Greetings, dear Readers!

Today’s message came out of the left field, and took me a little by surprise. Usually, I spend a couple of days trying to find a message that I want to share with others. This week, I was too busy obsessing over a good motivational and/or funny video to upload to my Youtube Channel. Much like my #MondayMotivation posts here, I wanted it to have a good message for a Monday, and one that would motivate those who watched it.

I didn’t make up my mind about what to record my vlog about until halfway through Sunday night – yes, it was as late as it sounds. By the time I was done recording it, though, I realised that it had also given me something to write about today – and so I’m going to share both the video and the message with you:

Don't Sweat the Small Things

When it comes to Mondays, we have this habit of taking everything out of proportion - and I understand why. It’s the first day back at work or school, it’s the day that ruined your Sunday, it’s the first day back into the stressful every day grind… Basically, Monday is that day with the bad reputation that everyone wants to avoid, but can never get away from.

Because of that, we’ve made Mondays extremely negative. Everything becomes a big issue, or a sign that it’s going to be a bad week. Even the smallest things get blown up into massive problems, and suddenly the very negativity we expect to find on the day become a reality.

In my vlog, I decided to read a few FML’s – “Fuck My Life’s”. These are humorous little snippets of bad events that people from around the world share and, when I’d had a day job, those had been my Monday Go-To’s. There was nothing like reading about people who clearly had it worse than I. Here’s the important thing, though:

They had it worse, but they could laugh about it.

That’s our biggest problem. Instead of laughing about those small things, we end up blowing them into these massive problems instead. We forget that, on any other day, we’d be able to just blow them off and move on. But if someone can laugh about having a dead woman sleeping on him for thirty minutes, or getting their transportation stolen… why can’t I laugh about accidentally spilling coffee on my shirt?

We need to learn to laugh at ourselves more. We need to relearn how to just let the small things be small things – and, at some point, you might find that even the bigger problems might not seem so big anymore. Maybe it’d be because you have more positivity, or because you’re not obsessing over things you can’t change, or that aren’t really that big of a problem.

The challenge for this week:

It’s simple – don’t sweat the small things. Don’t let the phone cutting out ruin your week – just redial. Just change your shirt. Make a new cup of coffee. Enjoy the music as you hit traffic. Laugh about your search for those damned keys. There are worse things that can happen – so save your energy for those, and let the rest go. Life has enough bricks that it’s going to try tossing into your travel bag – don’t add in more yourself.

I have faith in you! And now, I will laugh all the way to the publish button, even though I overslept and this article is four hours late…

Until Next Week!

Greetings, dear Readers!

A friend of mine recently asked me, “Why do you keep writing #MondayMotivation posts when you’re struggling so much with them?”. This was brought on by the intro of my post for last week, Excuses vs. Reasons – which you can read if you feel like you need a refresher of that message for this week.

I suppose, to her, it was a relevant question. Why do I keep putting myself through that every week, just to try and motivate other people that may not even be getting these messages? Or give a fat flying fart in space? Is it because, in part, I need the messages myself? Yes, shocker of the century – Vex also needs to keep herself motivated. Insert gasps here.

But no, that’s not the only reason. In fact, it’s not even the biggest reason. The reason is this:

Motivation Is a Team Sport

Oh, now I’ve gone and done it, haven’t I? If I were to make a bet that your first thought at that sentence was, “Bullshit. Get your head out of the clouds, because no one is going to help you.”, I’d probably win, won’t I? Yeah, that’s what I thought. And, to an extent, I even agree with you. Hell, just a few weeks ago I made it very clear that you shouldn't burn yourself out trying to motivate others, and I stand by that - but if you read that post again, you'll see that I didn't say that you shouldn't help motivate others at all.

Let me explain myself, before you get your knickers in a Gordian knot.

I’ll be one of the first people to admit that motivation comes from the inside – and I’ve said this before, too. You can have the world screaming motivational messages at you, but if you’re not interested in getting motivated and doing what you need to do to achieve something in your life… those screams are going to fall on totally deaf ears.

But if you’re the only person who can motivate you, then why are there so many team orientated motivational things to do? 

Companies routinely take their employees out for team building exercises, people love to go looking for motivational and inspiration messages, we follow blogs, Twitter feeds and Instagrams, all with the express purpose of getting our daily motivation fix. And, when we feel on top of the world, we share our own snippets of motivation.

WHY? Why do we have all of this, do all of this?

Because, like most things, support is one of the most powerful weapons we can have against getting demotivated. When we have one of those days, the days where we just can’t muster up our usual motivation, the right kind of support or words or images can help us get back up and on track. And when we share our own stories of overcoming the dumps, it makes us feel good to know that someone else might be benefiting from what we’re sharing.

It's a cycle, and one of the few positive ones out there. If we supported each other instead of bring each other down, it would make the communities and circles that we are a part of, stronger as a whole.

The challenge for this week:

When you hit your downer, don’t be afraid to ask for a little help to get back up. And when you’re at the top… pass it on. Give someone else a few positive words of support – you might not realize just how much that one sentence or that one pat on the back might boost a person.

Yes, motivation comes with from within… but positivity can be just as infectious as negativity – and that’s what we’re going to be doing this week. Remember to tell me how it went!

Until Next Week!

Greetings, dear Readers!

Let me tell you something right off the bat - #MondayMotivation is not getting any easier. It isn't all that surprising, if you think about it, because motivation is never easy. Oh, it's easy enough to just regurgitate a motivational message, but to turn generally generic word-vomit into something meaningful - plus my own unique spin - is not something 'easy'. I spent a good amount of time trying to find some kind of inspiration; a message that resonated with me, but that would also resonate with all of you.

And a thought suddenly occurred to me... Why not just skip today's message, and make up for it with an extra special post (whatever that was supposed to mean) next Monday? Everyone has an off day, right? This could be mine. My off day, my day of no writing.

In that moment I had to make a very important decision:

Make An Excuse For Why Not Or Find A Reason Why

Just like that I had my message for today - isn't life weird?


If there's anything you should know about me, it's that I am about as stubborn as an overloaded mule with a serious attitude problem. I wasn't going to just 'give up', no matter what the treacherous part of my mind was offering up as rationale for not writing. Aside from that, I also have plenty of my own reasons why to keep going - and no excuse was going to divert me from my goal. But that's not the case for everyone.

Finding excuses can be so annoyingly easy. Worse still, they all make sense in the moment. 

"It's cold, and I'm tired."
"I deserve a day off."
"It's just this one time. I'll make up for it."
"It's not that important anyway."
"I've got better things to do."
"It's too late anyway; it won't make sense to do it now."

Those are just some of the excuses I came up with - and I'm willing to bed that all of us have made an excuse not to do something today already. Whether it's an excuse not to do a certain piece of work you've been putting off, to why you shouldn't do something in line with your own goals and dreams today. It's unrealistic. You can do it later. Life will wait.

No, grasshopper, it won't. Life waits for no person - it laughs at your excuses and moves right along.

Today, I don't just want to give you a motivational message for the day, or for the week. I want to challenge you - yes, you. You can choose to take my challenge, ignore it, or fail it. I won't know. Newsflash: it doesn't matter whether I know or not. What matters is that you'll know and, believe it or not, it's going to niggle at the back of your mind - like that annoying voice that can offer the best encouragement, or be the cruelest demotivator.

Here's my challenge to you for this week:

Every time you have to do something and make a decision, stop. Focus on your thoughts. Are you making an excuse? If you are, take that excuse for why NOT to do something, and turn it into a reason why you SHOULD.

Get that work done. Do your painting. Write your story. Start your business. Pursue your goals. From the smallest thing to the largest, do it. Who knows? At the end of the week you might just find yourself thinking a little differently. You might be a bit more positive. A bit more motivated. Or you might be looking back and wondering if the week could've gone differently if you looked for the 'Why's' instead of the 'Why not's'.

Either way, I wish you luck - and if you'd like to share your experiences or key Why/Why Not moments of the week with me as it progresses, please post them in the comments below. You deserve to share your moments of triumph - big or small.


Until Next Week!

Greetings, dear Readers!

I found myself in a bit of a pickle for today's #MondayMotivation, but luckily, fate provided. The message for today is this:

Find Your Own Damn Candle

I was, as I often do, looking through motivational quotes and stories for inspiration, and nothing seemed to catch my eye. I was about to move on and try something else, when a small message caught my eye:

"Good People Are Like Candles; The Burn Themselves Up To Give Others Light.".

I'm sorry... what?! Let me get this straight: To be a good person, I have to burn myself out? I know the little message probably wasn't meant in the way my mind interpreted it. The idea was probably to live a life that was an example to people around you - and that's a great idea that we can get behind. But for that brief moment, the message became something completely different to me, and I felt that, somehow, there was truth in it.

Think about it for a little bit. How often don't we do exactly that? We decide that we want to be the benchmark. We want to be the person that shines the brightest, to have the world see us and aspire to us - to be the very embodiment of the saying, "The Candle That Burns Twice as Bright, Burns Twice as Fast.". For some people, living life like that is perfectly fine with it - it's all they want.

What really got me was that it was said 'Good People Like Candles.' - and therein lies the rub. 

I have goals and targets and dreams that I aspire to every day. I try to be supportive of others and inspire them with words and actions - but there comes a point where a line must be drawn. I'm not going to burn myself out, or turn my hopes and dreams into ashes, just to be the candle you need to find your own way in life. Sure, I'll light a way (not the way), but it's not my responsibility to do that until others finally open their eyes.

Does that mean that I'm not a 'good person'? HELL NO. 

It means that I'm a person willing to share, willing to lead, and yes, even willing to burn for others... to an extent. There's a point where 'motivation and inspiration' crosses over into self-sacrifice and self-destruction.

I'm not saying that you shouldn't help motivate other people. I'm definitely not saying that you should leave them floundering in a quagmire of self-doubt/self-loathing/aimlessness/'enter word here'. What I am saying is that you shouldn't become the only link they have to finding their way to their own goals, even if it's at the cost of your own aspirations. And besides, if they forever live by your light, how will they ever learn to conquer their own fears of the dark?

"So what would be the middle ground," I found myself thinking. As I said, we all want to be that light that motivates and inspires others - we just don't want to burn away because of it. For some reason, the saying, "Give a man a fish, and he'll eat for a day; teach a man to fish, and he'll eat for a lifetime." occurred to me. It resulted in an entirely new thought, and one I'd like to end this on:

"Instead of being the candle that burns out to light part of the way, be the light that guides people to their own candles, and help them light their own."


Until Next Week!

Greetings, dear Readers!

I'm not going to tell you where I got the idea for today's #MondayMotivation. We can just call it a special stroke of inspiration, and go with that. The message for today is this:

Choose Your Stick Wisely

You might be wondering what stick I'm referring to, and I don't blame you. But today's message is twofold, and the 'stick analogy' just fit so well that I couldn't pass it up.

I want you to think back to your childhood. It might not be the case for everyone, but I'm sure several of you have a memory of a point where your mother, father or preschool teacher had you stand up against a wall so that they could measure your height throughout your childhood. If you have memories about that little ritual, you might also remember your excitement at every little inch or centimeter that the wall said you grew. Sometimes it was slow going, but every little crawl upwards felt like a major accomplishment. Remember that feeling.

If you had siblings, some of you might even remember that you were either the taller or the shorter one. If you were taller, you were the one telling your sibling not to worry, that they'll get taller soon. If you were the shorter one - and had a nice sibling - you were the one being comforted and encouraged. Either way, all you wanted at the end of it - after the sense of accomplishment wore off - was to find a way to be a little taller the next time you were measured.

So what, you may ask, does this have to do with #MondayMotivation? Simple. Think about it; ever since that first time your measurements were taken, you've aspired to measure up better next time. Strange, isn't it, that the need to be better next time has never gone away? But here's what's changed:

By whose stick are you measuring yourself now?

Let that thought sink in. Back then it was all about beating yourself. Measuring up to your own standard, and then exceeding it. You were the one that set the bar, and beating that bar made you feel on top of the world. But whose bar do you measure yourself by now? A co-worker who drives a nicer car? The parent with two kids in college? The richest person or most famous person in the world?

Once, you were happiest by being your best self - so who do you need to be, now, to feel like you're succeeding?

The thing is, you don't see behind the scenes. The nice car might be in danger of being repossessed. The kids might be in a very strenuous scholarship program. That rich person might be living off more credit than you could imagine... You can't see the stress, the pain, the worry, or any of the other trials that person went through to appear as they do. So why are you trying to measure up to a bar you can neither see, nor control? Since when did it stop being enough to just measure up to your own goals - no matter how small the growth, or how slowly you reached it? Why is it that we measure our self-worth and accomplishment by the measuring stick of a complete stranger?

I'm not saying that you shouldn't aspire to reaching those heights. The smaller sibling might never be as tall as his brother or sister, but he'll also reach those higher bars eventually. Sometimes, he or she might even exceed them and become the taller one. But it takes time - and never does it stop being enough to just measure a little higher than before.

You can reach those high goals, too - but don't sacrifice yourself or your happiness to try and achieve it at the same pace or cost.

Remember I said the message was in two parts? Here's part two: when you do decide to aspire to the achievements of another person, and make their goals your own, choose carefully the stick you use. You are going to be using that stick to beat yourself with for an indeterminate amount of time - make sure it's not a stick that's going to leave you crippled and broken.

Instead of trying to be the best someone else today, I want you to try something different. Set your goals for the day, but set them to your own standard. If you want to be better than someone today, be a better you than you were yesterday, or last Monday. If you want to work harder, go to work early. If you want to be charitable, give five bucks to the guy at the traffic light. If you want to be successful, start with laying the steps that will lift you higher as you go.

You might not get as much done as the person who works sixteen hour days, or donate enough money to charity to get a building with your name on it. But when the day is over, don't think about those people. Think about yourself, and your own bar. Celebrate the inch you climbed, because it will send you soaring to the next inch.

Don't let those around you dictate your standards, goals and growth. Don't let them beat you with their sticks. Be the measurement they want to aspire too.

It's not going to be easy, and it won't always be fun or all 'good feelings'. But by looking in, you might just start seeing the things you are achieving, rather than what you're not. And, just maybe, you'll find that you measure up much better than you might have thought.

Until Next Week!

Greetings, dear Readers!

Today’s #MondayMotivation is a special one – it turned out to be a very emotional one for me, and maybe it will have some meaning for you as well. As some of you may know by now, about a year ago I left my day job to pursue a full time freelancing career. It’s had its difficulties – like anyone else who is self-employed can probably attest. My situation is far from ‘worst’, but it certainly doesn’t have rainbows and butterflies shooting out of it every day – and I’m okay with that. It was my decision, and I made it knowing there would be consequences to accept. Suffice to say, said consequences led up to one of the most surprising conversations – an unplanned chat with my brother on the steps outside, and our first real bonding moment in years.

As we chatted about life and ourselves, there was a little while where things got… serious. Then, unexpectedly, he said something to me – something I think that a lot of people might need to hear, too:

You Are A Worthy Person

You may have made bad decisions, or be in a bad spot, but that does not make you less worthy as a person.

It hit me harder than I thought it would. Sometimes your mind can start going places without you even realizing that it is. Maybe you’re in a difficult spot; your job isn’t all you expected it to be, or finances are tight, or you find yourself more dependent on the people around you than you’d like to be. It might make you feel less worthy as a person, maybe even ashamed or like you don’t deserve either the help or the opportunities to get better.

Your circumstances don’t dictate who you are, or your self-worth.

I needed time to revaluate, but not everyone has the opportunity to do that. But if you find yourself in that position, where you feel like you are worth less as a person because of your circumstances, stop right there. Take a short break. Treat yourself. Maybe all you need is a bubble bath, a special meal, or something nice to wear. Do something for yourself to remind you that you’re still important.


No matter where you find yourself now, no matter how hard it gets, you’re not less worthy now than the person who is on top of the world.



And that’s it. Just a short little message, but one that’s just as important – if not more important – than anything else I could say. Don’t forget that you are important and special!


Until Next Week!