Have you ever wondered what kind of impression you give off? I don’t know really know how to describe what I’m thinking of — I’m not talking about those first impressions when you first meet someone. I suppose I mean more those times when your friends or family see you — what is their first question/comment:
Are you okay?
What’s going on? (Either in the Wow, something awesome seems to be going on sense, or conversely in the hmmm… something seems wrong with you sense)
Hey, how have you been, you’re looking great (not necessarily in the physical sense — more the overall picture)?
In the last few months, with what’s gone on in my life, I’ve had all of those. You’d think that the days after I ran my marathon, when I was arguably in the best shape of my life, I would have gotten the ‘Wow, you’re looking great’ comment when people saw me, but I was in the middle of a crisis, so I definitely didn’t get that comment. The comments I received at times were: “are you okay?” and the like.
In recent days, things have clicked for me. I’m hopeful that I have learned some new self-strength so that this renewed self-confidence is not due to the improvement in the area of my life that was in personal crisis earlier this year. As that improved, shortly after that things changed in my attitudes and impressions. Those lessons of self-strength haven’t been tested — yet. Not directly in the area of my life that was the stress. I’m glad for that, I could use some calm in that area of my life.
But often, I think, where we are in our lives and how we feel about ourselves is reflected outward and who responds to us is affected by this idea.  I’m not talking necessarily about our friends, the people who are real in our lives, those people are there through the good and the bad. At the moment, I’m thinking more about the people we meet, and get to know. Or who approach us. One thing I’ve realized: when I’m in a place of confidence and emotional strength I attract men. When I was a mess earlier this summer, I was mostly cocooning, emotionally speaking. As a result, I put back up this insulating emotional wall that I had up for years.  I was approached by no one. But as the stresses were dealt with, and I learned more about where my confidence lies, and started to learn: that I am strong, that I am capable, that I am good enough, and that the poorly chosen words of people can’t affect me unless I Iet them, helped those walls come down.
I remember just at the tail end of the stresses, going away for a dance weekend.  I decided, as I have in the past, to have fun. It was a conscious choice on my part. I did have a great time. I gave off an impression of attractiveness and energy. It caught the attention of people and I made some connections with new friends and got to spend time with a guy I was really attracted to.
It slowly carried on and built from there. At the end of August, I had a really rough week — there are blog posts here about that week. I did what I’m still doing: deciding what it is that I want to do to enjoy myself and my life — to live it to the fullest and I’m doing it. Often that means going to Seattle and usually without Vancouver dancers, but not always, like this weekend. This weekend I stayed here, mostly because I had (er… have…) a horrible cold and I didn’t have the energy to go all that way.
I guess I’m talking about ‘attraction’ being attractive isn’t about how you look, how you do your hair, what clothes or makeup you put on, it’s something deeper than that. And for me, there definitely seems to be a direct correlation between when I’m feeling emotionally strong and self-confident and when I’m getting approached by men.
And that’s good to know. It does bring me to a question for how do I keep going maintain this? Keep this strength and self-confidence that I have found? Part of it is doing exactly what I have been doing. Deciding what it is that I want, and what will make me happy and just doing that. If that means taking off to Seattle multiple times in a weekend, so be it. If that means a new hobby then that’s what I should do.  A personal reminder to make the choice to enjoy what I’m doing and enjoy my life.
The reality is that we all have crap that’s going on in our life. It can be small, it can be big, but I don’t think any of us can honestly say we don’t have stuff — physical, emotional or spiritual that we’re sorting and dealing with. And sometimes it can be bigger than other times. Often, yes, at the crux of a crisis we need to take time to grieve, deal, and process.  But the reality is that we can permanently mope about the crap that’s going on hoping that by some miracle we’ll all of a sudden be in a better place, or we can choose to accept where we are at, work on dealing with things but still do our best to live life to the fullest.
And that’s where I’m at. I will choose to live my life to the fullest, even if there is stuff to deal with. Because, yes, I’m in a pretty good place, but there are things I’m thinking about. I’ve got stuff I’m processing. But you know what? I’m going to enjoy every day of my life as I do that.  I’m not going sit down and mope and just do nothing while I deal, I’m going to take each day as it comes and do what I want to enjoy myself and live my life to the fullest I can. I want to accept the past, learn from it and look towards the future and the possibilities.