So I am sure you may have noticed that I missed last months Motivational Monday Post. If not, well now you know I had. While I was eager and ready to write I could not, due to my laptop being in the shop.
Today’s quick unofficial motivation is to remember radical acceptance of yourself, but also to radically accept others around you. We all think differently, but we all are human. My official Monday Motivation will be on handling emotions and hopefully posted by next Monday.
“You can do anything you set your mind to.” You may have heard this phrase in some variation throughout your life. It’s that “go get’em tiger, you got this,” quintessential positive attitude that permeates American culture. (I cannot speak for outside the U.S.) This sentiment might seem like a positive message, in reality it keeps you producing while hoping to attain unreachable goals.
Normally I write motivational pieces for Motivation Monday, but this month I decided we need to talk about internalized ableism. I will preface this with the fact that I am disabled. I am an autistic male who also has pots and is epileptic. I walk with a cane on most days. I also am asthmatic and ADHD. These are all disabilities. This topic is important, not just because it applies to me though, many of you will know someone who is disabled. Let’s begin.
As I am pressed to finish my novel, I believe I shall post inspiration Mondays once a month on second Monday of each month. I am close to finishing on my novel.
Meanwhile, the children have been writing assignments of their own and soon some may be posted here.
Disclosure Statement: I will include my sign-up link for Home Chef. It does not influence my review. The link provides 35% off for those signing up while giving myself $35 towards my account.
In August I ordered Home Chef for the first time. I want to give a few things I liked about it and disliked. I will start with its advantages.
What is radical acceptance? The other day one of my best friends said in a chat group, “People really need to learn to radically accept their disabilities.” This prompted another person to say something about not having heard of it, which confused us because our whole chat was a bunch of people who radically accepted they were disabled. Some of us were doing so, it seems, with no idea what the word for it was.
For me, failure was always hard to accept. With NPD, nothing less than being seen as perfect was ok. The problem was nothing I did felt like success. I often felt my failures made me a bad person. That my many mistakes meant I could never succeed and then I had to remind myself of my favourite childhood quote from Paul “Bear” Bryant:
“When you make a mistake, there are only three things you should ever do about it:
1. Admit it.
2. Learn from it, and
3. Don’t repeat it.”
An empty football field at night with a qoute written in white font.
Mistakes didn’t mean I was bad, just that I should learn from them. It was ok not to know things; it was ok to have failure. Failure and mistakes are part of learning. It is part of the experience. As Adam Savage said, “Failure is always an option.” Being able to accept this option though took me some work.
Blueprint with rocket ship and quote in white font
I had to reframe my failure as a success. That each time I made a mistake, I really was on track to succeed. My failures aren’t failures, really. When I messed up, I simply just made another step to success.
Step shelves with star and quote in blue font
Striving to be perfect does not bring the admiration I desire. Being able to fail with grace, to be successful and admit my failings is not a bad thing. I do not think my mistakes make me a failure or a bad person. When I mess up, I learn from that and move on. It is ok to make mistakes.
Garbage can with crumpled paper and blue font quote.
Failure is an option. Your mistakes are steps to success. They are not dark marks that make you a bad person. Learn from them, use them to grow and keep on staying motivated.
Yesterday I posted about Monday motivations. I do not have one written for this week and so they will not be started until next week. I had meant to say so in the post yesterday. My apologies.
I will return to posting regularly on this blog, though for myself I will only post the Monday Motivations. I shall have the posts first thing Monday mornings CST time. My children will post stories and art when they can.
I also have or will take down all the Aldaria posts as I finalize my novel. I found the subscriber feature to the blog to be unusable. I do not wish to have the Aldaria work posted publicly at this time, though I may in the future.
Promotion and Goals for Shadow’s Lair and The Shade of Writing
We also opened a CafePress store: The Shadow’s Lair Store. We post weekly on YouTube, which you can find here: The Shadow’s Lair Finally, we have a Patreon and will post family vlog posts with early access for patrons. Also, all Aldaria writings will be available to patrons.
To Our Fans: Thank You
Thank you for remaining with us all these years. If you like what we do, remember to follow our blog, like and subscribe, and support us on Patreon
I am a writer who often dawdles (wastes time). So here I am, procrastinating by talking about organization, writing tips, teaching writing tips, and other random things to keep up my writing habits, when I should be writing my novel, and here you are, dawdling as well. C'mon in and join me for some dawdling (and pretending we're not).
