I had a very interesting night a couple weeks ago.

I was with my friend and she introduced me to a short story called, “The Egg” by Andy Weir.  The message that I got from the story is that we are all one.  This is a quote from The Egg:

“But all the people on earth…All you. Different incarnations of you.”-Andy Weir.

This friend told me that I should support an organization because I’m black, I told her no.  The short story of The Egg, says exactly what I was trying to say.  Only supporting one group of people is like asking me to just support one side of my body.  She told me that I have to deal with the body that I’m in right now.  I don’t agree with that.

I am not my body.  I am a spiritual being. 

No one’s soul is black, white, asian, or Mexican.  God/Universe doesn’t just show love to a certain group of people that look alike.  My DNA says that my body is Nigerian, Mali, Cameroon, Native American, Irish, Scandinavian, Southeast Asian, and British.  If I just support one “race” then I’m not supporting all parts of this body that I’m in now.  I’m borrowing this body right now.  In a hundred years, I probably won’t be in this body anymore.

The beauty in that is that I get to choose what to do.  I don’t have to live my life according to what other people what me to do.  I get to live my life the way that I want to live it.

Every one has that choice. 

My friend asked me how I was changing the world.  I replied that I was changing myself.  For example, as a travel nurse I am spreading my positivity around where ever I go.  People are noticing that I can keep my smile during a stressful situation.  After going skydiving, one woman said that she was now inspired to go skydiving.  Some of the nurses are inspired to become a travel nurse because of all the adventures that I talk about.  I started the blog for myself and if it helps other people that is great.  That is just some of the ways that I’m changing the world.  Some things that I do, I don’t talk about because I do it from the heart and I don’t want everyone to know.

That’s why I say to change the world, you need to change yourself. 

Sending positive energy into the Universe always comes back to you.  If the people around you are angry, then you are putting out that vibe into the Universe.

When I was in the process of falling in love with myself, I learned that I have to love all of myself.  I can’t just pick and choose what part of myself I’m going to love.  I have to accept and love all of myself.  I dont just opt to love the “African” side or the “British” side of my body.  One friend of mine said that she didn’t want anyone to have to settle for loving the crazy parts of her because she was really crazy.  I wanted to tell her that she has to love all the parts of herself before you can ask anyone else to love all of you unless you are willing to love all of yourself.  I didn’t tell her that because she didn’t ask for my opinion.  She just wanted me to listen.  I used to be in relationships asking for my boyfriend to love me when I didn’t even love myself.  I had to learn to love myself, the good and the bad.

When we got back to my friend’s apartment, we sat outside by the pool and talked.  We talked about spirit animals and other things.  There were ants crawling on our picnic table.  I looked up the meaning of ants.  Ants are small but they are very strong.  “No matter how small your task, or your contribution, it is still essential.  All good things come with time and effort.” – Ant.

One man was listening to our conversation.  My friend and I ended up sitting at the picnic table that he was at and having a conversation with the man.  The message that I got from the conversation, is that when a person has peace on the inside they radiate that peace outwards to other people.  I know that to be true.  People are starting to notice the inner peace that I have cultivated.

I didn’t agree with everything that the man said but I listened to him.

It is possible to really listen to someone that you don’t agree with and be respectful.

What would the world be like if we actually listened to other people instead of just waiting for them to finish so that we could state our opinion? 

I do this sometimes too.  Just like I want to be heard so does the other person that I’m talking to.

The man also stated that I needed to look up the meaning of my name.  I need to know what I’m responding too.  A lot of people have asked me what my name means and I always respond that I don’t know.  When I got home, I looked up the meaning of my name.  My name means, God is gracious in Irish.  No wonder I think that God/Universe is gracious.  God/Universe has always taken care of me, even when I make a “mistake”.

The biggest lesson that I learned from that night was to radiate peace from within.  That is how I’m going to spread peace and love. That is also how peace and love are going to come back to me.  The energy that I put out into the universe is going to come back to me.  Whether it be good or bad energy.

I believe that that man was sent there to remind me of that.  If I had not listened to him, I may have missed that message from the Universe.

https://www.spirit-animals.com/ant-symbolism-ant-meaning/.

 

 

 

I was recently watching one of my favorite movies and I gained a new perspective on it.  The movie was Ratatouille.

The movie is about a rat, Remy, that can cook.  Remy is tired of being the typical rat always stealing garbage.  He wants to make things instead and be a cook.  Remy’s father is content with the way things are.  In order to do what he loves, the rat needs a human to help him.  Linguine, a human, finds out that Remy can cook.  They come up with a plan to help each other.

At one point in the movie, Remy’s father takes him to an exterminator shop to show Remy dead rats.  Remy’s father tells him that this is what happens when rats get too close to humans.  Remy’s father tells him that we live in the enemy’s world and we look out for our own kind.  Remy’s father states that, “this is the way things are and we can’t change nature.”  Remy refuses to believe that.  Remy states that, “change is nature”.  He realizes in that moment that the future doesn’t have to be the present.  He can make a different future and he does.  At the end of the movie, Remy is cooking at a restaurant and Linguine is a waiter at that restaurant.

This has happened in real life too.

A pod of killer whales in Australia used to help whalers to catch baleen whales.  Every fall this pod would come to Eden, Australia.  The Thaua people of the Yuin nation had developed a relationship with the killer whales.  The killer whales would herd the whales into the bay.  One of the killer whales would alert the humans by either breaching or tail slapping until the humans showed up.  The killer whales would then lead them to the baleen whale.  After the whale was caught and killed, the humans would let the killer whales eat the lips and the tongue.  The humans would get the rest of the baleen whale.  They even put a law into placed called the Law of the Tongue.  The whalers had to let the killer whales eat the tongue and the lips.  The killer whales would protect the humans from sharks and help them from drowning when the boats were destroyed.  If a killer whale became trapped in the nets the humans would help the killer whale out of the nets.

If humans had only looked out for themselves then this relationship would not have worked or vice versa.  There are a lot more stories of killer whales helping humans to fish and the humans giving some fish to the killer whales for helping them.

So I posed a question to myself.

Why do some humans like to only be around people that look and think like them?  If humans and animals can learn to work together, then why can’t all humans learn to work together?

I thought about that question for a while.  I guess some people like to be around people that think like them and look like them because it makes them comfortable.  Those people won’t challenge their views on the world.  It helps keep them in their comfort zone.  I used to be like that.  I liked having all my friends look like me.  It was comfortable to me.  Now I’m happy that all my friends don’t look and think like me.

When I became a nurse, I had to work with a lot of different people.  I had to take care of patients that didn’t always look like me or think like me.  I’ve heard a lot of different view points.

The most important thing that I learned was just to listen to different view points.

I don’t have to agree with them but I can at least listen and have a discussion without getting into a heated argument.  That is just one of the reasons that I love being a nurse.  I get to talk to all types of people and learn new things from all of them.

 

 

 

 

Perspective is how a person views the world.

For example, Oprah did a talk show about eye witness accounts.  While the audience was waiting outside, there was a fake crime that was staged.  A man stole a woman’s purse.  The audience was then asked to write down what they saw.  After that they were shown the video of the fake crime.  Some people had gotten the color of the man’s shirt wrong.  Some people had gotten the man’s height and age range wrong. At the time, that was their perspective of the situation.

Every one has their own unique perspective of the world, much like wearing glasses, it is the unique lens they see the world through. 

We could debate how someone’s perspective is right or wrong, but really the beauty in this is that a person can change their perspective when they want to.

It wasn’t always easy, but here are a few shifts in perspective that have changed for me:

I have a friend that wasn’t always able to go out when I asked her to.  At first it would make me sad when she said no.  Sometimes we would go months without seeing each other.  We texted each other but we didn’t talk on the phone.  It would hurt my feeling because when she said no, then I would think that she didn’t want to hang out with me.  She would say that she was tired or sick.  My first full time job was as a nurse.  I work 3 days a week.  I’ve never worked any job that required me to work 5 days a week for 8 hours each day.

Thinking about that helped me to change my perspective of the situation.  I feel tired after I work 3 days in a row.  The next day all I want to do is relax at home and not do anything.  I can only imagine how tired I would feel if I had to work 5 days a week with just 2 days off.  I was talking with my life coach and she told me a story about her friend.  I thought about what she said.  Now when my friend says no it doesn’t affect me like it used to.  When she does say yes to going out, I know that she really wants to be there.  She’s not tired or sick.  She is present in the moment.  I was able to change my perspective of the situation.

Want a shortcut to hearing people’s perspective?  Post something on social media or start a blog, haha. 

Another example, is recently someone told me since I said in my blog that I didn’t love myself a couple of years ago, then I didn’t have love as a child.  Perhaps for some people that might be true, but that person’s perspective didn’t apply to me.

I had a great childhood.  I had everything that I needed and most of the things that I wanted.  To be honest, I was spoiled and I loved it.  I was surrounded by love.  I had love from family, friends, and neighbors.

The struggle that I was having a few years ago, was that I was relying on my ability to be happy to come from things outside myself or out of my control.    I was telling myself that I will be happy when I get to a certain weight or my husband comes into my life or I will be happy when I get my nursing degree.

My happiness was fleeting because it was always conditional.

When I shifted my perspective, I realized that happiness is an inside job, as in I had to cultivate it within myself first, it brought me back into the driver’s seat of my life.  Rather than waiting to be happy later, I could be fulfilled and joyful now, and from there losing weight, loving myself, and feeling worthy of love came naturally.

Another example, is when I started my nursing career.  I thought that I was going to be a super nurse.  That was my perspective at the time.  All my patients were going to listen to what I had to say and they were going to change their lifestyle.  One diabetic patient told me that they weren’t going to give up fried foods.  That patient was getting worse each time that the patient came to the hospital.  I finally had to learn that I can’t change a person. Just because that patient wasn’t listening didn’t make me a bad nurse.  I had to change my perspective of the situation.  Now I know that I’m a great nurse.  Some patients change but its of their own accord.  When I overcame my eating disorder, it was because I wanted to change and not because someone else wanted me to change.

One of the reasons that I changed my perspective in the examples above, is because I was harming my self esteem with my original perspective.  That diabetic patient was getting worse, but it wasn’t because of them not listening or my teaching skills.  It was because the patient didn’t want to change and that was the patient’s choice.  My friend wanted to hang out with me but she was tired or sick.  I couldn’t let that person’s perspective on my childhood make me feel sad.  I know the truth.

What I learned was that we can change our perspectives when we want to.