Greetings!

After wrecking my brain (which doesn’t take much) about what to write for this, my first blog
post, I vacillated between lots of stuff. A bio of sorts? Nope. In a career change so that’s not
appealing (yet). Current events? Maybe…not so much. (Yay Ketanjii!) Advice on personal
improvement? Okay. Not sure about the “personal improvement” aspect, but that’s really your
call. Ultimately, I felt compelled to write about a lot of what I’ve experienced and see both
personally, and professionally. So here goes:

Willfully Dining with BS
There’s a lot of talk about what folks “bring to the table.” My two-cent contribution to this
decades-old debate is that too many of us set out our best fine China for BS – be it in the form of
family, friends or associates. We pull out a chair, make a lovely place setting and allow the gamut
of disrespectful behavior to feed off of us.

What is BS @ the Table?
My definition of BS (as referred to in this post) is the willful manipulation leading to wholly
unnecessary situations. (Though I fancy myself a poet, I really had no intention of rhyming, it just happened.)
Basically, it’s allowing others to feed off of you (yes, like emotional vampires) be it for supply
and/or just general BS. A few examples:

1) You allow dysfunctional people to consistently tell you what’s wrong with you and they offer not worthy suggestions for improvement UNLESS it benefits them.
➢ Pass them the salt and stop eating. Don’t get full off of someone else’s gassy projections. They’re FOS.

2) You’re in a relationship (doesn’t have to be romantic) where you give and give yet receive little not no reciprocity.
➢ You’re being served BS on a platter – and – you aren’t even being force fed!

3) You procrastinate and constantly sacrifice your needs for others.
➢ You’re eating yourself alive, or to death really.

This molding is hard to unlearn. There is constant second guessing fueled by anxiety while the
all-knowing subconscious knows things aren’t right by doling out psychosomatic reactions
(anxiety, panic attacks, etc.) This normalized dysfunction of allowing bad behavior is at epidemic
levels. Overall, I’m generalizing in this post, but those of us unlearning these toxic teachings of
how to be the best flying monkey don’t need me to expound. We. Just. Know.

STOP Taking Sh!t
“In every relationship, there’s always some sh-t, but never, ever let nobody spoon feed it to you.”
-Mary J. Brown

Sage words said to me by my grandmother. Ya’ll, stop taking sh!t – whatever that looks like for
you. That also means stop taking it from yourself too. Solutions will differ for each of us, but one
I highly recommend as a starting point is therapy – by someone licensed. Yes, you can have an
awesome built-in support network, but there’s something beneficial about chatting with a
licensed professional who has “no dog in YOUR hunt” and therefore is direct and supportive
about your ultimate goal: course correction for your life.

Another popular idea is to “set boundaries.” Setting boundaries is all good and fine. I can write
them out. Email them. Text them. Even say them on loudspeaker. However, the ultimate litmus
test of boundaries is ENFORCING them. That’s true change. Again, a therapist can help with that.

So here I am, BS-free and happily dining with my words. Anytime you need inspiration to
(figuratively) shoot the sh!t, feel free to stop by.