Author: mindsetrevolution83

Is your salmon shirt gay?

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My boyfriend asked me if I’d heard of the color term ‘salmon’ being applied to women’s clothing, and I replied that the term was invented strictly for men’s clothing for these situations:
Guy 1: Hey, bro, why you wearing a pink shirt?
Guy 2: Nah, dude, this is salmon. Not gay
He then proceeded to tell me that two guys at his work had almost the same conversation except for the gay part, but it’s pretty much implied.  It’s been ingrained in our heads that pink is for girls and blue is for boys, so much so that some guys have gay-panic at the thought of being accused of being one simply for wearing a pink shirt.  And some people thought it was stupid Target was no longer separating their toys by gender.  That stuff stays with you and it is not so simple as letting boys be boys and so forth.  The sexes will always be different, but each individual should have the choice to choose how they portray themselves.  The same goes for race.  Each race has their own cultural differences and we need to stop spouting the mantra of ‘we are all the same,’ because that doesn’t celebrate diversity and assumes someone had the same experiences as you.  However, that doesn’t mean every individual of that race encompasses those cultural differences, for they still can choose how to portray themselves.
And then there’s the gay part.  To be called gay is to be called weak, inferior, and different.  And in this society, to be different is unnatural and so some of us shun that term.  Society has always shunned  the different because different means anarchy and the unknown.  To be different means society has to conform to you, so what does society do when they fear you and the unknown?  They make you conform to them.  It is an innate fear, but to recognize this fear is to recognize we can rise above it.  Sometimes, you don’t have to change the world, you only have to acknowledge the cultural, gender, and sexual-orientation differences that exist and know they apply to a group, but not individuals.

The Cult of Worship

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As humans, we’re hard-wired to idolize and worship deities and people alike.  We worship movie stars and idolize religious figures because it makes us feel safe.  We’ve been doing it for ages and some of us have never questioned why. In a world where everything is so unsure and nothing is guaranteed, the belief in something larger than ourselves gives us refuge from the unknown. If we can believe hard enough, we may be rewarded, and it is this believe that makes us fashion gods out of men and worship gods that have existed for centuries.  Worship is everywhere: churches, concerts, celebrities, and whomever else we choose to idolize.  We want to hold someone higher than us, so we can cast under their dominion because we have been ingrained to be followers.

There is nothing wrong with expressing your joy for something, but when you come to worship it, be careful what you do.  When you worship and place someone on the level of God, they can do no wrong.  They are unquestionable.  And they are to be obeyed.  And that is why many of us seek out fame and power; to try to attain this status.  Worship is a powerful tool because it means you are humbling yourself before some one and in their complete obedience.  Be careful who you obey.  I believe in God, but I do not believe in organized religion or worship.  I believe my God would believe in you even when you don’t believe in him,  because he is always there.  In that sense, why do you need to worship him unless he was a fickle God?

For me, we worship because we are a fearful race who do not want to incur the wrath of those who govern us.  For those who have little power and control over their lives, it is a way to exercise what little we have in hopes to gain a bit of favor.  We worship because that is what we’ve always done.  This is why it is so easy for religiously fanatic groups to become cults.  If you place one person above question and give them free range, you are in danger of becoming a cult.  You can believe in God or not.  You can worship or not.  You can idolize or not, but know that you always retain the right to question.  For when you start to question, you start to unravel the mysteries of life.

Unconditional Vs Conditional Love

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Some people think a relationship with mutual unconditional love is true love, but it isn’t.  So what is the difference between them?  Unconditional love means that you’ll continue to love a person no matter what happens.  Conditional love means you’ll only love them if they follow your rules.  Sometimes, we get the two mixed up and think that we have to love our romantic partner unconditionally, so we keep taking abuse to prove how much we love them.  That is not true love.  True love means loving someone so much that you want to give them the best, even if it means leaving them.  If you truly love someone, you will know that they are growing as a person and that may mean they can grow more without you and you can let them.

What happens if you stay in a unconditional love relationship?  It’s not healthy.  You should not love someone unconditionally because that it what’s been handed down to you.  The only time you should ever love anyone unconditionally is if you have a child.  Other than that, to have a respectful and nurturing relationship, you must change the terms of your relationship and your love to conditional.  Oftentimes, those who are looking for unconditional love from a romantic relationship are seeking out the unconditional love they are lacking from their parental relationship.  It is not healthy to confuse the two and believe that someone will love you no matter what you do.  What this does is set the relationship up for failure because either party believes they can do whatever they want and still be loved.

It’s okay to feel guilty if you can’t offer unconditional love because that’s what you’ve been taught your whole life to give, but do not feel guilty for leaving.  When you leave, you  are allowing them to grow and allowing yourself the respect that you deserve.  If you stay knowing that you are being disrespected, you help to lower your own self esteem and it becomes a viscous cycle.  Love like you’ve never been hurt, but also love with respect for yourself.

From broken homes to broken relationships

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I came across an article about kids who came from broken homes, where many expressed feelings of not being able to connect with others and yet having an urge to form relationships with them.  It’s sad to acknowledge this, but this is a segment of society that should be noted, for they oftentimes lack the love and comfort of youth that many take for granted.  Because they had no security and/or sense of belonging, they would question themselves and their self-worth.  Most of these individuals went on to become functioning members of society, but some expressed the desire just to be loved even though they knew they didn’t have the skills to deal with relationships.

How can you allow someone to love you if no one else has shown you love as a child?  To know that you are not good enough causes you to rethink every relationship and every move you make.  Are you doing enough?  Is this the end?  Are you disposable?  I think these people can love like no other, but some of them cannot allow themselves to be loved because they think they are not worthy of being loved.  Because of this, they may sabotage relationships, retreat back into themselves, and recreate their early childhood again.  Then, they may ask why no one loves them when they are actually seeking out the unconditional love of a parent and not the conditional love of a romantic partner.

If they can grasp that, they may be able to stop projecting onto their romantic partner and see what they are doing to cause the demise of their relationships.  Secondly, they will need to start loving themselves in order to know they are capable and worthy of receiving love.  To do so, they must forgive themselves what they don’t know and deal with the trauma of the past.  If they can start accepting who they are, they will be able to view relationships in a different light.  A parent’s unconditional love is such a strong beacon that it calls to us our whole lives, and when it is absent, it leaves us in the dark on how we should care for ourselves and what love we can accept from others.

28 is when girls lower their standards

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I was telling my boyfriend that when girls hit 28, they suddenly realize that they are two years from being 30 and they are still unmarried and childless, so they lower their standards to reach that goal.  His sister was telling him that she knows this chick who is intelligent, beautiful, accomplished, and yet, she was pining away for this guy who didn’t really want to be with her who didn’t quite have his life figured out.  I asked, “is she 28?” He texted her that question and she texted back yes.  Of course, she’s 28, because that’s when girls realize their options are running out.

Go to the bar and just ask random girls their ages. If they’re 28, you’ve got a way better shot with them.  Here’s the part I get all touch-feely: girls feel the pressure of society to be married and have kids to be successful, thus they greatly feel the age limit of 35 child-bearing years pushing down on them.  Because of this, they sometimes aggressively push for it at the magically designated age of 28.  My boyfriend was like, ‘does that apply to you because you’re Asian?’  I told him no, because we get married at 15, so I’m way overdue anyways.  And I just want to say for the record, settling is not that bad.  Oftentimes, girls get this idea into their head that they are going to meet this perfect guy who intuitively understands them, and that isn’t the case.

Girls think that guys think the same as them, so when they are offended a potential suitor did something, they think it was done on purpose, so they cut them off immediately.  Don’t be so quick to judge guys because they do not think the same as women.  You should always have standards on which to judge a potential mate, but also know that they can be flexible.  In the first stages of dating, a girl wants a man who shows just the right amount of attention: not too much and not too little, so they know they are liked, but not too much so that there is still chase.  A lot of guys don’t realize this, and the ones that do know how to play the game play it much better than most girls do.

You spent your whole life wondering if he really likes you when you should ask if you really like yourself.  If you like yourself, the right one will eventually come around, just give him a chance.

How to be an elite sports player

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Okay, so there are some players out there who just rock no matter what, but then you encounter those out there where the game gets mental.  Of course, to become an elite athlete, you have to have innate abilities, practice, and grow, but  practice doesn’t include anything mental, and that’s where a lot of players who are lacking in this area can improve.  People have already devised various ways to mentally focus and visualize success on the field, but they don’t necessarily attack the core of the issue.  The core of the issue is that a good portion of the game is mental and if you can shut out the rest of the world, you’re fine, but if you can’t, you need to work on your mental as well as your physical abilities.

Oftentimes, we see a brilliant player spiral downward such as Tiger Woods after a personal scandal.  Sometimes, players beat themselves up for losses and mistakes that occurred years ago and this memory still eats at them.  Mentally, they have not left these things out when they are playing, so it affects their  time on the field.  First, they must learn to see mistakes as learning opportunities, for as long as they hold on the memory of it being bad, they will always feel bad about it.  If they can let go of these mistakes, they will free themselves from the guilt of it.  As long as they attach a reassuring thought with the memory, they will be able to feel differently about their mistakes and see them in a positive light.

So you’ve probably heard the story on the Chapelle Show where Charlie Murphy plays basketball with Prince and Prince turns out to be phenomenal.  I believe this is because overall, Prince believes in himself so much that he can step over hurdles that most athletes face on a daily basis.  Because he believes in himself so much, he exudes charisma and doesn’t second-guess himself on the court.  To achieve this level, athletes must hold themselves to higher standards in their personal lives and live by them.  If they are able to do this, they will also gain similar beliefs in themselves and it will translate to their sport.  When a person is sure of who they are in their personal lives and does not fear mistakes, they are able to hold their head high in their personal lives and in the public court.

Interventions are best served warm

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Everybody loves a good intervention.  I mean, have you seen A&E’s Intervention?  We do interventions because we care for the person and want them to change, but when we run an intervention, we are dealing with the symptoms and not the source.   Oftentimes, I watch the show and I see the family members and friends reading statements about how it has affected them.  A lot of times, this simply does not get through to them.  The best of them may feel guilty, but that will never get someone to stop what they’re doing.  If you don’t address the source of the issue, you’re just treating the symptoms and the problem will always be there.  A lot of times, the source is something that occurred years past or even something no one knows because it has been suppressed.

You have to realize that the majority of these people are in deep denial and use other things as an outlet because they can’t emotionally express themselves.  When they can’t emotionally express themselves, they delve deeper into their addiction because it helps numb them.  Of course, some people are physically addicted, but the majority of people I see with severe drinking and drug issues are those who refuse to deal with their past.  If you try to talk to them about actions to fix their problem, it will not help at all. When you talk about actions, they are addressing symptoms, but not the source of the pain.  You must address the pain to begin an honest conversation with them so they can acknowledge their pain.

So you see how reading statements of their addiction affecting you may not be the most effective?  A good way to start is ask them how they FEEL.  Tell them that you see they are hurting and relate back to them what is happening such as I see you’re hurting and you’re drinking every night because you want to drown it out, but it’s always there.  And you wake up every day and pretend everything is okay and put on a smile so that no one will know just so you can survive, but I know.  I can see the hurt in your eyes.  When you can relate back to them the pain and that you see what they are doing and how it affects them, that is a much more effective solution to addressing the real issue. When you can address the hurt, they are forced to confront it and talk about their feelings.

They are not going to change overnight and they may not understand at first, but the biggest step in the road to recovery is acknowledging the hurt.  If you can start having them face the actual pain, they will lift themselves out of denial and be able to address the source and then the symptoms.

Changing your past

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I’ve written about this very topic already, but I feel as if I need to delve deeper.  All of us have cringe-worthy pasts or memories from our pasts.  For some of us, they still haunt us.  And in a few cases, we are stuck in our past because we cannot escape the shadow of it.  Let me clarify, for I’m not talking about people who refuse to deal with their past and are in denial, but people who have processed their past, but just can’t let it go.  The way we are wired, we tend to hold on to bad things because that’s what we do.  We have to learn how to change this process and a lot of how we think because it is not productive to our growth. It is completely natural what we’ve been doing for centuries, but it is not conducive to our souls.

What I mean is that oftentimes, our reactions and feelings are innate and something the majority of us would do without being told because we don’t know any better.  If little children are molested, they tend to not tell anyone.  When someone dies, we blame ourselves for not being there for them.  When we hurt someone, we continue to carry the hurt.  We need to teach children about sexual assault and that it is okay to tell someone.  When someone dies, we need to acknowledge our own guilt and express the times we were there for them.  When we hurt someone, we need to process it and move on, but that’s harder said than done because no one has told us how to move on.  All these things are hard-wired into who we are, and it will take years before we can change how we think.

Here is how you can start.  First off, if you haven’t processed the past, do so.  That’s another blog altogether.  Once you have processed it, know that you can never change the past.  The past is what it is, but that is not the important thing.  The important thing is how we FEEL about the past.  We don’t carry the past with us, but we carry how we FEEL about it and that is what prevents us from growing.  When you can change how you FEEL about the past, you will be able to let it go.  You need to know that it is not healthy to keep carrying these things.  It does you or anyone else no good to continue beating yourself up for actions that occurred in the past.  In fact, the memory of it will continue to drag you down.  If you can acknowledge that you are worthy of growth and a clean slate, begin to change how you feel about the past.

When you recall a bad memory, you feel guilty, shameful, or embarrassed of it. These are the memories we tend to hold on to the most.  When we do this, we cannot pass the memory and it eats us alive.  What you need to do is attach a good thought with it every time you bring up the memory.  If someone died before you could be there the last time, remind yourself that you shared a great memory with them another time.  This changes how you feel about the memory.  Instead of feeling shame, you feel joy at the memory and it fades into your consciousness.  You haven’t changed the memory, but you’ve changed how you feel about it.  This also works for things you’ve recently done.  If you’ve asked a girl out and she turned you down, you may feel embarrassed by it.  Remind yourself of the courage you had to ask her out and the memory will no longer contain embarrassment for you.  This will allow you to be able not be suppressed by the memory and be able to ask other girls out.

We’ve been hard-wired to react a particular way and the funny thing is that we only think we are doing it, when in fact, all of humanity generally reacts the same way.  We need to retrain how we react and feel about ourselves so we can continue our journey.  If we are constantly ashamed of our pasts, we will never be able to fully embrace who we currently are and move into the future.  This starts with the knowledge that we deserve to be happy and have a clean slate.

Some people just love drama

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You’ve seen it on social media where someone keeps posting about terrible a relationship in their life, but they do nothing about it.  They swing from saying their mate is never around and uses all their money to spouting about how they love them and how they only have one life to spend their happiness.  They ask why they constantly find themselves in this situation and they never look at themselves.  It’s you.  You’re causing all the drama because you crave it.  Some people have no choice but to be drawn into it, while others will periodically have drama-filled episodes, but if someone constantly posts about it, it’s because they want the drama in their life.  If you recognize a pattern that always involves you and don’t change it, you must be getting some value out of staying.

I’m not talking about abusive relationships where someone slowly tears the other down so they can’t leave, but people who stay in tumultuous relationships for the sake of the drama.  A sense of drama sometimes creates balance in your life and it causes you to see where your priorities are, but having too much of it can throw you off.  Those who are drawn to it only know it as their norm.  They live for the high and reassurance that it brings.  Some of these people start drama to regain a sense of normalcy.  This can happen when a couple starts to argue out of nowhere.  It blows up and draws in others.  Their real feelings come out and other things that they’ve been bottling up.  They run through a gamut of feelings ranging from annoyed resentment to mild anger to full-on rage to guilt and to loneliness. It is a circle and it comes full circle every time.

What happens is that a couple fights and goes through this cycle, and they seek the reassurance at the end of it that the other party really does care for them and that they will not do it again, only for it to happen again.  They crave these affirmations, but can only get them through this cycle.  These relationships usually become abusive and thus it is harder to get out, but those who crave drama will continually seek out these type of relationships because they don’t know any other way of expressing themselves.  And so, they continue posting about how terrible their mate is while everyone else thinks about how crazy they are.  Drama really equates to attention.  You receive negative and then positive attention from your mate and attention from other that you elicit through posts that make you out to be the martyr in the relationship.  You don’t care what kind of attention you get as long as it is attention.  Examine why you need this attention and it will usually hearken back to not receiving attention as a child.  That’s pretty broad, but I’ve seen this happen a million times.