Personal development is something that I work on every single day. Part of that is reading personal development (aka self-help) books. I don't really know why self-help has such a stigma. I find it to be totally commendable to try to HELP YOURSELF by EDUCATING YOURSELF. But who am I? Just some chick.
Anyway, the book I most recently read was titled Live Your Truth by Kamal Ravikant. In this book, Ravikant encourages readers to find something that they believe to be true and to live like you believe in that every day. This got me thinking. What the hell is my TRUTH?
Here's the list of things that are most recently true FOR ME.
- I love animals. I hate to see animals mistreated. I once "went vegan" for a period of time, but my hair fell out in clumps and my doctor told me to eat animal protein. My hair looks fuckin great, but I still believe that a vegetarian diet is easiest on the planet (and the soul).
- I do not love children. I love certain children very much, but I will never ask to hold someone's kid. I don't ohh and ahh over babies.
- I ADORE my kids, but they aggravate the shit out of me a lot of the time.
- My husband is the one human being who I have spent the most time with in my life other than my mother. I can't explain it, but I cannot see a life without him in it.
- Motherhood is a secondary state of being for me. I am Jessica FIRST, and I strongly believe that I am teaching my children through my actions that they should come first in any relationship. And I don't care if people think that's selfish. People come and go. The only person you are guaranteed to spend the rest of your life with is you, so you must both put yourself first and love yourself always.
- I am a teacher at heart. Whether it's teaching teenagers to love reading and respect themselves, or mamas how to put themselves first, or coaches how to build a successful business, it's what I do best. It comes easily to me, and it's the language that I speak.
- I LOVE to learn. My spirit of curiosity is strong, and I'd rather be studying and learning new things than doing anything else. I feel most at home and at peace in a classroom, learning new things.
- Hiking is my exercise of choice, because I love the sounds that the world makes when it doesn't think anyone is listening. The forests and the waterfalls go about their business despite what we are doing -- despite the fact that we are looking, despite what we want it to do. We can take a lesson from the trees.
- I am loud. I am opinionated. The two rarely mesh well, but I can't control it.
- I have lost a lot of friends and family members over the years, but I'm not sad about most of them. If they're gone, there's a good reason for it.
- I like to drive fast with the windows down and the volume up.
- I think I can sing.
- I can't sing for shit.
- I sing anyway.
- I divorced one whole side of my biological family. I'm slowly and selectively mending bridges with a few of them, but it's a process. I believe everyone always deserves another chance.
- When I turned around and looked at my past through the eyes of an adult instead of through the eyes of the child who I was when I endured painful experiences, my whole perspective changed. I did not forget what those who had wronged me had done, but I thanked them for making me the woman that I am today. For without those experiences, I would never have found my strength.
- I believe in redemption.
- I believe in a higher power but I'm not sure which one.
- I am moved by art of any form, and I wish that I could be that creative. But I'm just not. I intrinsically understand the messages that the artists are delivering and can analyze the shit out of them.
- I can also analyze the shit out of a situation. To my own detriment.
- I have bipolar disorder. I don't medicate for it. I don't go to therapy for it. I don't often know when I'm in a "swing". I don't talk about it enough. When I peek in on bipolar disorder support groups, I feel like maybe I am one of the lucky ones because I do not ever feel as low as some of the people in those groups can feel.
- I am awkward in social situations, but I put myself in them anyway.
- I make friends easily everywhere I go. My husband used to joke that I would go to the bathroom or to the bar to get a drink and come back with 3 girls who were my new best friends.
- That being said, I would rather be home by myself with my husband and my kids than ANYWHERE else.
Now, the real question is...HOW DO YOU LIVE YOUR TRUTH once you KNOW WHAT IT IS? I feel like my truth is this chaotic mess of shit and what the hell, but I do NOT want my life to FEEL like a chaotic mess of shit and what the hell. So do I then live my truth by understanding and accepting this chaos, or do I just embrace the chaos and try to find the eye of the storm where I can live a peaceful life?
What are YOUR truths? When was the last time that you sat down and took a self-inventory and really thought about it? Are you living your truth? Are you living the life that you wish that you could?
Let's connect! We're all in this together, and I would LOVE to walk beside you and help you find YOUR truth and live your life by that truth.
Thanks for stopping by! xo
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