Last night I woke up out of my sleep at 10:58 pm and thought of this topic. Obviously it needed to be read because I was almost into that good sleep and I rose up like Lazarus from the bed! I mean, I could feel a dream coming on. The thing about putting on a blindfold is that although you can’t see at the moment, you can always take it off to see clearly. Unless your hands are tied, you can take it off without very much effort, meaning you are just choosing to be blind at that moment. A real life example is when you see those homeless people with the signs on the side of the road, but you try not to make eye contact. At that particular moment, you’re choosing to be blindfolded by the issue of that person. We tend to do this with a lot of the issues going on in this society.

When we need something, we go to great lengths to get help and assistance. When others need help, we have to go through a whole spill to see if we will help. You know the questions a person asks when they really don’t want to help. Why can’t she ask her parents? I thought she was making good money, what is she doing with that? She went to school and still can’t find a job? We ask these questions as if we have never been through a situation where things just weren’t going good for us. The worst part is, we have the means to help, but sometimes we judge people and talk ourselves out of being a blessing for someone else. Imagine if no one ever helped you.

Being blindfolded is a way of the world. We can see our next door neighbor struggling and won’t even offer to carry in some groceries. We can see our church member needing help to the car, but assume someone else will help and walk away. We see our very own neighborhoods falling part, yet no one will get a committee together because it’s “not our job.” The thought of it not being our job has harmed so many people and stopped so much progress in the world. Is it not our jobs to care for people? Doesn’t it make us selfish if we only think about ways for us to prosper, leaving others to basically fend for themselves? When will the blindfolds come off and we attempt to see the people right next to us who need someone to simply care? Be Sweet.

Every time the song comes on, I sing louder than Lil’ Duval and Snoop. “I’m living my best life…” But am I? NO! The song is catchy and comical, but for my life, it’s simply not all the way true. I’m not saying my life is miserable, but I can surely use a huge change. I have areas in my life that are great, but I have far too many that are not. With that being said, I don’t try to put on. I don’t do it for the “gram.” I work hard daily, I work towards things that are important to me, and I won’t stop until I get them. I say this because we look at too many people online and think they have it all together. People need to know that others are pressing their way through hard times. Someone needs encouragement right now and this is the blog for just that.

Have you ever looked down your timeline and thought, what am I doing with my life? I surely do! I know comparison is the thief of joy, but we just can’t help it sometimes. Now some people we know are living a social media lie, but others are really doing big things. Instead of being jealous and upset, I have channeled that energy into pushing me to work harder. Some people aren’t trying to fool you with their fake posts, some people are really enjoying their lives. I want to be that person. I said the other week that posting about what God has done for you isn’t bragging. Sometimes others need to see that they can be blessed with great things as well if they work hard too. The question is, will you sit back and be jealous or get up and get on your job?

Because I am pursuing my dreams, I know that I will be living my best life soon. I’m not waiting for it to come to me, I’m going to it. Not everyone can be lucky enough to have their goals and dreams drop in their laps without work. Your effort will determine how bad you want it. Are you being consistent or are you being too lazy to see good results? My favorite quote is “if nothing changes, nothing changes.” You have to break habits that rob you of your best life and replace them with new ones. You can’t lie to yourself and say that you’re okay with the little that you have when you know there’s more out there. Complacency will have you living a boring life with many regrets. I just can’t do that to myself. I’m ready for my best life outside of the box!

No one likes to admit when they’re at fault. It’s like we couldn’t possibly be wrong, couldn’t possibly apologize for anything we’ve done wrong. We live in a world of Perfect Patty’s and Perfect Peter’s…except we don’t. You’re wrong sometimes. You need to learn how to say sorry. And you need to stop blaming others for the crap you’ve caused yourself. Well since that escalated quickly, let’s continue on with the subject of you being the problem at times. I know you hate to hear this, but own up to your mess so we can go to paragraph two. Get it? Got it? Good! May not be too sweet, but it’s very necessary if we intend to grow.

This may be heartbreaking news, but you can’t be right all the time. Before you let your heart crumble to pieces from that last sentence, stay with me. If you can’t get along with anyone, maybe it’s you. You may think people are hating on you all the time and no one likes you because you’re such a wonderful person. But what if you’re not so wonderful? What if you have problems with your attitude or you start mess and have yet to acknowledge it? If there is an issue EVERYWHERE you go, sooner or later you have to re-evaluate if you are in fact the issue. Again, this may be hard to relate to if you aren’t in the position of wanting to grow.

Sometimes a message has to be a little stern for you to grasp it. All that dancing around the subject won’t get anything resolved. I say all of this with love, but I do want us to change our habits for better living. Acknowledging there is a problem is always the first step in resolving it. Do you think you have plethora of haters, are you always getting into altercations with people, in your mind have you been wronged many times? If the answer is yes, try to take a look a how you played a part in the situations. Maybe you’re a mess starter, maybe you gossip too much, maybe your attitude stinks. If you have heard these things before, maybe you should consider a change. You owe it to yourself to be a better person than you were the day before. Be Sweet.

I want to start this off by saying I truly love everyone. There is not one person that I hate and there is nothing you can do about it. Now that I got that out the way, let’s dive deep into this subject. I, a woman, would never want to be apart of the NFL, NBA, or any other entity that is for men. I use the women’s bathroom because I’m a woman. I wear dresses because I’m a woman. And lastly, I have a monthly cycle because I am…A WOMAN. Some things you just CANNOT be included in and that’s okay. I would never try to force my way into things that are geared for only men because as a woman, I wouldn’t fully understand it. For the life of me, I just can’t understand why someone would want to fit into a group that has nothing to do with them.

If you haven’t heard by now, Always is removing the female symbol from their packaging to “be inclusive toward transgender and non-binary customers.” Yeah, I still have no clue what I read in that little quoted section either. It further goes on to state that not all people who menstruate are women. Well, what are they? Aliens? I jokingly say this because I just haven’t come across a man in history that has been able to menstruate. With that being said, I go back to my first point. Why would a person who has nothing to do with tampons or sanitary napkins want, or even need, to be included in this subject? It’s the most unnecessary thing we’ve had to talk about amongst our peers this entire year. This is not to downgrade any specific set of people, but it is to ask what in the world are y’all thinking.

We, as a people, have become the most cry baby people I have ever seen. It’s literally as if teams were being picked and we started throwing a hissy fit because we didn’t get picked. And in response, the world is like, okay big baby we will include you. Now it’s all awkward and crap! I can’t walk into the hospital and demand a circumcision and I know good and well I don’t have the anatomy for it. It’s the same with tampons, men or transgender men just don’t have the anatomy for what they are asking to be included in. I don’t care how real of a woman you look, it just makes no sense. I laugh at the phrase I saw on social media asking to make it make sense. It will never make sense! Get out of your feelings and leave well enough alone.

Since I was starving today, I had to stop and get a big greasy meal from the local corner store. I ran in and never expected to see my ex’s dad. I never really try to avoid anyone, so I spoke to him first and asked how he was doing. Of course, he had to ask if I had spoken to his son, and I said no. He proceeded to say some not so nice things about his own son and I laughed it off. As we parted ways, I got to thinking about how I never really heard any good talk about my ex from his family. It’s pretty bad when your own family doesn’t speak highly of you. Then I began to think about how I never caught that when we were together. I overlooked some signs that could have saved me time from a pointless relationship. Even worse, I began thinking about all the times I overlooked signs from relationships and situations. Needless to say, I have been a fool in this dating world over the years.

INFATUATION, NOT LOVE, CAN TRULY BE A BLINDER. The all caps was to put an emphasis on the cause and effect. When you’ve been single for so long and you finally come across someone you think is amazing, it can be worse. You’re willing to overlook some things because loneliness has set in. On the other side of the spectrum, when you just got out of a relationship and get into a new one, you let things ride because they are probably a little better that the last one. But in doing so, you set yourself up for failure. You may get better, but only slightly. It’s never really worth it. That person’s faults just aren’t the last person’s faults, but they are faults nonetheless that should be taken into account. Not to say that anyone is perfect, but some stuff you just shouldn’t have to take.

Below, I will list some things that should not be overlooked no matter how sweet and fine a person may be:

• Physically abusive, but a sweet talker
• Verbally abusive, but makes up for it with gifts
• Family has nothing good to say about your mate
• Your mate doesn’t want you to have friends
• Your mate gets extremely jealous when you hang with other people
• Your mate breaks the law often and makes excuses for it
• Your friends have tried to warn you, but you cast it off as jealousy
• You keep making up and breaking up over the same and/or different things
• Your mate has anger issues and can’t keep a job because of it
• Your mate is lazy and never does anything to change

I believe I definitely could have saved myself some trouble in ALL of my relationships if I would have not been so naive. But since they are over and done, I can only say that I gained some hard earned lessons. Some had to be learned a few times out of stupidity. The person that is for you will be kind, compassionate, and you won’t feel like you have to question their love. Anything less than that is not worth it. If you’re not happy, what’s the point? You can be miserable alone. So if your mate can’t or won’t BE SWEET, drop them ASAP!

This past weekend, I got together with some really good friends for a girls night in. We had just come back from a wedding and we were all dolled up, but we just felt the need for girl talk, libations, and laughs. Somehow we got on a very heavy topic and the mention of Basketball Wives came up. As I sat there listening to my friends talk about different characters and the different situations that had occurred on the show, I had one question. How did anyone think this would be a good show to start? The show is about how mainly black women degrade each other, fight on television, lie on each other, cheat, and a slew of other messiness. Okay, every blue moon something positive happens, but for the majority is was all madness. What was the point of the show?

It’s hard to tell our teenage girls to be sweet when we have shows like Basketball Wives, Real Housewives, and Love & Hip Hop. It seems like the very thing we would teach them to make something of themselves would be undermined in the hour long shows. How can we say make friends if the shows are about be conniving? Even better, how can a woman teach her children to be great if she is the epitome of a mean girl? You know the ones who always have an attitude, always have something negative to say, and rolling their necks. The ones we try to avoid! And it’s not that we avoid them because we’re afraid, it’s because we simply don’t like all of that drama. It makes me wonder at what point do mean women realize they are too old to be behaving that way.

It was one thing to be a mean girl in middle school or high school. Our hormones were changing and everyone wanted to be this and that. It’s another thing if a woman is STILL acting the same way she did in 10th grade. When will she stop the full on attitude with any and everybody? Always ready to fight, needing to get bailed out of jail, always getting fired, always quitting when they don’t get their way. It’s just childish! The scary part is that a lot of these people are inadvertently raising their children to be the same way. Now we have to try not to slap little Susie because she acts just like her stank attitude mama! And heaven forbid these mean women get a leadership role in the professional field. The whole work flow is off and stress levels are through the roof.

The bad thing about mean girls turned mean women is that you can’t tell them nothing. They attribute it to others being weak or punks. They never understand that people actually avoid them because of the frustration they cause. If you do try to have that conversation with them, they either dismiss it or try to get confrontational. It’s a catch 22! I would never say that people can’t and won’t change, but I do believe it can be hard when no one tells a person they need to change. It’s a hard cookie to swallow if you’re reading this and YOU are indeed the mean woman. I think we just need to take a quick assessment of our actions and how people usually respond to us. Are you a mean woman? If you answered quickly, go back and ask yourself again. Be Sweet.

Around this time of year, people are looking for hope. Maybe they set out with a goal at the beginning of the year, but somewhere along the way it never came to pass. It’s different this year because we not only have to reflect back on the year, but on the decade. I can truly say that from 2010 to right now, life has been a roller coaster! I started my path to a Master’s degree in 2010 and now I’m looking to expand my horizons because of that goal being accomplished. Yeah, it only took me 10 years to seriously get ready for something new. We tend to look for a prophetic word that will encourage us to keep pressing on towards our goals. Well, consider this your message. Actually, consider this your call to action or an assignment to greatness. Today’s message is simply GO OUT FURTHER.

I recently went snorkeling on a girls trip. My friend had never been before, so she asked if we would be snorkeling by the dock. I informed her that we would have to go into the deep water to really see the good stuff. Thinking back on it, that was the prophetic word that I needed for myself. I needed to go beyond what I knew and security to the deep water to get the good experiences. The thing about “dock diving” is that it’s so muddy from people not getting out of their comfort zones that you would never get a real glimpse of the nice views. You have to be willing to swim with the big fish to see the clear views and amazing things. It sounds scary because amongst those big fish can be sharks, but how will you grow if you are always comfortable?

Once you’ve been exposed to the view of the world outside a box, you realize the things you can have. It’s why I admonish everyone to explore this big beautiful world and take advantage of the great things out there. Maybe you didn’t do well the first time around in school. You know you have to go back to be a nurse. Maybe you’re business didn’t get off the ground because you were too young to take it seriously. Last time you helped 10 people, stretch out and help 30 this time. We often limit ourselves to wonderful possibilities because we won’t simply try again. What do you need to try again so you can reach your greatest potential? I believe we can make this home stretch work for us if we’d get on top of things now. It could make for a clearer view in year 2020!

Recently, I made my journey to Jamaica for my dream trip. I was so excited that I dang near packed my whole life in a suitcase for a 5 day trip. When we got there, I realized that I forgot a very important thing, the sunscreen. We kept talking about how we needed it and even passed the gift shop on the resort several times. I guess we were so excited, that we totally forgot to get some for the entire trip. We spent countless hours outside in the sun having fun. But that fun in the sun had a price…sunburn! My shoulders literally look like a cracked pot. I’m shedding at this very moment and it looks awful. But I guess I have to take into consideration that shedding is necessary when you’ve gone through something. In fact, I must apply this same concept to my life. There is another layer that will come after the intensity of a bad experience.

Sometimes we allow certain situations to get the best of us unknowingly. We seem to be having the time of our lives with that abusive man when he’s in a good mood. Or we stay connected to the toxic family member because heaven forbid family members be excommunicated to have a healthy lifestyle. It’s just like my fun in the sun. I knew what I needed, yet being in the moment made me forget about it. After too much time without it, it was already too late. The key is to not only know what you need, but get it. We don’t have to take the abuse, gossip, or mistreatment. We can screen ourselves if we know what’s good for us. Just in case we have not protected ourselves, we have to shed the bad to get to the good. We have to have hope going forward that the next layer will be radiant and we will have learned a valuable lesson.

The other day I turned down a job that paid a pretty good salary. Most people would think I’m crazy to say such a thing, but let me put it into context. For the last 4 years, I have had it in my mind to move to California. At first, I was leaning towards San Diego, but after my birthday trip to Los Angeles last year, it changed. I felt as if L.A. was pulling me and the platform that could come about in that atmosphere suited me more. I have been diligent in my wanting to move, so I felt as if taking a job that didn’t promote my purpose was pointless. A decision like that required an adult like attitude and growth. The fact that I said no so quickly showed me just where my heart’s desires where aimed towards. As I told my sister, I’m tired of jobs that make me miserable because I’m not called to do those things. I’m ready for a purpose filled career that motivates me to change the world one person at a time.

I know that I have been called to speak to the masses. My name alone means counselor or wise one. I just don’t think that sitting in an office doing so will be my final destination career wise. I like speaking and my true passion is writing, so I believe that gift will be what ushers me into the presence of greatness. Knowing what you truly want, no need to do is a huge responsibility in itself. It makes you not want to take any old job just for the pay raise. It makes you consider what impact you will have on other people’s lives when you do what you are supposed to do. I laughed at how the generation before millennials stayed on jobs for long periods of times, even though they hated their jobs. Most people in the generations before millennials never pursued their callings because they just wanted to be hard workers and provide an income for their families. There was nothing wrong with that, and it is quite an admirable trait. But my generation is more focused on purpose and comfort.

Some would call millennials quitters if they didn’t get past the surface of us. It’s not that we are quitters per say, but we just don’t want to stay in places where our hard work is not celebrated. To be honest, that shows high self esteem. Most of the people in my age group have degrees and special skill sets, so we want to use those skills and not under the pressure of toxic work cultures. It may not be known to a lot of people, but there are great work environments and everyone doesn’t hate their jobs. I, for one, am one who appreciates a good atmosphere and helpful work mates. This is the reason why we job hop and live on job websites looking for new jobs all of the time. Is it so bad to want to be treated right and paid for what we are worth? Those two things should go together! Anyone who tells you differently is not thinking straight.

One thing that other generations envy millennials about is them not being pushovers. We stand up for our rights, demand fair treatment, and won’t back down. The way we go about it may be extreme in certain cases, but we want to be heard. A profound statement will always get the attention of the people. In all honesty, our parents and grandparents should be proud that we stand up for what we want. They should be even more excited that we are out here trying to break generational curses and make our family names great. Not saying that the generations before us didn’t try to do the same thing, but we have a bigger platform to do so with social media. We use what is popular to get attention and bring about change. Every generation does things a little different from the ones before, so it shouldn’t be too far fetched to think we won’t. I’m glad that I turned down that job and I believe I will be rewarded for doing so and having the faith to know great things are ahead of me. Will you settle or will you go for what you deserve? Be Sweet.

People think that since you’re strong in public that you do well walking through the fire.

Well let’s just say that my clothes are singed beyond recognition, I’m dying from dehydration, and my feet are blackened by the soot.

Yes, I have been walking through the fire for so long that the particles of my shoes have disintegrated. I hope my faith isn’t next.

My feet long for rest. Ash is my new skin tone and coals are my new path to glory.

But where is glory? Is it just around the corner or is it miles ahead?

Will there be water to quench my thirst or help at the end of the journey?

Will a pat on the back be my reward or will there actually be the reward I’ve set out to find on this long trailed journey?

The fire continues to burn, right down to the very depths of my soul.

Oftentimes, I’m not sure if I’m melting or being refined.

But I know that standing still won’t make it end any faster, so I continue trekking.

GOD I PRAY it will all be worth it!