The “D” Word

by desing | Faith & Purpose

Do you control life or do you allow your life to control you? You might find yourself reacting to every little thing that happens to you if you don’t exercise this one principal which is the dreaded thing called discipline. You have a choice when it comes to being disciplined, and you either choose the pain of discipline or the pain of regret.

The pain of discipline weighs ounces but the pain of regret weighs tons. You might buy something on your credit card that you know you can’t afford; the instant gratification feels good until you see your credit card statement and now you have to pay back what you bought plus interest. So although you’ve bought those new shoes or you’re going on that European vacation, you’re now pushing yourself further into financial lack.

Or maybe you don’t know how to discipline your emotions so you’ve said something mean and hurtful in an argument with your boyfriend. Once those words come out of your mouth, you can’t take them back and as a result of your lack of discipline in the area of your emotions, you’re now faced with an unnecessary break-up.

I know being disciplined is not fun at first but the rewards that you experience in the end are one thousand times better than the instant gratification you receive by not being disciplined. Who wants to wake up an extra hour earlier to work out? Most people don’t but when you begin to do so and you see the results then your drive to achieve your fitness goal will be intensified.

Discipline is always rewarded. The key to remaining disciplined is consistency and learning to delay your gratification. You have to continuously exercise discipline so that you can become stronger at it. Start by giving yourself realistic goals so that you can grow in confidence. For example, let’s say that you want to pay off 50% of your credit card debt within the next year. One of the first things you can do is not put anything on your credit card that you cannot pay back in full at the end of the month for the next 12 months. Instead of saying that you won’t ever use your credit cards again, you’re exercising discipline to only charge what you can pay back.

Be careful not to get satisfied with incomplete, mediocre results which you’ll be tempted to do when you’ve been consistent for a while and think that you “deserve” a splurge. You might be exercising discipline for a few months and although you haven’t hit your goal, you decide to treat yourself by spending more than you can pay back. You tell yourself that it’s only this one time but it’s only opening the door for you to experience the pain of regret later. Or let’s say you’ve decided to exercise discipline by choosing not to date anyone who doesn’t share the same morals and vision for marriage as you do. You’re doing great for a few months and out of your loneliness, you decide to go back to dating someone that you know you have no business dealing with anymore.

Choose plan A for your life instead of being content with plan B, C, D or even E. What I mean is that you’re in control of experiencing the best that life has to offer you but if you keep making bad decisions, you’re going to experience the pain of plan B and plan C. If what you’re doing right now is jeopardizing your overall success, is it worth it? I don’t think so.

I know you want the best of life and it begins with you.

Take some time over the next few days to determine where you lack discipline in your life. Is it in your finances, emotions, eating habits, time management, or daily routine? Once you determine that, write down your plan to become more disciplined in that area. Maybe you have to eliminate some toxic relationships, put yourself on a budget or start packing your own healthy meals to work – it’s time to grow up and learn to delay your gratification.

I know it’s not easy but even 5-year olds are starting to understand how much more rewarding being disciplined can be! Watch this hilarious video and I promise you that if they can do it, so can you!

XOXO,

Maria I. Melendez
@embraceherlegacy

Controlling Your Fears

by desing | Faith & Purpose

Did you know that fear is the 2^nd most powerful human emotion? I’m so sick of seeing fear hold us back from believing, receiving and seeing the best that life has to offer. Fear is such a liar and loves to come disguised in many ways, in particular, it loves to come disguised as being practical.

Being in bondage to any fear in your life stops today!

There are actually two types of fear. One is external fear which is what we feel when our outside circumstances are threatened – like if you wake up in the middle of the night to hear someone lurking around in your kitchen. Then, there are internal fears which are the imagined fears that play out in your mind. They usually come in form of threats of the future and are presented in our minds as all the negative probabilities that can happen.

After years of working with women, I’ve noticed that common internal fears we face include: fear of rejection, fear of failure, fear of success, fear of pain, and fear of financial distress. These fears love to paint a picture of the worst possible scenarios. Instead of recognizing that these are fear-based thoughts, you fail to respond to your thoughts appropriately and proceed to meditate on the fear while believing it, receiving it and acting out on it.

Don’t feel bad if this is you because most of us have been programmed to think this way. Most of us who are in bondage are usually control-freaks because it’s a form of perceived protection.

Fear attracts negativity into your life because what you focus on, you empower to grow. Faith and fear are essentially the same thing; the only difference is that you believe for the worst in one and the best in the other. It’s the same muscle that you’re using because you have to believe something that you cannot see in this physical, tangible world yet. Instead of choosing to act out of fear, you could have stopped for a moment and chosen faith.

In a world where we like to be instantly gratified, having faith for the best can be such a challenge. Fear and common thinking says, “I won’t believe it until I see it” while faith says, “I believe it so I know I will see it.”

I want you to think about where in your life have you been in bondage to fear? What lies are you listening to in your mind that has held you back from experiencing the life that you deserve? Perhaps you really, really like a new guy that you’re dating but the fear of getting hurt again is holding you back from fully committing. Perhaps you really want to pursue a new career, but the fear of rejection from loved ones is keeping you in bondage to stay in a position that isn’t fulfilling you. Or maybe you want to become an entrepreneur but fear of financial lack and failure has stopped you from trying. If that’s the fear that you’re struggling with, I encourage you to have a “5 to 9” life. You may have a 9 to 5 but what are you doing after work? Are you just going home to watch TV and scroll through social media and wake up tomorrow to do it all over again?  Everyone asks me how I transitioned from employed to entrepreneur and one of the ways I was able to do that was because I worked on my business after work and oftentimes during work.

After you’ve identified what fear has been taking control in your mind, I want you to get a journal, write that fear-based thought down and create a faith-filled, replacement thought. Every time that fear thoughts comes to your mind, replace it with that new faith thought. Speak it out loud if you have to. This is no longer about simply thinking positive, this about you learning to exercise the power of controlling your thoughts and fashioning your thoughts to work for you and no longer against you.

Don’t be so hard on yourself either because it takes research shows that it takes 3 cycles of 21 days to break a bad thought habit. You may want to start on transforming one thought at a time so that you can grow in confidence. I told you that the 2^nd most powerful human emotion is fear, and I know you’re thinking what’s the 1^st one? It’s love! You’re going to have to let the love for your best life to drive the desire to defeat your fears.

You wouldn’t tolerate a liar who always comes to destroy what you’re working on to continue to be in your life would you? So why keep allowing fear to do the same?

You got this!

XOXO,

Maria I. Melendez
@embraceherlegacy

How Do You See Yourself?

by desing | Faith & Purpose

When another woman who is smarter, more attractive and has significantly more money and status than you walks into the room, how do you react? Do you squirm in your seat or do you feel just as confident as you did before she walked into the room?

If your confidence or your security is in being the most educated, most influential or best mom ever, then your self-worth is going to constantly be threatened. Too often we allow the labels of this world to determine how we see ourselves and if what you do or what you have does not meet’s society’s standards of success then you’re deemed inadequate.

That’s a lie from the pit of hell!

Your self-concept is all determined by how you see yourself and how you perceive yourself is determined by how you think of you. If you think that you are not qualified simply because you don’t have the years of education or because you come from the wrong side of the tracks then you have already been defeated in your mind.

So I ask you this question – how you do see yourself?

Too many of us are waiting to achieve a certain level of success in order to feel validated. However, you must think as a champion before you actually become one. Do you believe in your heart that you can be the next CEO of your company? Do you see yourself as capable of fulfilling that role?

Do you see yourself as a woman who can achieve her dreams or are you waiting in the corner for someone to rescue you? It’s time evaluate how you perceive yourself because you are powerful, capable, purpose-driven and able to create a life you desire but you have to believe that about yourself first. Sometimes your success is delayed simply because you don’t have mindset to receive what you desire. Don’t be expected to be blessed with the lifestyle of a millionaire if you have the inferior mindset of a slave.

You can’t be a woman who is threatened by the success of others because there will always be someone who is smarter than you, younger than you, more educated or funnier than you. You have to discover what your identity and self-concept is rooted in. If you think that you were created to simply pay bills and die, then that’s the type of life that you will lead.

You have the right to expect more out of life and that realization comes with discovering who you are and what makes you – you. There’s something spectacular and something extraordinary about you, only you have the gifts and abilities to achieve the purpose that has been predestined over your life. Everything that you have experienced is shaping your outlook on life.

So much power resides inside of you, more power than you can imagine. That power is waiting to be awakened by you. It’s time to start being the powerful woman that you already are. You don’t need to get that promotion, buy that new house, pay off the debt, get married or have a million dollars before you can believe that you’re powerful. Like I said, if your power and your identity is rooted in what you do or have then it’s always going to be threatened and you will never feel permanently secure.

Your circumstances do not define who you are, only you do. My confidence comes from my faith and knowing that only I can do what I was created to do. I used to think that because I wasn’t from the best of neighborhoods and a woman of color that I wasn’t good enough to speak to stadiums of people or achieve the monumental success that I desire but as my self-concept change, my outside circumstances started to change.

I will leave you with this quote from my pastor that resonated with me to change my thinking – “Leaving the ghetto begins in your mind first.”

XOXO,

Maria I. Melendez
@embraceherlegacy 

Do You Know How to Love?

by desing | Faith & Purpose

While filming a special interview over the weekend, I was asked a question that blew my mind which was – what has been my greatest lesson on love? Immediately, I answered that love is not selfish, nor is it prideful and it desires to give instead of always trying to get.

It took me years to learn this because as most women in the realm of dating, I thought I was a great catch because I have all my stuff together on paper. I thought that because I’m educated with a great career, success-driven, kind and can cook a “finger-licking-good” meal that that’s all I needed to be a good woman but just because you’re successful in your career and you have the domestic capabilities that a man would love does mean that you have the capacity to love that man the way that he’s supposed to be loved.

First, your capacity to love anyone else begins in your capacity to love yourself. What you allow in your life is a direct representation of how you feel about yourself because you will attract who you are, not who you pretend to be. The best way to measure the love that you have for yourself is to analyze the thoughts that you have about yourself and how you speak about yourself. If you’re always condemning yourself, focusing on the negative or love talking about your shortcomings and love to put yourself down then it’s time to get it together!

The quality of the relationship that you have with yourself is going to determine the quality of your relationship with others. Not feeling worthy enough or speaking words of defeat begin in your thoughts. If this is something that you’re struggling with then change your thought life now. In order to change the quality of your life, you must change the quality of your thinking. For every negative thought that you have of yourself, cancel that thought out by replacing it with two positive thoughts. So instead of thinking, “I don’t like my legs” – replace that with “I may not love my legs but I do love my hair, my smile, and my unique sense of style.”

Also, if you discover that you don’t like something about yourself then do something about it to change instead of complaining about it. If you don’t like parts of your body, set some fitness and health goals and create your plans to achieve them. If you don’t like the way certain “friends” make you feel, then cut them off. If you don’t like your job, then set up a game plan to get out of there within the next 3-6 months.

Love ain’t always about you either! We always focus on what we can get out of a relationship or what someone else is willing to give us, but real love desires to give at the expense of oneself. Lust desires to get at the expense of others. So while you may not have an issue with loving yourself, you may have an issue with being selfish and self-absorbed. That type of attitude is usually rooted in pride and a prideful attitude has no room to co-exist with real love. Real love puts your selfishness aside and forgives, real love picks up the phone to call someone first in the midst of dissonance, real love is not so easily offended.

Am I preaching to yet? I don’t mean to LOL!

We can focus so much on what we accomplish in our careers and education that we forget to go to work on our inner being. I had to face some ugly parts of my character that I met face-to-face which were unveiled in my relationship. People deserve to receive the best of your love and that can only happen when you make the conscious decision to grow in your character and focus on what you’re giving instead of what you’re getting.

One of your greatest attributes that will define your growth as a woman is going to be your capacity to love yourself and the quality of how you love others. Put childish things behind you and walk in love!

XOXO,

Maria I. Melendez
@embraceherlegacy