that they are on their own, but everyone struggles, some more than others but still. By reading this chapter I came to the realization that we grow as people when we experience struggles. By letting this idea integrate into my life, I was able to trust that fate would steer me in the right direction, instead of trying to control things that I had no power over. This makes everything in my life less stressful, school especially. Also struggling gives you the motive and opportunity to make changes in your life. "The only one who doesn't struggle is the one who doesn't grow. So if you are struggling right now. see it as a terrific sign-celebrate your struggle (Kaiser 255). Personally, I am still working on seeing the good for every situation; I know it can be hard because at the time the bad might outweigh the good. But in the end that struggles that you face make you a stronger person and gives you the chance to grow. You have to ask yourself, "What good is coming out of the current situations that are troubling me?"
Question: What's a time that something good came out a bad situation?

KAISER, SHANNON. SELF-LOVE EXPERIMENT: Fifteen Principles for Becoming More Kind, Compassionate, and... Accepting of Yourself. PENGUIN BOOKS, 2017.

Trust Your Dreams

Excuses. We make excuses for ourselves when we are too scared to go after something we want, if we are unsure in our abilities we make excuses. This fear blocks us from doing what we dream of, it stops us from reaching our full potential. If you tell yourself an excuse often enough, you will start to believe it. But Kaiser wants us to identify that these excuses aren't real, we are just creating ways of not making ourselves vulnerable in situations that we are uncomfortable with. All excuses are based off one thing: fear. We hold ourselves back and look for something to blame, instead of realizing that the problem is not believing in our abilities (Kaiser 268). I realized that I was making excuses for myself and that was holding me back from my aspirations. For every excuse I had to find a way to place it with a loving thought that worked in opposition. This gave me a lot of motivation to stop being scared to face my fears.

For example, I dance. I absolutely love dancing. I would consistently make the excuse that the reason I wouldn't go "full out" was because I wasn't able to. I would compare myself to the people around me, and that's the reason I didn't try. But I soon realized that I was scared, I was scared to put my whole heart in it and then have someone tell me it was bad. You can't let fear stop you, it has to stand as motivation to prove yourself wrong. "Your fear-based thought are blocking you from reaching self-love, but when you approach these excuses with loving thoughts, you will see forward momentum and more positive results" (Kaiser 269). We have to see our dreams as more important than the excuses we make for ourselves. I was able to apply this to dance, I only focus on me and the best I can be. I put myself out there because that's the only way I will ever improve. You can't move forward if you're always focusing on what can drag you down.

Question: What's an excuse you make for yourself? 

KAISER, SHANNON. SELF-LOVE EXPERIMENT: Fifteen Principles for Becoming More Kind, Compassionate, and... Accepting of Yourself. PENGUIN BOOKS, 2017.

Sweet Surrender

Self-love focuses on gathering the positive energy and incorporating in into your life. But it's also about getting rid of negative energy. "To get what you want, you have to let go of what you don't want" (Kaiser 242).  This principle encompasses the idea of needing to drop the negative things that surround and replace them with things that make you happy. People find ease at letting positive things in, but tend to struggle in the process of letting go. We always are trying to find constant control in our lives, and ironically it's the things we never can control. Letting go is the only way to expel the things in your life that drag you down.

Destination disaster. Best described as feeling as if your life isn't on track with what you originally planned. When the expectations that you make aren't met and you feel like a failure. You need to let of go of who you think you should be, and embrace who you are meant to be (Kaiser 244). Personally throughout my life I have always had high expectations for myself. Don't get me wrong maintaining high expectations is good, they help in achieving your overall goals. But there's a point where that bar becomes harmful not helpful. I needed to learn to let go of the negative energy I was feeding myself.  Inside of my source there was a mantra that I found helpful to repeat to myself. (See picture). Not only do you have to let go of the internal negative energy, but also external negative energy. Things like people or activities that make you unhappy need to go. Especially because the New Year is coming up many people see it as a fresh start. Letting go of people is especially hard, I have had to do it multiple times. But if someone that surrounds you brings only negative energy to the table, maybe it's time for you to walk away. Letting go and allowing the universe to steer is something I  have to continue to work on. But I know eventually it will make me a more accepting and open person. 

Question: What helps you generate more positive energy in your life? 

KAISER, SHANNON. SELF-LOVE EXPERIMENT: Fifteen Principles for Becoming More Kind, Compassionate, and... Accepting of Yourself. PENGUIN BOOKS, 2017.

Not functioning, but flourishing.

The process of self-love and acceptance is not something one can achieve in mere days or even months. Learning to become more compassionate, kind and accepting towards yourself is a life-long journey. In the current world, it has become easy to lose self-confidence and feel as if you aren't living up to an expectation for yourself.  I used to believe there were necessary steps one had to take in order to feel better about yourself. As if there was a bulleted list that every person who had achieved inner peace had followed previously. But the journey to self-love doesn't have instructions or a clear map. Everyone has to find their own path on the way to self-acceptance.  One problem that always stood out to me was, how does any of my self-reflection really change the outcomes of my life?  My answer was contained in principle 8, "When you nurture the inside, the outside will flourish" (Kaiser 257). The idea of focusing on myself was new to me. I would always worry about other ideas, leaving me with little time to actually prioritize my needs. Kaiser mentions that when you improve your relationship with yourself, your "outer world" will begin to improve as a result. She also mentions the idea that you attract what you put out into the world (258).

My journey to self-love will differ from everyone who has experienced their own journey. The insight provided by Kaiser has allowed me to see that in order to see a change in my "outer world", that I need to make changes internally first. Using this information I can guide myself to make choices that can make me happier in the long run. Kaiser has allowed me to ask myself powerful questions that help me reach self-love. I like to write down my answers to the thought-provoking questions that Kaiser inquires, I keep them around so I can see how I can work on reaching my goal of achieving genuine acceptance.

Do you agree with Kaiser's idea of needing to be content with your "inner self" before you can be fully content with your "outer world"?

KAISER, SHANNON. SELF-LOVE EXPERIMENT: Fifteen Principles for Becoming More Kind, Compassionate, and... Accepting of Yourself. PENGUIN BOOKS, 2017.