What are you fighting for?

I broke my hand just over 5 weeks ago. 24 days before I was set to compete in the Alberta Weightlifting Association's Senior Weightlifting Provincial Championships. This competition was intended to be my trial run at qualifying for the Senior National Championships. If I didn't qualify then, the plan was to make it happen at Hakkaido cup in January 2015. Instead, I’ll be sitting out the season. No Provincials, no Hakkaido and, sadly, no Nationals.

Since the injury, I've declared, time and time again, that I’m a fighter. While I have no doubt in my mind that I am determined, motivated, and goal driven, does it need to be a “fight"? Perhaps I need to reframe it in my mind.  Approaching life, and its associated peaks and valleys, as a struggle is surely giving it the wrong energy. When things go “wrong”, why am I seeing it as the Universe against me? Further, why am I seeing it as things going “wrong” in the first place? Why can’t they be going right? They might not be going the way I wanted or the way I THOUGHT they would but who am I to say they’re going wrong?

What if, instead of reacting with anger and frustration, I embraced these scenarios with an open mind and a grateful heart? 
What if I had so much confidence in the Universe, and its plan for me, that my only response was gratitude?

Thank you, Universe, for ensuring my path is FULL of love, light and LEARNING.

Because, when it’s all said and done, that’s what I truly believe we’re all here for.

Birthday Reflections

I’ve chosen to begin my 33^rd year with a serious case of self-reflection. The last year, albeit not my happiest, was a year of intense growth and learning for me.  With the hopes of solidifying lessons learned and continuing on a path of improvement, I have decided to attempt to capture some of, what I feel, are the most important pieces of wisdom that I have taken away from my 32nd year.

• This is me. Silly, stubborn, emotional, kind, generous, determined, strong, and a hardcore procrastinator. I expect a lot of myself and I’m often critical, of myself and others, because I hold everyone to a high standard. I love big and I love hard.  I’m a handful…….in, what I feel is, the best possible way. I will no longer apologize for being any of these things. Ever…

• Trusting the process. Embrace the fact that the harder you try to control situations, and people, the less you actually feel in control. Do what you love, be kind and maintain hope that everything will work out in the end. Leave the rest up to the universe……

• Just because you have a past with someone doesn’t mean they need to be a part of your future. I truly believe that all relationships in our lives have definitive life cycles.  They serve a purpose, for a certain amount of time, and then need to be packed up and set in our figurative treasure chest of life.  This does not mean that what they brought to your life is forgotten it just means that they are no longer serving the greater purpose that was once required. Additionally, I have found that when I try to maintain relationships past their “end point” they end up taking an extreme amount of energy to maintain. They also tend to be full of empty promises, “lip service” and are extremely inauthentic. I want to be surrounded by love, laughter, kindness, inspiration and joy, daily. The relationships I have in my life that are providing these things are the ones that are still serving a purpose and should be the ones I continue to invest in.  Not everyone or everything is forever…

• Some people will desire you. This does NOT mean that they value you. If you like the “idea” of me but show no interest in getting to know the inner workings of my mind and my heart, you can hit the road. End of story……

• Give love away. All day. Every day. To everyone. Do not save it for those you think “deserve” it or those you think will return it. Everyone deserves it, period, and if you give love away that is not reciprocated it is purely a reflection of the other person and says nothing about you. And for reals, you contributed more love to the world…..have you really lost anything?

• Lastly, two words….”Sweet Solitude” tattooed across my torso. Based off a quote by Warsan Shire. Truly a message, to myself, that Alysia Ann Jansen, is bad ass as a solo unit. I refuse to accept anything even close to mediocre, especially when it comes to a man, just because society tells me that I “should” be in a relationship or I am “less than” because I am single. I am not broken because I’m divorced and there is nothing wrong with me because I am “still” single. There is something wrong with a society that tells people that they need to be in a relationship in order to be “complete.” I am 100% whole and I am 100% awesome with or without a man by my side. 

In this moment, I'm setting the intention that my 33rd year will be full of more learning, more laughter and more love. 
With these three things, the world is mine! 

Just drop the damn ball......

Life is a juggling routine.

There are so many aspects that require prioritization in order to ensure that all the balls stay in the air. For years, I struggled with how to juggle the sadness I felt after my mom passed. It was like this oddly shaped “grief ball” that stuck out from all the other things I had to manage in my life. I would work hard at keeping all the balls in the air but, at the end of the day, my sadness was the one I would never drop. My health, my happiness, and my relationships, have all, at times, taken a back seat to the all-encompassing sadness that I felt in my heart after she passed.

Over the years, I created a “safe haven” of despair that sabotaged anything good before it could fall apart. Then I could say, “There. This is why it’s important that I’m STILL juggling THAT ball. Inevitably, I will end up being disappointed so I should always be prepared for it.” It’s as though it was a defense mechanism that I unconsciously developed very quickly after my mom died; choosing emotional “composure” and the "comfort" of my sadness over exposing my vulnerability and potentially being disappointed. I can distinctly remember the day my sister told me she was pregnant with Easton. It was only a few short months after my mom had died. Inside I was so excited for her and her husband but my outward reaction was cool and collected. I actually remember her saying “That’s it? That’s all you've got for me?” This fear of expressing my true emotions has happened more times than I care to admit over the last 10 years.

It wasn't until the last few months that I've been at a point where I can actually ADMIT, to myself and others, that I was doing this. 10 years. 10 years she’s been gone and for 10 years I've been suffocating joy and happiness in my life all because I was too afraid to drop that damn grief ball and own my true emotions. The uncertainty of what would happen if I let myself feel true, uncensored, happiness was too much of a risk for my scared heart to take. 

Since coming to this realization, I've focused extensively on trying to establish “the why”. I’m a firm believer that you can’t move past something, or learn the necessary lesson, until you understand the motivation behind your behaviours. During this time of reflection, I've recognized that somewhere in my subconscious mind I made up a story that my heart was unable to hold both joy and sadness in it at the same time. As though, if I truly allowed myself to feel happiness then it meant that I was no longer sad about losing my mom. If I wasn't sad about my mom then, in some way, I was forgetting what had happened and dishonouring her memory. So, in order to ensure that I was always “honouring” her, I would focus on maintaining my sadness. As I type this, I realize that this is completely absurd. There is no way, absolutely no way, she would want me to be withholding happiness from my life, and replacing it with sadness, as a way to “honour her”.

So, what now?

I am so sick and tired of being burdened with this sadness that I am dropping that ball. Scratch that. I’m throwing it on the floor and happily watching it smash into a mess of useless tears and pointless despair.

Most importantly, when life presents me with opportunities to experience joy, which it currently is, I’m embracing it wholeheartedly. And you know what? It feels good .

So. Damn. Good.

What's your ball? Figure it out and drop it. I dare you!