Tuesday, January 28, 2014

Oh what a difference...Part 2

OK, Ok...I know I promised this Part 2 business over the weekend, but some things don't change over the course of 5 years! ;)  I got caught up and didn't get to sit down until today to get this written! If you missed out on Part 1, check it out here.

SO...during my mild adventure of Facebook stalking myself, I found not only pictures, but a "Note" that I had posted in February of 2009 and a items in that note really make me look back at how much has changed not only since then, but even as short as in the last couple of years!

The note is titled, "25 random things about...ME".  You can check out the whole she-bang here.  There were two items on the list that really stuck out to me:


15. I have extremely low self confidence in all senses of the phrase. 

22. I sometimes think I have lost the person I once was...I am not sure what happened to her and how to get her back but I miss the old me... 

I want to explain one thing before I dive in here...I read these statements and I literally felt like someone punched me in the gut.  The feelings that I had back then and for a lot of my life leading up to the last couple of years, came flooding back and I was put in a place that I KNEW I needed to share.  I need to get this out and truthfully, the reason is because if I can help ONE person that is in the same place I was, it will be completely worth putting myself out there. It's a hard thing to open up and really be honest about what you have struggled with in your life.  There is always the chance that you will be judged or people will not completely understand where you are coming from.  However, the benefit of helping, like I said, even ONE person, that makes it worth it!  So, here goes...:)

Through most of my life I have had such horrible self confidence.  Some of it had to do with my physical appearance with being born with one leg shorter than then other (you can read more about that here), some of it had to do with just insecurity.  I can't tell you where it came from particularly, I just always compared myself to other people.  It happened all through elementary school and high school, and into college and even after graduating.  I want to make something very clear here too....I grew up with incredibly loving parents and people who supported me in school and other than having the issues with my leg, I never had any extremely bad experiences in feeling like I didn't have friends or that people didn't like me.  I just didn't like MYSELF and for the sole reason of that I couldn't LOVE myself for who I was.

So....no self confindence over a number of years can lead to many unpleasant things. Like I said, I constantly compared myself to others and all I saw was the negative things about myself and every situation I was surrounded in and it made me a unhappy, negative person on the inside.  I was faking the happiness that everyone saw on the outside.  I would laugh, but not like I used to with a full heart of true joy.  I would smile, but at the edge of that smile were tears of sadness waiting to pour out.  I had found myself literally as a shell of my former self (but that shell was housing a MUCH larger person - I had put on weight and lost it back and forth so many times, but at the time I posted that note I was probably 170 lbs, by the end of that year, when I found out I was pregnant with Kolten, I would top out the scale at just around 180/185, I weighed around 225 lbs when I gave birth to Kolten).

Now, being so unhappy can make you do some desperate things...I used to find ways to continually beat myself down around others and I would "fish" for compliments, just so someone would say something nice about me so I could try and make myself feel better.  The person I did this a lot with was Keith (God bless that man, seriously).  I would say, "Does this look okay?" or "This makes me look fat, doesn't it?" or "I feel so ugly." and every time, I would expect him to come back with some comment that would mildly bring my mood up because he was saying something nice, but it was not anything that would last and it was in NO WAY Keith's fault...it was me.  It was because I was the key to this.  I had to be ready to change, my heart had to change.  I had to MAKE changes and LOTS of those changes happened in my head and my heart...not just changes in food or supplements or activity.

I am not going to go into the long story of what happened and how it happened and exactly how everything went down...each person has their own story.  What I want people to know is that you HAVE to not just want a change to happen, you have to MAKE changes to make an all over change happen.  There is LOTS of changes that have to happen to make your life happy.  Let me tell you a few things (not in detail - if you want details, let's talk...I am happy to share, but this post would be a NOVEL by the time I was done) that I have done to make some changes:

  • I STOPPED making excuses.
  • I STARTED pushing through at the point I always used to stop because it was "hard" to keep going.
  • I read my Bible EVERY DAY.
  • I started to realize that I can't change what happened in the past, I can simply learn and move forward.  ANYTHING and EVERYTHING.
  • I learned to forgive, not just others, but MYSELF and truly forgive, not forgiveness with conditions.
  • I learned how to eat, to fuel my body and enjoy my food, but not JUST indulge.
  • I made goals for myself, realistic goals, and rewarded myself (but NOT with food) when I reached my goal.
  • I learned and always try to live on a daily basis what it means to LOVE.
  • I started to truly put others in ahead of myself (and stop trying to draw attention to myself when I did it).
  • I started to look at everything that was POSITIVE in my life instead of NEGATIVE. (That business is HARD - but it is worth every ounce of effort you put into it!)
Those are not ALL the changes (10 is a good number to start - if I gave it all away now, what else would I have to write about! ;)) I wanna show you a few pics from 2013 and I want you to see how changing multiple small things can make a HUGE impact.

McKinley and I - July

Keith and I at AdvoCare Success School - August
Kolten and I - August

McKinley and I - October

Kolten and I - December

I will share more about my journey along the way, that was the whole reason I wanted to start sharing with others.  However, I will tell you...while it felt like getting punched in the gut at first, it is an incredible feeling to look back and see how far I have come in 5 short years.  I am so excited to see how God will bless us and how many changes we will see in the next 5!

Have a blessed day!!!



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