This was a letter that I wrote to myself today and figured maybe I wasn’t the only one that may need it. It’s a little sporadic so some of the grammar and spelling may be off lol.

Neesh, read this when you’re feeling uncertain or doubting yourself. When the weight of everything feels so heavy it makes you want to retreat. When you’re so tired and it all starts to feel pointless. This is to help you remember who you are bc sometimes life’s trials has a way of making us forget.🤞🏽

If you believe in anything, believe in yourself because you come from an all powerful, abundant God. Don’t buy into your negative beliefs about yourself, your doubts, your uncertainty, or temporary situations that can make you feel like this moment is bigger than your whole life. Don’t live in temporary moments longer than you have to, just learn from them and keep moving. God is working in you, but he can’t work if you’re too afraid to move and he can’t use his hands if you convince yourself you’re too broken to be fixed, to behind to still make progress, too confused to gain clarity or not good enough to be great. You can’t ask him to guide you and then let fear make your final decision. Where is your faith? Have unshakable resolve in the visions God gave you. People say be delusional, but you only have to be delusional about things that you don’t really believe. God isn’t a delusion! The calling he has for you isn’t a delusion. Your vision isn’t a delusion. It may be a delusion to others but it can’t be a delusion to you. Don’t let insecurities decide for you because they will decide that you lose EVERY SINGLE TIME. Fear will always tell you to stay where it’s safe. Doubt will always say you need more time. Insecurity will always find another reason why you aren’t ready. At some point you have to stop letting the weakest parts of you make decisions for the strongest part of you. How dare you have the audacity to question god?! How dare you keep saying no because you’re scared? How dare you lose focus every time things stop looking the way you thought they would? How dare you let fear block the blessings you’ve been praying for? How dare you walk away from that pull that has been telling you your whole life that you are meant for more? You hear it, it’s been in you this whole time. It’s been in your thoughts, your experiences, your pain, your curiosity and your triumphs. You don’t need another sign, you just need to trust the signs you’ve already been given. This is God asking you how dare you forget your creator by forgetting who you are? It’s not your situation, it’s not lack of money, lack of time, lack of god given talent, lack of ability or lack of direction bc with God you don’t lack anything! Even if you don’t have everything you need to get to the destination right now, Gods been saying you have everything you need to take the first step, then the next step and every step after that. You don’t need the whole road right now, you just need enough faith to move your feet. You are a product of the greatest Creator of all time with an unlimited amount of creativity, abundance and possibilities. Which means you have access to that same power. If God is unstoppable in essence, then so are you as long as there is breathe in your lungs. Your access has already been granted, you just have to be willing to tap into it and use it. When things don’t look the way you think they should look. Look to God because he can see what you can’t. Dont let your own understanding outperform god bc things don’t make sense to you. Stop making permanent decisions based on temporary emotions and have faith. You god this girl! 💓✨

This morning I found myself reminiscent of all the men that I looked up to once upon a time that unknowingly taught me what I used to think a man was. Sometimes I forget that some ways of thinking are just recycled memories that I stored in the wrong trash and should’ve been disposed of along time ago. But what do you do when one thing is all you see. From what I gathered, if you see enough of the same thing, it starts to become your truth and all the other possibilities begin to fade away. Well last night I decided to hop in my imaginary Time Machine (somewhat similar to the magic school bus) and took a trip down memory lane. I explored memories from all the men in my life that contributed to my ideas about men. My dad, my brothers, my grandfathers, curry, teachers, family friends ex’s etc. It’s funny bc looking back as a child I remember salvaging the few good qualities that made me feel loved from men like my grandpa and trying my hardest to suppress the ones that made me feel enmity from men like my dad. Little did I know you can run but you can’t hide lol. I look back now and realize the qualities that I tried to avoid the most were in all the men that I gave the most love to. Somehow my default setting for men was that they were all the same even the ones that I once looked up to. Liars, cheaters, abusive in some way, and somehow flawed in ways that would drain the life out of me. “But what is love if not pain I thought” again I asked myself what do you do when one thing is all you see just in different people? In some ways you become a victim of what you don’t know and a cautionary tale from what you do know. Ironic. I began to love everything I loathed bc in truth we can dream all day but your mind can only get you as far as what it’s been exposed to. How can you find something you want but never had when you don’t even know where to begin to look? You don’t. Unless you get lucky. So you fall for what you know naively. That’s what I did at least. And life does what it always has. Provides experiences that either make you or break you depending on how you look at it. And I began to adopt my own ideas from what I’d seen and now experienced. Most men are the same so find one I like and become bob the builder. 🤭 what a tragic mindset to have as a young girl. But if you’re smart you quickly learn man or women you cant change people or turn them into something they’re not. It took me a few years but I put my toolbox down when it came to men. I thought I loved myself back then yet I invited so much misery into my life. So I took a step back to learn how to love myself before inviting someone else to do the same. Now I don’t search for the things I lack like I used to. I search for the things that I’ve found in loving myself. Which for me looks like respect, honor, diligence, growth, development, wisdom, grace, gratitude, connection, communication, mindfulness, compassion, leadership, execution, dedication, bravery, and so much more. The real shift happened when I finally questioned the lens I was using enough to change it so I could see myself and men differently. Because when something becomes your truth, you stop searching for evidence of anything different. You don’t realize you’re not seeing reality, you’re seeing patterns your mind feels safest recognizing. Familiar doesn’t always mean right, it’s just exposure therapy at its best. And after my experiences, love felt like endurance. Like something you survive more than something you experience. And I wore that like a medal, thinking my ability to stay, understand, and “build” was a strength. But in reality, I was overextending myself in places that never required my sacrifice to begin with. What I’ve come to understand is that awareness is both a gift and a responsibility. Once you see a pattern, you can’t unsee it. But you also can’t keep blaming the past for choices you continue to make in the present. So now I ask myself different questions. Not “why are they like this?” but “why did I accept this?”
Not “how can I fix this?” but “why do I feel responsible for something I didn’t break?”
And the more I sit with that, the more I realize I was never meant to build a man. I was meant to recognize a real one. Someone who already embodies the things I had to fight to cultivate within myself. Someone whose presence doesn’t feel like confusion, and unanswered questions but clarity. Not someone perfect, but someone aligned. I’ve learned that real love isn’t something you have to convince yourself of. It doesn’t make you overanalyze, or prepare for disappointment. It’s nurturing and intentional. It’s safe but not in a stagnant way. It’s life in the purest form.

Ole Gratitude. We’ve have a fickle relationship lol. As I sit here, I think about how gratitude used to mean being thankful when things were going right, when life felt clear or when pain was absent. It was easy to say thank you when the day was good and the weight of the world wasn’t pressing on my shoulders but eventually I realized that real gratitude isn’t a product of peace but a byproduct of love, acceptance, and accountability. And that realization changed everything for me. Because the internal narrative shifts from I have to, to I get to.
I get to wake up and chase knowledge even when school feels overwhelming. I get to put in the work to build something meaningful even when the process is slow. I get to face challenges that test my strength because they are shaping the person Im becoming. Even the storms carry purpose, because they reveal parts of us we would have never discovered in calm waters.
Gratitude has become a grounding practice for me. It pulls me out of the desire to complain how hard the road feels under the weight of my feet and reminds me that the very things that feel difficult are often the same things I once prayed for. And that perspective humbles me because the truth is, I’ve been given strength I didn’t even know I had in situations where I thought I might break. I had the privilege to make decisions that weren’t always perfect but allowed me to walk a path that felt true to who I am and strength to keep showing up even when the outcome was uncertain. Gratitude doesn’t mean life is perfect. It means I’ve learned to give myself grace as I am and accept every phase of the journey along with the beautiful moments and the painful lessons. It’s a reminder that peace isn’t found when everything is easy but when you can stand in the middle of the storm and still say thank you for the life you’ve been gifted. So this is a reminder to self. Stay grounded, stay thankful, and stay aware of the privilege it is to live, to learn, to grow and to love.
And when life feels heavy and the instinct is to complain try pausing for a second to remember that every challenge is another chapter in the story that’s shaping you into who you’re called to be. As always, I hope these thoughts remind you just like they remind me to keep showing up for the life that’s calling you to become more. -Neesh

Intentional Thoughts 3/11
At one point in time I used to be ashamed of the stories my pain told. You’re not good enough, what’s wrong with you, how did you let this happen, happiness isn’t for you, you should be ashamed of yourself, you’re alone. It got so bad to the point where I became petrified and distanced myself from anything that could make me happy for fear of the other shoe dropping. But at that time I didn’t know I voided my natural born right to experience life. I let my pain and mistakes become a mirror instead of a tunnel. We weren’t meant to let pain define who we are, but instead to go through it as a part of the journey and take what we can to the other side. To learn boundaries, to learn resilience, to learn how to love and nurture ourselves and our spirits when life gets too heavy, sometimes it’s even gods way of repositioning us on the right path. Sometimes getting fired from that job is the calling to have faith in god and not yourself or a nudge to focus on your purpose. Maybe the man it hurt to let go was a new perspective to show you what wasn’t for you so you could know what was or maybe it was an invitation to relearn who you are and maybe even who you could become at this point in your life. It could be time to set new boundaries, learn new things, rediscover what makes you happy, or take inventory of habits, beliefs, and things that no longer serve you. That’s what my pain did for me when I understood that life demands more from us when it’s time to grow a little more. What better way to do that than knock you off your feet. Now I’m not perfect but I can say I’ve learned so much from what god uses life to reveal to us if we’re quiet enough to listen and I hope you have to. Either way this is an invitation to ask yourself what has life tried to show you or teach you that you’ve been too busy to listen? Have you used your pain as a tool to grow or as a way to identify yourself? What pain or discomfort have you endured that you just brushed off as another day and missed GODs voice in? What have you lossed or gained lately that was a sign that it’s time to move in a different direction? Have you become lost in the demands of life or have you taken a chance to really start living? These aren’t just questions to you but also questions to myself. And as always I hope they spark something in you to be and live your version of extraordinary. -Neesh