How To Create A NEW VERSION Of Yourself In 2023! Part-II

Hello guys, I welcome you again to the blog "How to Create a new version of Yourself" part II. here we'll discuss some other things about how we can maintain ourselves. so let's start from where we ended the last blog.

sometimes you're going to feel a little crazy but you're going to have to start talking back to yourself I can remember we went on vacation I've been doing this book tour I haven't been taking care of my health the way that I usually do I was in the mirror and I was like a girl it's not good you need to get it together and then I was like this thought is not serving me in any way right now the only thing it's doing is beating up my confidence so what is a more powerful more purposeful more beautiful thought that I can bring into this environment and then I've shifted to having gratitude for my body and thank you for showing up for me and thank you for being strong and just those subtle shifts and talking back to those negative thoughts help to lead us right into the renewing of our minds.

It's so important that you said that like I honestly cannot thank you enough for that because people may read you and myself included where they're like oh they're confident it's all right for them and it's like no no no every day I battle the negative voice that keeps going in my head are you good enough are you worthy enough and I think it's important that people still hear you say that you do that because it's a disservice to them yeah to dismiss you as being gifted yeah as to dismiss you and say well she's got it together it's like no it's still every day she's still doing the work.

it's never just it's like in a relationship right it's like you don't just find the person you love meet them marry them potentially and then go okay we're all good now no no every day you have to work at that relationship absolutely so just like you have to work a relationship with someone else you have to work in a relationship with yourself yeah and you have to know what it is that you need you to know um just like in a relationship like we're not qualified to be in a relationship until we realize what I need a person in my life for what is the best value and purpose that someone can bring into my life as it relates to the partnership.

but to ask those questions of myself where are my deficiencies where are my insecurities and how can I be a better lover of my own soul how can I take better care of my own being so that I am not depending on someone else to be my confidence and my support and my hallelujah and my amen you know what I mean like I don't want someone to have to bring everything if you bring it it's great but you're just going to add to the voices that are already in my own soul because I've learned to do the work for myself because yeah.

I love that and I heard you say something like well when I met someone it was well hanging on I love myself am I willing to change my own life to allow this person to come in and disrupt it yeah yeah that's how I felt when I met my husband because I everything like I had finally done the work I was like taking care of myself I was fine you couldn't tell me nothing okay and he came into my life and I'm like he's pretty good I was like how good is he like are you going to leave you alone to be with him and I was like he could upgrade you you might want to move on over there and so I definitely moved over there but I had to really ask that question.

I'd finally learned to protect my space and my energy and my growth and I wanted to know that whoever I was inviting into my space could continue to cultivate the garden of who I am my husband told me on our first date that he felt like his purpose was to create an environment for me to flourish and I tell people all the time everything they read in my life and in my world has so much to do with my husband creating an environment where I really could flourish wow talk to me then about how you went from being you know married how old were you when you first got married 19.

how you go from having an early marriage and divorce and extreme turmoil I've heard you talk about you know very insane stories which I love to share actually to give it context because I think that's why I personally love your stories it's because it's not just in isolation it's your story starts somewhere and now look where you are and it is such an important for people to hear the ability that they to have to do the transformation if they do the steps if they put in the focus like you do to go from doing things that make you feel shameful that make you feel embarrassed.

where you are today so actually if you don't mind taking me back to the extreme turmoil that you had with your first husband to then lead me to how you were able to say that about your current husband okay so all right I'm gonna try and abbreviate it but I was married before and I had this moment where I was walking out of child protective services which is a government agency created to make sure that children are protected at home the reason why I was at cps is that my in my previous relationship he brought someone to our home and I was cooking dinner.

this girl was waiting in the car for him to finish with dinner so that they could like to go on a date, of course, he didn't tell me she was outside I discovered it I was like your car is still running so I creep outside I read she's in the car I'm like what are you doing with my husband and she was like we're kicking it and I was like kicking it my mind just left the building I am enraged I get in this car I'm ramming the vehicle over and over and over again until the police come to the police is like what's happening here I'm like my husband brought his girlfriend to my house and I didn't know how to handle that and he was like I can read how that could happen he's like I'm not going to arrest you but you are going to have to go to cps because this is probably not the best environment for your children.

I'm walking out of the cps office and now this fear that I've had since I became a mother is that I wasn't good enough that I wasn't a good mom that I was a bad mom that I had no business having children all of this has become a reality my motherhood is in question because of an action that I made and I realized at that moment when I was walking out of cps that the relationship was a symptom it was not the disease it was a symptom of insecurity that started long before I met the person that even the toxic nature of the relationship wasn't just one-sided that I brought my own poison and my own willingness to hurt or betray someone to get this prize into their relationship.

I had to ask myself how did you lower your standards how did you come to this place where you were willing to because he was a relationship when I met him where you were willing to hurt another woman for you to have a relationship with someone else like what's happening with you we don't like to say this but it's like what's wrong how did we get here and when I began to read it as a symptom and not the disease I realized that I had been ingesting all of these thoughts that changed my identity so much so that the only thing I wanted was someone who was a reflection of what I already believed about myself and I decided that I didn't want to believe that that about myself anymore I can remember saying I can do better than this and every day.

I just woke up and I thought I can do better than this and so I started doing better and I feel like even now I am in this space where i'm like I can do better than this and that road to better allowed me to encounter my husband it allowed me to start blogging and writing and connecting with other women but it all started with I can do better than this oh god how to do you in those moments because I always find that there's normally two main parts it's the complete opposite like what the hell have I done just like you right like I can do better than this at that moment.

it came to you it hit you and you pivoted but what about the people that in those moments go read I knew I was no good told myself and it's almost like they lean into it more as proof to why they're not worthy Yeah how do you suggest that in those moments that people can make that little shift to think like you because that's what it takes perspective it's not even about the ability right it's not that you were so freaking special that you were able to all of a sudden do this and no one else on the planet can it's like no you had a thought you reframed that thought.

then you put the time effort and work in that no one can take away from you but you did the work it was that perspective how do we encourage women to have that shift in perspective well I would first say that if you know a woman like that that the best thing you can do is love her not judge her a lot of times we want so badly for the woman to be free that we kind of push her into freedom but to love her right.

where she is whether she stays or goes you can always count on me because at the end of the day, it's love that leads us out of places of fear and then I would say to that woman as she's going back and she's in a relationship that she knows probably isn't good for her but it's all that she has available to her to ask herself what does this relationship feed in me because that's a really powerful question when we know that I am betraying myself to be in relationship with someone then I have to ask myself what am I receiving to them that is so valuable that I am willing to betray myself.

what I have learned is that for the most part, it comes down to people really feeling like this person I have so much potential and hope in this person that I don't want to walk away from that but if we can turn that hope and potential into inner focus then it's easier to walk away hope is a very powerful thing and I've you mentioned it earlier that almost is like the first step is like assessing your hopes and then can I do this and then moving forward and I've heard of this phrase before but you've inc you incubate your hopes.

yeah, I love that like talk to me about how on earth you incubate hopes and even just the metaphor is so powerful in my head oh my goodness hope is incubating hope is about creating an environment where hope can continue to grow that might be putting post-its on your mirror it might be listening to songs that lead you in the direction of hope it might be messages and books and sermons and things like what we're doing here where i'm constantly feeding my hope and that I am starving my fears that means anything that makes me insecure.

I may have to log off of social media for a minute I may have to create boundaries and not talk to certain people who make me feel less than others because i'm trying to incubate my hope and what you'll notice is you start to get more courageous when you're incubating your hope because you begin to allow that to become part of who you are and part of your DNA oh my god I love that so much um I actually want to go back to something you said earlier which is about toxic people and I want to read the quote that it really hit me so hard.

it's so beautifully said a toxic person doesn't mean they're evil it just means they need healing yeah yeah we always want to pass judgment you've said this a few times now and it's like naturally we pass judgment on people and it's like oh they're toxic but it's such a beautiful reframe why do you feel like that's powerful for you and how do you implement that well I realized that in my previous marriage, it was so easy to be like he did this he did that then I was like yeah but you weren't good for him either like your mouth was crazy.

you were ramming cars like you you were so upset and enraged that you became someone that you didn't even like yourself and so to realize that at the end of the day, we were both broken I think our natural inclination is to have a villain my story needs a villain right but our lives are not cartoon and animation we are all in this world on a journey trying to do the best that we can with the childhood we've had with the brokenness that we have experienced.

so when we encounter someone toxic we have to understand that they are acting thinking and speaking from their brokenness and when we read it as such we're able to say you know what you cannot pour into me because you are still so poisonous yourself but what I can do is wish you the best while I move into spaces and environments that help to edify and allow me to have sustenance because otherwise, our need to be a hero will make us drown in someone else's pool of poison instead of really taking the time to really you know and my analogies are out here.

I freaking love the analogies that are so beautiful because I think that that's important to remind ourselves because when someone is toxic we either vilify them which is a hundred percent which I actually don't think that does us ourselves anytime yeah what does that do like but I've also heard you you say sometimes you want to hold on to some hostiles so talk to me about that and is that hostility within yourself is that hostility with other people you know.

it's towards other people now I'm telling you this is the best version of me talking to you right now because I want to be very clear that I am very petty when I am not the best version of myself okay so if someone does something to me it takes me a minute to come to this place of forgiveness and compassion and they're just broken because I start you know like I hope there's a pebble in their shoe and that is pettiness yes this is why it's important to tell me a couple of the pettiness.

so that we can say how you shift it no it's a girl no like I hope there is a pebble in their shoe and that it bothers them everywhere they go I hope they walk into a puddle very politely I feel like I hope they you know the falling would be great and scraping of the knees and people walking away from them I hope someone breaks their heart the way they broke mine like I mean all of the things right but then I spend so much mental real estate thinking about what I want to go.

wrong with someone that I don't have time to consider what I want to go well with my own spirit and soul and so when they say forgiveness is for you it's not for the other person it's kind of become cliche now we don't want to hear it but the truth is that it takes a lot of energy to wish harm on someone and you have to become someone to wish harm on someone and of course, we become bitter and resentful after that but to then say you know what I don't even have to worry about what's going to happen to them.

because right now I need to focus on what's happening to me because i'm changing out of this need to be spiteful and revengeful yeah I've had like I got like my a little mental list of people in my head of just like I want to pebble in there shoot everything everywhere yeah exactly every but you're right and being able to even say it like this makes a light heart of it which I think is important but hate takes a lot of energy a lot of that deep readded you know that like not in your stomach yeah like and so I love that you say you know it's like.

I am natural I get this it doesn't serve me long term and I freaking love that because people are going to want to paint you as being perfect you know that right now people shouldn't do that no absolutely not I think that if anyone hangs around long enough that they'll read that like I definitely have my moments where i'm feeling depressed why I'm feeling angry why I feel like god how could you even be real if this has happened to me like I don't understand.

it and here I am a pastor a woman of faith who has these feelings and I try to be very vocal about it even on my social media because I don't want you to think i'm perfect at the expense of you thinking there's something wrong with you you know it's important for me for you to realize that i'm on a journey too I'm trying to figure it out as well and then I share what i'm learning along the way we're students in the same classroom and some of us get good grades sometimes and some of us need tutoring and mentoring but together we can all win yeah god.

I love that so much your analogy is just an amazing girl um I want to talk about betrayal because there was actually I heard a story about your sister was the one that wrote a letter to your parents to tell them that you were pregnant at the age of 13. yeah, I had to rewind it because I was like her sister when I heard it I was like oh my god like, and then I was like how did this not break their relationship and your sister said something so profound she said in those that moment it was more important that my sister was okay then my friendship with her yeah I was like wow how to do you in those moments so you feel betrayed how do you actually overcome that like that's a very big betrayal.

so, this was the end of part ii. if you like it tell me in the comment and wait for the 3rd and the last part of the blog. thank you very much guys for reading and for your love and time.