Priceless Inspirations (18 page)
The other thing I try to do to keep my skin healthy is get my full hours of sleep. I know some people have insomnia and can’t sleep, but I’m lucky. I don’t usually have any trouble falling asleep or staying asleep, unless there’s a death in the family or of someone close to me. Death messes me up and keeps me awake. If someone close to me passes, I’m awake for weeks. I just can’t sleep. I get scared. I start thinking all kinds of crazy stuff, worrying that I’ll be next and that my time is up. It’s a shame really. I pray every night, and I believe in God. I know that when it’s my time, it’s just going to be my time, but still, I’m afraid of dying. This is one of the reasons I’m really working hard to exercise, eat good, drink my water and sleep. I want to live a long, long life!
Mind
“Never let anyone dictate your happiness; find your peace within yourself.” I don’t know who said it, but it’s a quote that I say to myself every single day. I memorized it a long time ago and whenever I’m feeling sad or down, or like I can’t keep on going, I say it to myself over and over again. I have a lot of reasons to be happy, and I’m working every day to find greater peace inside myself. No one is responsible for my happiness but me!
I didn’t always understand that.
I’ve always been afraid of failure. Most of my life I’ve been scared, terrified actually, to try new things because I didn’t want to fail and look like a fool. Being scared of failing kept me from doing lots of things for a long time, even things I really wanted to do, like open a boutique or offer my services as a styling consultant. It was like there was this voice in my head saying “You can’t do that” or “You don’t have the right background to try that” or “Everyone’s gonna laugh at you” or some other negative thought. I was miserable, scared and doing nothing much with my life other complaining and wishing.
Then, I had a long conversation with someone about how to beat back the fear of failure.
“Nothing beats failure but a try,” they said to me.
Nothing beats failure but a try. I have forgotten who I had that conversation with, but I’m never going to forget the words. I live by them now. Whatever it is that you want to do, whatever it is that you hope to be, you can’t get there if you don’t try. You can’t get there if you don’t take the first step. No matter how scared you are, no matter what the fears are, you’ve got to give it a shot. Nothing beats failure but a try.
These days, I keep myself busy trying all kinds of things. I fail sometimes, and sometimes I don’t reach the goals I set for myself, but I never feel as bad as I used to feel when I let self-doubt keep me from even trying. A lot of the time when I try something new, even if I fail, something good comes out of it, or the failure opens up a new possibility for me. So, even failure has turned out to be a learning experience that led to a new opportunity for me. Trying almost always leaves me with something good in the end.
Trying new things helps me to stay positive and it keeps me focused on what I can accomplish and what I can learn, instead of sitting around thinking about what I don’t have. I know you can relate. When you have something new and exciting that you’re working on, doing, or preparing for, you just feel better, right? So for me, keeping my mind healthy and my self-esteem high means always having something new and exciting to work on.
If you’re feeling down, I’d really encourage you to seek out a new experience. Take the first step to a dream you’ve always had. Just try one small step, and when the fears or the negative thoughts start in your mind, tell them “Nothing beats failure but a try.”
If you want to keep your mind healthy and positive, it also helps to surround yourself with positive people who will encourage you along the way, offer support and help you to see every new effort as a good step in a fresh direction. Some of the biggest mistakes I’ve made in my life have been made even worse by spending time with people who love negativity. I finally learned my lesson about that. Being around negative people just drags me down and I don’t want that any more. I’m determined to keep my circle positive, and motivated. The more positive and motivated people I have in my life, the more energy I’m going to have to try new things and reach for higher goals.
If you’re going to keep your mind healthy and positive, you need to make sure your circle is full of healthy and positive people. There’s a saying that goes “Water seeks its own level” and it means that things that are alike find their way to each other. You want to make sure that your friends are positive people? First take a hard look at yourself. Are you a positive person? Are you working on making yourself better? Are you trying new things and making your dreams come true? If you aren’t, don’t worry about finding new friends first. Take care of your own house, and the friendships will take care of themselves. You’ll find, like I did, that when you change, your friends change. The old negative relationships end up fading away one at a time.
Spirit
When I was growing up in New Orleans, I used to go to church almost every week. I was raised a Catholic and when I was a child my relatives would take me to Mass on Sundays. The older I got, the more I realized that I didn’t really understand the religion at all. Nothing against Catholics or the Catholic faith, but I guess I didn’t get enough education about the religion when I was younger and I felt disconnected in the services. By the time Reginae was born, I really needed my faith more than ever, but I was looking for a different way to celebrate it. I converted and became a Baptist in my late teens.
When I was still living in New Orleans, I would take my daughter and my little brother (he was living with me by then) to the Baptist church every Sunday. When Dream was in town, I would try to get him to go, too. Sometimes that worked, but most of the time, it didn’t.
Later, when I moved to Atlanta, I started going to a different Baptist church, a mega church led by a very, very well-known minister. I stopped going there when I started to feel that the congregation worshipped the pastor, and not God. It really bothered me that they didn’t seem to know the difference! It wasn’t just that. It was also that being in a crowd of 20,000 people made me feel like I was at a concert, and not like I was in church. Once again, I decided I needed a change.
I started looking around for another church, a smaller one, and a place that could become my church home. I tried a bunch of churches, but I never found what I was looking for, so eventually I stopped looking. However, I didn’t stop praying and I’ve never stopped thanking and praising God.
I pray every night before I go to bed, but it’s more than that. I pray all the time. I’ll be my car, having conversations with God. I ask for guidance and help. I ask for wisdom and courage. I ask for more faith. I ask for forgiveness. Mostly, I thank Him. I thank Him for my many, many blessings. I thank Him for waking me up to another day. I thank Him for my family and good friends and for all the positive people in my life who motivate me to do better. I thank Him for everything. Sometimes, when I’m driving around I just speak whatever’s on my heart and thank Him and praise Him. I’m blessed. I’ve been blessed since I was kid. When I’m just riding along running errands or whatever, I’m praying. I’ll just be feeling so good and grateful that I just have to start thanking Him. If it weren’t for God, I don’t know where I would be, or what my life would look like. I’m not just talking about material things. I’m talking about my good health, and my daughter’s good health. I’m talking about having all my senses. I’m talking about having a new man, my love, beside me. I thank God for bringing someone like him into my life and for all the things that have nothing to do with money or possessions that make life so wonderful.
I am truly, truly, blessed.
I used to feel like you couldn’t have it all. I thought you couldn’t be both successful and happy. I didn’t think you could have both money and true love. I tried to make the best of what was missing in my life. I had married a rapper and had an extravagant lifestyle, and I wasn’t happy. I thought that was just the way it had to be--you’re either happy in love and struggling financially, or you have it made financially, but the love is lacking.
I was wrong.
You
can
have it all. I know because I feel like I really do have it all. I have my own nice things, I have good man who I love and who loves me, and I have a healthy, talented daughter. I guess it’s all about the timing, and when God is ready for you to have those things, you have those things.
Or maybe, when your mind is ready to really receive those things, and to accept them with gratitude, God provides them.
Even if all of the good things in my life were taken away tomorrow, I would still pray and still thank God. I believe absolutely that He is in control of my life, and this helps me to feel spiritually healthy and spiritually at peace. Praying reminds me that not everything is up to me, and I have to accept that in the end, God is the master and I am the servant. Knowing that His Will is done eliminates a lot of the stress in life, and stress isn’t healthy at all.
The Mistake I Made That You Shouldn’t
As I’ve said, appearance is important to me. I like to look good, and I try hard to stay in shape. I regret that I let the video girl image get me feeling so bad about myself that I had the liposuction. I wouldn’t do that again. It’s really easy to get sucked into trying to look like someone else instead of celebrating and taking care of the body that you have
right now
.
Don’t make that mistake. The best thing you can do is continue to make good, healthy choices that really add up, like eating fruits and vegetables, drinking lots of water, trying to get some kind of exercise every day and getting your full sleep. Fill your life with positive people and new experiences, and don’t be afraid to fail, like I was. Also, don’t forget to thank God for everything in your life. Counting your blessings makes you appreciate them that much more.
Toya’s Priceless Gem: Whatever your size or shape, find ways to take care of your body, mind and spirit. Even small changes can add up to a big difference!
They say you can’t really love someone if you don’t trust them, and I believe it. I’ve learned the hard way that you can say you love someone and you can have a lot of deep feelings for them, but if you’re worrying about what he’s doing and who he’s with all the time, then you don’t really trust him. If you don’t trust him, the love you have isn’t true. Real love and real trust go hand in hand.
Trusting people isn’t easy, especially if you’ve had your heart broken into tiny pieces like I have. Betrayal makes you feel like the whole world is full of liars, cheaters and people out to do you harm. Betrayal makes you doubt that anyone is really what they say they are, or that they’ll do what you hope they’ll do. Your guard goes up real high, so high that hardly anyone can get past it, and that’s the way you want it. I know I felt like I needed to keep my guard up after my marriage ended. It felt like the only way to take care of myself was to raise my guard and never, ever let it down again.
Don’t get me wrong--being cautious isn’t always a bad thing, especially when it comes to men. There are dangerous guys out there, there are guys who just want to play, and there are guys who are users. It’s just smart to hesitate and to step back a bit and make sure everything is cool before you decide to start kicking it with someone. If you’re really looking for someone to share your life with, at some point you have to find a way to balance being cautious with being open enough to find love again.
For the longest time, I knew I wanted to be in love again, but I was afraid. I was afraid that I’d fall deeply in love with someone who might take advantage of my feelings and treat me bad. I was afraid I’d be back on that painful roller coaster of loving and fighting and loving and breaking up. I was afraid I’d be the one waiting and wondering again, while he moved from girl to girl.
When I thought about all the negative things that might happen if I got serious in a new relationship, it seemed easier to just leave the whole business alone. You’ve heard that saying “I can do bad by myself?” It was sort of like the opposite of that for me. It wasn’t that I was doing bad. It was that I was doing
good
, putting my life together step by step, and finding a place where I was truly happy with myself and what was going on around me. I was afraid that falling in love again would only mess it all up.