ASU Alumni Association launches new personal development series

The ASU Alumni Association is dedicated to creating programs and opportunities for alumni to learn and grow while also supporting and highlighting …

* This article was originally published here

30 Little Reminders To Nourish You On Your Healing Journey

1. Your presence is your power. When you connect with present moment awareness, you tap into endless creative flow and allow inspired actions to clear your path.

2. You are lovable. This is the most basic human truth. And it is true whether you believe it or not.

3. When you look to another as a source of love, that person also becomes a source of fear. Love them and let them love you. But you must find that love within yourself first. Otherwise, the fear of losing that person will prevent any love from shining through.

4. When you judge others, you are really judging yourself. Life is a mirror. Next time you find yourself in judgment, meet yourself with compassion. Ask, What is the purpose of this judgment and how is it trying to protect me?

5. Every sentence of your story is a lesson and a blessing. Your obstacles are opportunities, and rejection is merely redirection toward your highest self.

6. Your triggers are your teachers. Open your heart to their lessons. Allow them to guide your unhealed wounds into the light.

7. Self-love is your freedom medicine. Compassion opens the door to your healing.

8. Breath is boss. Your breath is with you regardless of whether or not you tune in to its presence. Become aware of your breath and each inhale and exhale will guide you toward peace.

9. Prescribe mindful movement daily. The physical body stores unprocessed emotional energy. Moving mindfully allows you to tap into these unprocessed layers and create space for fresh prana or life force.

10. Sing your heart out. Open the vocal channels from deep in your belly to reawaken the power of your voice and remember the strength of your truth. Remember, it doesn’t have to be in tune.

11. Forgiveness is not a gift you give others. Forgiveness is a gift you give yourself. Forgiveness reawakens your power. When you let go of the illusion that the past could have been different, you can begin to show up for the present.

12. Feel all the seasons. You hold the strength to feel every layer and every ripple of deep feeling. Honor all the seasons of your emotions through deep feeling.

13. You are the dreamer of your own dreams. You are a sovereign being. Your dreams are your own to create. You can draw outside of boxes. You can write a new story of what success looks like.

14. Your body is intrinsic genius. Steep in stillness and you will flow intuitively toward healing.

15. It is safe for you to be seen in your fullest expression. When you allow yourself to be seen, you empower yourself and countless others around you. The world doesn’t need you to be more like someone else, the world needs you.

16. Your path to healing nourishes the soul of the collective. Keep going, keep growing. The world needs your freedom medicine.

17. Inspiration is your invitation to embody your soul’s truth. When you act on inspiration and creativity, you are guided closer to your soul purpose.

18. You cannot choose your thoughts, but you can choose the relationship you cultivate with them. When you befriend those thoughts that are keeping you stuck, you are liberated from them and empowered to move through the unconscious blocks standing between yourself and your goals.

19. If you want to move faster, slow down. The healing happens in stillness. The alchemy flows when you acknowledge your resistance and judgments with compassion and allow them to uncover the unconscious patterns holding you back.

20. Your freedom lies outside the womb of conformity. You are not bound by the edges of this world. Color outside the lines.

21. Burnout is just feedback showing you there is a better way of being. Invite this redirection. Write a new story of what leadership looks like. Lean into grace and inclusion. Let go of fear and competition.

22. A river of love flows through you. It does not waver . Whether or not you choose to flow, it is always there. In any moment, you can step back and choose again. Love is always available.

23. Your thoughts create your reality. You manifest what you believe. Your thoughts are messages to the universe flooded with vibrational energy. You attract the vibrations that you project. Your thoughts are never idle. The universe is always working.

24. Your beliefs are just thoughts on a soundtrack that you have chosen to play on repeat. You can tune in to tracks of compassion at any moment. When you nourish the narratives that awaken your authentic power, you allow your truth to elevate the world.

25. Your energy is your point of attraction. You are a magnet for vibrations that align with the frequency you project. You have the power to both honor your emotions as they are and shift how you feel to a higher vibration in any moment.

26. You can be compassionate and still maintain boundaries. Boundaries honor and reflect your innate self-worth. When you are truthful to your yeses and nos, you are kinder to yourself and of greater service to the world.

27. You can choose to move through the world guided by fear or love. In every moment, you have a choice. You can respond to fear with more fear, or you can guide your fears into the light through a lens of love.

28. Turn inward. You are already home. You are already whole. You are the love you cannot find. You are the love you’ve been looking for.

29. Suffering occurs when you become a martyr to your thoughts. When you are willing to question your thoughts and see them as untrue, you are liberated from them and you are liberated from your suffering.

30. You are brave for doing the work. You are strong for asking for help. Remember always that you are worthy of healing. Just as you are in this moment. You are worthy. You deserve peace.

* This article was originally published here

Where Would We Be If Things Had Gone Differently?

I turned 22 on December 23rd, 2019.

It was a great birthday. I didn’t get terribly intoxicated (though I did preemptively celebrate my birthday a week prior and that ended in me coming home and throwing up in a pile of my clean laundry) (Trashy but make it classy). I went to Applebee’s with my friends back home, whom I haven’t seen since summer.

We’re all in that part of our lives where we’re slowly transitioning into full-time adults. Halflings. Half-children, half-men, and half-women, clinging to our mothers and fathers as we slowly lower our toes into the water.

Some of us live at home, some of us scrape by in tiny apartments, some of us are in college, some of us fight with our parents, and some of us can drink in bars. We work hard and we have a good time because we all know it’s coming. One day, we will become completely wrapped up in ourselves and the lives we’ve built. Most of us will have kids, others will focus on our careers, and some (though I don’t like to think of it) will live far, far away and we’ll only see each other, if we’re lucky, every few years when we can shoot the shit and mutter to ourselves every other sentence, “Wow, time flies.”

As we were sitting in that Applebee’s in 2019, my mind was running through the typical train of thought one follows when they’re turning a year older. You look back on where you started, you look towards where you’re going, and if you’re lucky, you’re excited about the future. I was truly excited. I remember thinking how good it felt to be 22. I had my friends, my shoebox apartment, my budding career, and a new year. I was young, I was healthy, and I felt incredibly lucky.

The day is February 20th, 2021 and hOlY fUcKiNg ShIt.

It’s strange to think back to moments just before our youth was stolen. That’s what it feels like sometimes, and I know I’m not the only one who struggles with this. I’m 23 now, and sometimes I can’t help but feel like the time in our lives that we were promised would be the greatest was stripped from us. A whole year of our lives has vanished into the new world order.

Where would we be if the world hadn’t fucked up?

Where would I be at 23?

Since March of 2020, the whole world has undergone one thrilling, continuous, collective existential crisis. The plans we made, the future we pictured, it doesn’t exist anymore. We’re a generation of fucked up individuals, and we’re the ones who have to clean up this mess.

When the pandemic started, I was finishing up my last semester of college. Once I had finished in May and my lease had ended on the 31st, I went home to my parents. Where else was I supposed to go? The “real world” that every other adult bragged about being a part of no longer existed.

I stayed with my parents for two months. By that time, we had all gotten used to nothing. Nothing to do, nothing to see, nowhere to go, nowhere to be.

But something had happened that summer. It was the first time in a long time that me and my high school friends were all in the same place with nothing. None of us had jobs, none of us had school, none of us had rent, and all of us were free. When was the last time it was a Wednesday night and all your friends had nothing to do so you decide to fuck around with some beers in your parents’ basement? That was our summer. My parents’ basement. It felt like high school.

Every day there was something stupid to laugh about. We got creative when we got bored, just like when we were 16 years old. It was simple and we were free.

And that’s where I found myself at 23, on December 23rd, of 2020. It was a Wednesday night with nothing to do, nothing to see, nowhere to go, nowhere to be. So we decided to fuck around with some beers in my parents’ basement. Strange to think a year ago we were at Applebee’s.

I don’t know. Was our youth stolen? Even in good company, there is this cloud of uncertainty. Where will we be once the world is free? Will we get back to our lives as halflings? Will we be allowed to slowly transition or were we just dumped into the water without any forewarning? And how long will it be until we’re allowed to go back? Is there any going back? I don’t think there is. I think we’re a generation of lost youth.

And I look at my friends a year later. A year from who we used to be.

Some of us still live at home, some of us still scrape by in tiny apartments, some of us are still in college, some of us still fight with our parents, and none of us can drink in bars.

But we find ourselves in my parents’ basement on a Wednesday night with nothing to do, nothing to see, nowhere to go, nowhere to be. Attempting to live our twenties in the new world order, clinging desperately to our youth. Seeing a world we wish we hadn’t seen. This is the new world. It’s our real world. It’s different from most. And I still can’t help but ask myself, Where would I be at twenty-three?

* This article was originally published here

An Open Letter to Sober-Curious People

The day before I quit drinking, I would have told you that I did not have a problem. I did not look like someone who had a problem. And yet, I wish someone (anyone) would have pulled me aside and confirmed what I knew deep down. My drinking was hurting me.

Ever since that morning of my last hangover ever, I have been committed to sobriety. Deeply. Every single day.

I also decided that part of my work in this lifetime is to tell others what I wish someone had told me. So, with that, here is my letter to you if you are questioning your drinking.

Dear Sober-Curious Person,

If you are curious about sobriety, this is for you. If you are managing or negotiating with yourself (or those around you) when it comes to your drinking, this is for you. If you have had the thought, even once, that maybe you need to stop, this is for you.

The first thing I want you to know is that you don’t have to hurt more than you already do. You don’t have to be in unimaginable pain in order to stop hurting yourself. You can just decide to stop hurting.

You don’t have to be more of a hot mess in order to be worthy of sobriety. You don’t need to be more of a trainwreck in order to “prove” that you need to get sober. Again, your life is your own. You get to just decide if you want to.

Sobriety isn’t better if you suffer more; you don’t need to “earn” a redemption arc through hurting yourself or messing up your life. It doesn’t have to be that dramatic. You can just stop hurting.

If you’re curious, that might be a sign.

If you’re working at managing it, that might be a sign.

If you’re reading about it or listening to podcasts about it or talking to friends about it, that might also be a sign.

And if you’re fighting to justify that I’m not talking to you, that might also be a sign.

The sign that you need to quit drinking doesn’t always come in the form of blackout binges. Your drinking might not be threatening your career or finances or relationships (now or ever). Maybe your sign comes from the dull shame of thinking to yourself, “Not again.”

Sobriety isn’t always light and easy. Some days it is a slog and you’ll wish you could just give up. Don’t. Because you are worth not being in pain.

You will still have fun. There will be parties. There will be celebrations and connection. You will still have your friends, your family, but most of all you will have yourself. And the people you lose along the way, who can’t stand that you are holding up a mirror to what they might also know deep down inside about themselves. Let them go if you need to. What you lose in sobriety isn’t always painless, especially if you’re holding on tightly. But what you gain is so much more meaningful.

Most of all, I want you to know that you can let go of regret and shame. You can forgive yourself for where you’ve been and find a new path forward that looks and feels rewarding and authentically you. You can find new things to think about, worry about, and practice in your life.

There is more for you. I am cheering you on so hard.

* This article was originally published here

The Truth Is, You’re Not A Self-Improvement Project

People don’t typically stumble on a path of spirituality and self-improvement because everything is going just fine and dandy in their life.

If you’re like me, you usually go through a slew of events in your life that force you to realize that you need to make a serious change or see a new perspective in order to move through the challenge. You’ve gone through all your usual behaviors that used to work, and now they don’t. You start to realize the problem is you.

So you start to look within and see what’s going on beneath the hood that is causing you to repeat the same unhelpful behavior over and over. You start to learn, either on your own or with the help of a coach or therapist, that you’ve got some areas of your personality you need to work on. It’s difficult work because you have to come face to face with your demons.

But at the same time, it’s empowering. With this work, you realize you have the power to change your reality from a negative one to a positive one by changing yourself. You realize you have control over what you can do to change your life.

Then, once you do move past your demons and your challenges, on a hero’s journey, you feel what it’s like living without these demons. And it feels incredible! It’s like removing grime covering your glasses for most of your life. You didn’t realize that you could live in a world where you could see so clearly.

What happens when you start to change your beliefs and to value yourself more is that you start to create more positive experiences in your life. You start to experience life in the way you always dreamed you would, and everything is in technicolor.

And this is the best part about self-development. The more effort you put into it, the more benefits you will receive. It’s incredibly rewarding. On the other side of healing is joy, creativity, and freedom of expression.

The dark side of this work is lurking underneath. What happens when you start measuring your current self against your future self? This is a slippery slope because the work you do on yourself is never going to end.

Healing is a continuous journey. Now that you’ve experienced the freedom on the other side of pain, you want more of it. That’s when it becomes dangerous to your self-esteem if you’ve had an experience of shame in your upbringing and ancestral lineage. Shame is a driver of perfectionism.

Needing to have everything perfect in yourself in order to succeed or be accepted is actually just shame dressed up.

When I was going into a shame spiral recently and seeing myself as not enough, the first thing I thought to do for some reason was to search for a solution on YouTube. I typed in ‘ feeling not enough.’ I don’t know why I was called to do this, but I quickly realized it was because I was being led by my higher self to find a new perspective to get through this.

Right away a video with the title “Love Yourself — There’s Nothing Wrong with You” stood out. I clicked it. I saw that it was made by therapist and relationship coach, Alan Robarge. What I would hear next would truly shift everything about how I view myself and self-improvement.

With absolute accuracy, Alan proceeded to describe the exact process that I went through with my own shame spiral and exactly how to transcend it.

Alan started off by saying, “You follow the healing path based upon your suffering, it gives you direction and insight, and you go on a journey.” This is the process I described at the beginning of this article, the high you feel from the positive results of healing.

He then went on to describe a shame spiral as, “Now I’m in the rabbit hole and looking for healing modalities outside of myself because I’m not enough.” Check. You can easily detour into a detrimental way of healing yourself because you only see how much left there is to heal in yourself.

Can you relate? You’re constantly working on improving (which is a good thing), but you’re doing it for the wrong reasons. Through the lens of the ‘not good enough’ self.

When you heal because you feel shame, it’s because you don’t feel enough as you are right now. As Alan says, this is actually a form of aggression towards yourself, and I couldn’t agree more.

The underlying belief is: There’s something wrong with me. You can so easily stay in a loop of thinking there’s something wrong with you and set off on a never-ending quest of finding a way to fix it.

With this behavior, you start to see yourself as a project and you no longer see yourself as a human being. It’s like you’re renovating a house with no end date in sight, constantly working and fixing.

Woah.

This distorted thinking is basically saying that you’re less than human because you’ve got shame, anxiety, depression, or trauma. It’s saying you’re broken and need to be fixed. That is not okay.

This doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with you. Even when you do have these afflictions, you still have basic goodness, as Alan says. That’s an important reminder.

You don’t need to disparage your worth.

You don’t need to shame yourself.

If you’re a self-improvement project, you’re not living your life. You’re living your life waiting to become the shiny new version of yourself, thinking you’ll become that person in five years. At that point, you’ll be acceptable. You’ll be loveable when you’re the ‘healed’ version of yourself.

Alan affirms that you’re a lovely and wonderful human being right as you are right now. He even gets so emotional that he almost starts to cry — he explains this concept so well because he’s experienced this too.

Reminder: As a human, you have a right to be okay with who you are.

Stop treating yourself like a self-improvement project, because this skewed view won’t allow you to accept and love yourself as who you are right now.

You’re human.

There’s never going to be a day where you wake up and think “I am 100% healed of my upbringing and every traumatic event in my life.” I used to aim for that type of healing, and quickly realized that it doesn’t work that way. You just get better every day.

Yes, you will need to change in order to move through life and while you’re doing this you can still love yourself. You can get better at working with what you’ve got, instead of trying to ‘fix’ yourself.

As you do this you don’t need to tell yourself that you’re broken or not enough. Instead, you can affirm to yourself that you embody basic goodness no matter what and that you’re okay. Ironically, when you start to accept yourself as you are, that’s what allows you to take the next step to heal. You don’t do it from a place of self-loathing but from a place of self-love.

As Alan Robarge says, “Honey, there’s nothing wrong with you.”

* This article was originally published here

3 Reminders To Help Ground You When You’re Experiencing Social Anxiety

“You must have changed, because you definitely weren’t an extrovert when I met you.”

That’s what one of my friends said when I referred to myself as an extrovert. I knew why he was confused. I was the person who locked up or gave painfully general responses when asked simple questions like “How are you?” or, God forbid, “What’s on your mind?” I distinctly remember one time when a ministry leader asked me what I was thinking about and, in a moment of fight-or-flight, I just said “That’s a really personal question.”

For years I considered myself more introverted because, even though I fantasized about having a circle of friends, I was too scared to approach people in real life. If someone struck up a conversation with me, I’d assume they were just doing it to be nice and they secretly couldn’t wait to close with the good old midwestern, “Well, it was good to see you.”

Those assumptions are really unfair to people. I’ll get into that in a bit, though.

Since I was too scared to just talk to people, being around them began to stress me out. It stressed me out so much that I wasted all my energy on being stressed out and spent none of it on being in the moment. People became triggers for my panic attacks. I became the person who couldn’t wait to close with “Well, it was good to see you.” I truly, sincerely dreaded being around people. I worked at an amazing coffee shop with a fantastic customer base and coworkers, and yet I would sit in my car before every shift, whispering to myself, “You can do this. It’s just six hours.”

Maybe you’re a socially anxious person and you’re reading this because you can connect with it. Maybe you have a loved one who clams up around people, so you just want to understand. Or maybe you saw the headline and clicked on it out of curiosity. Whatever you’re doing in this article, I want to share three thoughts I’ve learned to utilize over the past few years.

1. Insecurity makes us think we’re better off alone

It’s so much work to put yourself out there. I was the kid who sat with adult leaders in youth group because I was afraid. Afraid I was enigmatic and exempt from being included in a group of peers. Afraid that everyone already saw me as beneath them. Afraid that if someone greeted me, it was out of pity. I carried this mentality with me to my first years of college, to my jobs, to my relationships.

It was two years ago that I discovered I was an extrovert. I started asking myself, “If I wasn’t afraid, would I want to go to (insert event here)?” And I started accepting invitations. Every time I engaged in conversation and lived in the moment, I left feeling more energized. It was a weird discovery because I’d been too far down in my insecurity to enjoy the company of others. It’s no wonder I was such a lonely person!

It’s not just extroverts who need people, though; we all do. Humans were designed to be relational, to build each other up. I’ve always been told this, but the voice in my head would come back with, “Yeah, well, they have each other. They don’t need you.” Why do socially anxious people listen to that voice? I’m not sure. I theorize that our brains look for every tactic imaginable to make us feel unwanted and invisible. That’s where the struggle comes in. No matter how much we want others, we believe others couldn’t really want or need us. And because of this, we believe we don’t need others as much as we need to avoid being hurt.

2. Insecurity makes assumptions about us

Everyone is real, except for me. Everyone’s input is worthy, except for mine. Everyone has already thought of this thing that I want to say. I am the exception to humanity.

For someone with social anxiety, being surrounded by others can prompt us to overanalyze every single thing we do—from our breathing patterns, to the way we move our fingers, to our vocal inflections (or how much we hate the sound of our voice). We might forsake basic needs like using the restroom or eating because we’re afraid to draw unwanted attention.

When I auditioned for a play in college, my professor at the time said, “Don’t be afraid to take up space.” As obvious as that might sound, it’s something that I frequently remind myself. I spent my entire life trying to shrink myself down as small and unimposing as possible, all the while admiring those with strong, room-filling personalities.

If you have similar thoughts, just know this: You are not the exception to humanity. Everyone else experiences insecurity and nervousness at one point or another and we’re all equally capable of love, collaboration, connection, and pain. In the words of Peter Parker, “Punch me, I bleed.” That applies to all of us.

3. Insecurity makes assumptions about others

This might seem out of place because social anxiety isn’t about others, right? It’s about ourselves, about not feeling like we’re enough. Right? Well, yes and no. No man is an island. Our perceptions affect the people around us, even if we’re blaming ourselves.

Our brain tells us that we feel worthless and stupid, but what it might not tell us is that we’re discounting other people as much as we’re discounting ourselves. This pill was hard for me to swallow when I went to therapy, so I’m going to share it with you: We don’t have the capacity or the right to assume what anyone is feeling at any time. Each person is a vulnerable, complex individual. Unless their intentions have been clearly stated, we can’t decide what their body language means or what they’re thinking about us. Many of the people I feared would reject me were instead rejected by me. At the time, I didn’t see the hurt I was inflicting on them.

I picture this: Our socially anxious brains have created a game with a set of rigid rules to follow—sugarcoat your concerns, cut conversations short, avoid sharing intimate moments and details—because in this game, we’re the inferior damsels in distress and there is no hero. The damsel must choose between running away or getting burned by the external world.

But here’s a secret: Life is not a game and our brains are lame game makers. People are worth taking chances on.

Yes, people can be cruel. They can and do hurt us. Most of us are socially anxious because we’ve been hurt. But it’s important to remember that every time we let our insecurity sit in the driver’s seat, we’re perpetuating the cycle of harming others and ourselves.

* This article was originally published here

67 St James residents receive land titles

MINISTER of Housing, Urban Renewal, Environment and Climate Change Pearnel Charles Jr on Thursday handed out land titles to 67 residents from six …

* This article was originally published here