Between Health and Wealth Avenues: You Define yourself. Don't let your disease do it or anyone around you! You define yourself!

How many of us with Chronic Illness feel this way? Whether you are being told it's all in your head, or being medicated, or just being put down by the lack of empathy we face daily we all deal with other people as they seek to define us. The best advice I can give is don't let them. The minute you let another person define you you begin to see yourself according to those flawed definitions. I went through this for many years and still battle not to give into how others perceive me. Let me show you a way to begin to change this for yourself. Remember first to focus on how you see yourself. Not on how another sees you - that is beyond your control. Don't bother. Seriously.

Now for those of us who are already damaged by other people's definitions of us (which is the majority of us I bet) I want you to do the same exercise we did for the Feed Your Concerns to the Fire post. If you missed it start here: http://akorteshares.blogspot.com/2014/02/feed-your-concerns-to-fire-its.html.

Now in similar fashion I want you to re-write how you WANT to define yourself. If you have a few people in your life who have been defining you this is great way to take back your control of the situation. Say you are dating someone who gives you grief every time you miss something because of illness & they call you a liar. They make you feel inadequate, selfish and guilty. So you write down... I am adequate and selfless. If someone calls you ugly and you now think of yourself that way you need to write down, I am gorgeous. This is your exercise. Sometimes when we are around this kind of negativity for too long we forget how to define ourselves otherwise. If this is the case start by writing down everything the people around are saying about you and to you that hurts your feelings, and makes you want to fight back to disprove them. Write that stuff down and use it as you did during the other post - the Feed your Concerns to the Fire post. Feed all that negativity, anger, trauma, disappointment and frustration the the flames. When you are done come back to this exerciser. You will probably have a much easier time defining yourself when you get all that negativity out of you and properly disposed of for good. Remember anything you want can be a part of what defines you. This is your life! Start acting like it people! If you need more motivation I am here folks. I hope for your sake you take the time to do this! And be back here tomorrow for Eating For Peace, Part 2. I wish you all a happy, healthy and hopeful day. Y'all come back now, ya hear? Peace, Audrey