We all are trying to figure out this thing we call life!

 

Keep It Simple, Sis For the New Year

Happy New Year, Tribe! It's been a minute since I've posted because I've been going through the holistic struggle of 2020 like everyone else. I had to take a deep assessment of myself and take time to heal by throwing myself in therapy, take time away from coaching, and took a solo trip, which I will blog about another time. I am back in full effect, and we got some dope things on deck for 2021. 

But here are some things that  I have decided to do. I've decided to keep my life very simple after dealing with a complicated and complex year(s) added to my invisible scars. This year I have decided to tap inward and reconstruct and unlearn things that weren’t serving me. Things I’m finally letting go of: 

👸🏾Perfectionism 

👸🏾Living A Pretty Lie 

👸🏾Escaping reality and feelings by throwing myself into projects and work 

👸🏾Self-Sabotaging and Self-sacrificing to uphold an individual and collective image

I’m over it. Surrendering it. Releasing control. I’m holistically exhausted, but at peace with my decisions. Healing sucks. Healing is scary. Healing is liberating. I’m up for the challenge, and it’s onward and upward from here. I may ugly cry my way through the healing process, but I have to evolve for me. I am too dope to stay unhealed. 

What are your personal intentions for the New Year?

Much love and light to the Tribe!

Drea

Day 2 of The Holistic FLYness Challenge: Positive Self-Talk

Day 2: Self-Talk 🗣
Affirmation: I am becoming the best version of myself. I trust, respect, and love myself.

Healing Activity: It is time to unlearn and reprogram your negative self-talk into positive self-talk. Sit down and write 8 positive things about yourself. Take these 8 positive things you wrote about yourself, go to your nearest mirror, and recite these 8 things! Recite them every day to start reprogramming and unlearning these negative self-talk.

Introspective Questions:
✔️ Where did you learn how to speak to yourself so negatively?
✔️ Are you willing to re-record your inner self-talk?
✔️Would you allow a stranger to speak to you negatively? Why or why not?

Shift Your Mindset from Poverty to Possibilities and Prosperity!

“When you can shift your inner awareness to how you can serve others, and when you make this the central focus of your life, you will then be in a position to know true miracles in your progress toward prosperity.”  -Wayne W. Dyer

Are you going through life basically struggling to survive, walking with your head down scared to look in the mirror and face reality? Many of us are striving to basically survive. Our mindset and our environment play a major role in our survival or thriving. Many of us possess a poverty consciousness which means we don't even like ourselves and we often validate ourselves through other poverty conscious people who also don't like themselves. We were not created to struggling, we were created to prosper.  

How is your mindset? Does your mindset match your environment? Is your mindset filled with suppression, oppression and lifeless?  Is it filled with life, hope, and prosperity?

Three ways to shift your mindset from Poverty to Prosperity:

1. The Power of Our Words:  The words we speak over our lives have power. Words become things and things have influences within our life. Therefore, if we keep proclaiming how poor we are, we will actually remain in a poverty state of mind and environment. We need to speak and receive positive words and let them enter into our life without a rebuttal. We need to surround ourselves with individuals who are going to pour truth, love, and vitality within our lives and we also need to provide the same to others. Optimism is key to shifting your mindset from poverty to prosperity.

2. People in Environment (PIE): As a young social work major, I remember learning about the Person in Environment (PIE). The person in Environment basically discusses how one will adapt to the environment that the individual is placed. If we are residing within an impoverished environment doesn't mean we have to possess a poverty mindset. We can still prosper within an improvised environment by shifting our mindset and allowing ourselves to be vulnerable, courageous and hopeful.  You don't have to be a product of your environment! Even if you are in a prosperous state of mind, you could possess an improvised state of mind by being selfish, negative and playing the blame game blaming others for our current situation. Look at various people with riches and fame? They may be prosperous but many are existing with a poverty state of mind due to greedy, loneliness, and other toxicity within their environment. Being worthy instead of worthless!

3. Assessing your lonely thoughts: Many of us are afraid of being still and assessing our lonely thought! We rather go to war with others instead of attacking the warfare within our minds. How to be still in oversaturated, a digital world filled with microwaveable thoughts? Many people are afraid of being alone with their thoughts. Hence, why many people sleep with the television on. Always in need of a distraction because we are literally afraid of inner and lonely thoughts! We need to silence the negative chatter and focus prosperous thoughts and attracting prosperous people. 

Coaching question: When a particular thought enters into your mind, how do you react? Do you over-think it? If so get out of your head and enter into your heart and listen to your intuition? Write down feelings, emotions, and triggers?

Thank you for reading Brown Girl From Boston!

XOXO,
Andrea

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I Am The Light!: How To Let Your Light Shine!

"The things that we minimize about ourselves is the exact thing that we should maximize. When others see your greatness graciously accept it without adding any rebuttals. Stop dimming the light of your greatness." -Andrea C. Imafidon

We live in a society in which we are bombarded by stuff. We are distracted by media, entertainment, social media, being apart of the in-crowd, being a people-pleaser and more. If you think about your day, you are influences by these things in which you are not fully in the present and allowing your light to shine. Many times, we are giving permission to others and to ourselves by give our light away. 

Within the article, I am going to answer three questions: Why do we allow others and things to dim our light? Why do we as brown girls dim our own light? How can we recharge our light and shine bright despite darkness?

Throughout life, we have encountered someone trying to bring darkness into our world full of light. Darkness can be disguised as an abusive relationship, divorce, nonreciprocal friendship and so on and so forth. When we are in these situations, we often ask ourselves how did we allow this to happen? Being brown girls, at times, we don't take a step back and listen to our intuition nor assess the red flags. Many times, we are so happy that someone is noticing our radiance that we get caught up in the rapture, like the Anita Baker song. For instance, someone sought me our via social media because this individual "admired" my work with being a natural hair organizer. At first, I was flattered because I felt that I was getting my shine one rather than affirming my good works myself. Well, let me tell you, I was in for a ride because this individual tried to take my shining light and turn it into a blackout. Honestly, if it wasn't for my intuition and unbreakable self-esteem, I would have fell victim to the darkness. That is one recent example out of many that we all have and will encounter once we realize how valuable our light is. 

Why We Dim Our Light: 
1. Fragile self-esteem, we don't feel good about ourselves and we trying to camouflage it by hiding putting our mask on and hiding the scars and wounds that we inflicted upon ourselves and allow others to do the same. 
2. Self-doubt which ties into self-esteem, we are unsure of our God given abilities, gifts and purpose. We are always questioning ourselves instead of praising ourselves for trying and being the best YOU can be. Once that doubt is placed inside your essence, you consistently feel you are not good enough but being you is good enough. 
3. Fear of Failure this also interconnect with fragile self-esteem and self-doubt. You are constantly in fear of failure that you self-sabotage you inner and outer being. You rather do the bare minimum or make excuses rather than putting your best foot forward and letting your light shine.
4. Fear of Vulnerability many times we as brown girls are guarded and afraid to allow our guarded to be down because we don't know how to be free and open. As brown girls, we wear many faces and hats because we are constantly shifting within this society. Many times, we masking our authentic selves because we feel we must be guarded and untrustworthy of others. Brown girls we must start loving ourselves, embracing our imperfection, stop minimizing our gifts and stop trying to prove ourselves. Being ourselves is a beautiful thing once we realize and analyze who we are. 

People and Things that Dim Our Light
1. Being a Yes, Woman! Whenever we put others' agendas and priorities over our own, we are giving our light away. "Let your no be quicker than saying yes." We need to start saying no as quick as we say yes. If we continue to be "on-call" for other needs instead of being on call for your needs, your light will continue to remain dim.
2. "Users", "Abusers" and "Opportunists"! Users, abusers, and opportunists have one thing in common; they want to take advantage of you by any mean necessary. People who possess these negative qualities are like K-9 dogs, they can sniff and see your light shine a mile away. They are looking to steal your shine and add on to their already dim light. If you are currently dealing with someone like this, run as fast as you can and protect your light because these individuals don't value themselves nor other people.
3. Dream-Killers and Nay-Sayers! Everyone isn't going to understand nor respect your dreams, ideas nor light. You are going to have the dream killers and nay-sayers. You know some of them already. Whenever do something positive or opportunities come your way, here comes the dream killers and nay-sayers trying to diminished your gifts and light.  
4. Trying to Fit In! My favorite quote by Dr. Seuss is "Why fit in when you were born to STAND OUT! You see how I typed stand out in bold. We are all unique and possess various gifts and talents. Why would you want to fit in and you were created to stand out? Don't ever dumb yourself down or dim your light to fit in. 

How Can We Recharge Our Light and Shine Bright Despite Darkness? 
We can recharge our light by taking a step back from things and assessing our own life. Many times, we burn ourselves out and dim our own light because we don't spend time with ourselves. We all are busy and bombarded with this amazing thing called life especially my brown girls. We need to put ourselves first. We need to make ourselves a priorities. If you don't put yourself first and care for yourself, than you are unhealthy and unworthy to yourself and to others. I can virtually hear and see your side-eyes and sucking of the teeth. I am tired of hearing I don't have time to do (fill in the blank) because I am a mom, wife, student, seasoned, entrepreneur and so on to not care for yourself.  I am not going to sugarcoat the truth, brown girls. I want all of us to be holistically healthy. 

I am going to leave you all with this, "Let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven." -Matthew 5:16

Thanks for reading!

Stay Brainy, Beautiful and Brown! XOXO
Drea from Brown Girl From Boston

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