The act of disappearing like a phantom is known as ghosting.

Ghosting is when a person suddenly ceases communication with someone out of nowhere, seemingly without warning or provocation. The opposite of love is not hate; it is indifference. Little did I know I have actually experienced it myself in the past! I was thrilled to have finally found some answers to why it made me feel so awful.

If you have been ghosted, remember you are not the cause of the other person’s actions or choices. The act of ignoring is seldom discussed as a psychological weapon though it is a mighty powerful one. It is powerful because it requires minimal action from its user and uses the mind of their victim to attack itself in a kamikaze fashion.

Ghosting is a way to avoid confrontations. It is a way to reject someone or cut ties without proper closure. The people who usually choose this method are generally emotionally immature or do not know how to deal with their feelings. It is an extremely hurtful betrayal. The disregard is insulting. The lack of closure is maddening. You are forced to move on but not before your self-esteem has taken a hit.

One of the most insidious aspects of ghosting is that it does not just cause you to question the validity of a close, loving relationship it causes you to question yourself. Why didn’t I see this coming? What did I do to create this?

After this kind of rejection, realize they do not respect you. It is passive aggressive. It is self-protective at the expense of other people’s feelings.

Do not allow there to be many loose ends or burnt bridges in life. The important thing to remember is when someone ghosts you, it says nothing about you or your worthiness for love and everything about the person doing the ghosting. Be the better person, retain your dignity, and let him or her go peacefully.

Remember to keep the circle positive, peaceful and loving. ©

Written with love.

Joy M. Mills (IP)
Copyright © 2019
MJM ©

*This article is not intended to provide and does not constitute medical, legal or other professional advice. This article was written to support, not replace medical or psychiatric treatment. Please seek professional care if you feel you have a condition.

Be willing, not perfect. You have to decide how you will deal with a crazy situation before you get into it because when you are dealing with an emergency or making a decision on the fly, your immediate needs and fears typically cause you to make choices you would not have made if you were thinking clearly.

If you knew what you wanted, what is the compulsion for asking for advice if you honestly have confidence in yourself? What we hope is the vast majority of guidance you will receive comes from a place of love. Ultimately, you have to make your own choice for what is best for you. Do not let people who do not matter too much, matter too much.

Be okay with taking responsibility regardless of the outcome. Look at every situation that comes up in your life as a chance to get to know yourself better. We cannot own our choices by thinking. We have to practice with action.

Friends and family force their wishes for your life on you because they are afraid to know their truth. That is not your responsibility. That is their issue, and they have to deal with it, not you. When I began realizing the difference from owning other’s problems and giving support, I started creating my own positive space; this has a lot to do with boundaries. Then I could say I choose to stand with you.

In today’s world, it is becoming increasingly more difficult to avoid, suppress and force ourselves into fake states of positivity. Clearly, our negative emotions are bubbling to the surface. It is no wonder so many of us get stuck in apathy, pessimism and distractions. Eventually, everything connects with the life you were intended to live.

Remember to keep the circle positive, peaceful and loving. ©

Written with love.

Joy M. Mills (IP)
Copyright © 2019
MJM ®

*This article is not intended to provide and does not constitute medical, legal or other professional advice. This article was written to support, not replace medical or psychiatric treatment. Please seek professional care if you feel you have a condition.

There is a difference between giving up and knowing you have had enough.

If you are not one of those beautiful people in the world, then to some people you mean nothing. You seek people who express themselves by wearing darker clothes, too much makeup or piercings we do not understand. We judge them. Sometimes you may get a bit envious because there are others that are wearing trendy, in-style clothes and seem as if they have it all together.

We were all created differently. You have to like yourself first before anyone else can love you. Relating to, “Beauty is only skin deep” means that people look at the outside and are not aware of what is going on in the inside. You see someone who is outwardly beautiful and desirable, but when you get to know them, you find they are shallow, mean and cruel.

Everything is based on assumption, and people want to show you the good things about themselves that they are willing to go so far to hide the bad or the ugly they do not want to publicize. The choices we make, the people we are when no one is watching determines our beauty.

How do we deal with the total allurement of the flesh and how it gets confused with subconscious matters?  Especially in regards to the most elusive part of the body, the soul. Here is what is disconcerting, we all seem to be attracted to material things and beautiful people; but when those things are gone, what then? You possess a delicate flower at the height of its bloom, one day it is going to lose its petals, you run after ephemera, things that are enjoyed for a short time, at your own peril. Usually, a person who is enamored with him or herself will become mean and spiteful if things do not go their way. That is their character showing through in their words and actions.

I am an old soul. I have genuine kindness, and I want to attract the same. If you are not deep, do not swim in my pool. If you have a pretty face and do not have a pretty mind, pretty heart and a pretty soul, do not waste your time.

Not one drop of your self-worth should depend on someone else accepting you. Beauty should be from the inside out.

Remember to keep the circle positive, peaceful and loving. ©

Written with love.

Joy M. Mills (IP)
Copyright © 2019
MJM ®

*This article is not intended to provide and does not constitute medical, legal or other professional advice. This article was written to support, not replace medical or psychiatric treatment. Please seek professional care if you feel you have a condition.

I hate every cliché about forgiveness. Forgiveness is a vast untraversable land for those of us that crave justice. The very thought of letting someone walk away scot free makes me sick.

I can see all of your faces the moment I say I am writing about how to forgive someone who never gave an apology. When people treat you like they do not care, believe them. Today I decided to forgive you not because you apologized or because you acknowledged the pain you caused me but because I deserve peace.

Many offenses are personal. Let us be clear; do not confuse forgiveness with reconciliation. Reconciliation is a beautiful, magical, redeeming experience if it happens. Forgiveness is for you and your heart without the other person’s participation. It is not an eraser that will wipe away the pain that has happened to you.

The wrong way to apologize for me is when somebody will justify, minimize, excuse their behaviors or not say anything. The right way to apologize is to acknowledge, accept and express. I am not talking about a quick fix to years of pain. We need to all start looking simply to arrive at our best possible selves.

Forgiveness is reclaiming your power. The misery you will feel is heart-breaking. Your soul hurts, your body feels tortured, you do not sleep, and your mind is shattered. You lose your power when you feel abandoned. You cannot control what other people do. We can only control how we react to them even if they never know. Either we choose to empower or disempower ourselves with our reactions.

Forgiving a person does not mean you have to trust them or forget what they did. You do not have to stay there in the replay of the pain. You can move on.

Forgiveness is the final step in a healing process. When we let go of our painful past, we make way for a bright and hopeful present and future. Forgiveness is the ultimate expression of love; the best gift we give ourselves.

Remember to keep the circle positive, peaceful and loving. ©

Written with love.

Joy M. Mills (IP)
Copyright © 2019
MJM ®

*This article is not intended to provide and does not constitute medical, legal or other professional advice. This article was written to support, not replace medical or psychiatric treatment. Please seek professional care if you feel you have a condition.

You are at a point on your journey, and the way you think things should be gets derailed. This sudden transformation is difficult to process. You feel shocked, scared and concerned or uncertain. When someone you love falls ill, gets into an accident or receives a scary health diagnosis, it is never easy. It may be the hardest thing you ever have to face. Unfortunately, it is also inevitable that we all will have to deal with this situation in life.

In the early hours of March 1, my husband yelled out my name as if his life was dependent on me helping him. It was. Between what was happening, trying to remain calm for him with 911 on the line, and the minutes ticking by as if they were hours waiting for help to arrive, life as we knew it would never be the same.

When you are younger, you visualize a picture of what your life would be like in five years. You fantasize about your future. You imagine peace, health and happiness. Fast forward twenty-five years, your life is nothing like you imagined. The onset of my husband’s recent health scare was a not so gentle reminder of what I was not doing right, not taking care of myself.

How do I prioritize when I am pouring from an empty cup? Taking care of yourself does not feel like the priority. Your best does not feel good enough because you have spent time focusing on everyone else’s needs. I have been working on trying to prioritize myself. I often fail miserably. What happens when you are desperately trying to fill your cup, but circumstances keep pouring your cup out and leaving it empty? You become tired and frustrated.

If you are running on empty, break the habit before it breaks you. People will ask you what or who you love, and yourself is not on the list. You have trouble saying no to people even when you know you are stretched too thin. Put your needs first. If you cannot put your whole heart into something, there is no shame in stepping away. By weeding out what is unimportant, we will become more balanced individuals.

My husband being seriously ill for the second time in our marriage has made me take a closer look at priorities. There have been other times that were heady but nothing like this. I am going to get good at saying no. Inner peace begins when you choose not to allow another person or event to control you.

One valuable lesson we often forget in love and life is you are made to survive the hardest days. When I have heard, you cannot pour from an empty cup I always took it in the context of a metaphor as we are to take care of ourselves. Prioritizing self-care and perceiving it as a necessity rather than an indulgence is important because self-care is about preservation, not selfishness.

Remember to keep the circle positive, peaceful and loving. ©

Written with love.

Joy M. Mills (IP)
Copyright © 2019
MJM ®

*This article is not intended to provide and does not constitute medical, legal or other professional advice. This article was written to support, not replace medical or psychiatric treatment. Please seek professional care if you feel you have a condition.

Once again, we have to mourn for the victims of another senseless shooting. When will this stop?

I am not chicken little or here comes the apocalypse kind of person. I can only imagine anyone that has had their life touched by these mass shootings, directly or indirectly, may feel the apocalypse happened. However, I do know we cannot sit idly by.

I used to think naively at some point the world would reverse, some politician would stand up and say, “This is not working folks.” I fear my generation will be the last to fight this war. The next and more than the next generation will know no other way. But I do not care if the way I think makes me a dinosaur. I do not know why I care so much. It is not my problem which seems to be all of our attitudes. I am being facetious. We are complacent, and complacency is dangerous. 

Over the years I have finally succumbed to the irresistible seduction of education. People with different opinions and the ministry of common sense. Whether you believe in God or not, these horrible bloodbaths our country has been taking from one end to the other has to stop. You may think you want to live forever, but you do not. 

Let us play this out logically. If you live forever, there are only three possibilities:  conscious external existence, unconscious external existence or reincarnation where we remember one lifetime.

Imagine the longest day you ever had. Maybe some of us have been awake for a couple of days. Perhaps even more than that. Most of us start feeling weird when we have stayed up all night. When I have not slept in 24 hours, I think I am in a time warp. In particular, when other people have started their new day and I was still working on finishing up yesterday. It just is not right. What is happening in our country is not right. Wake up!

I have bad news. The world is going to end. I also have good news but probably not any time soon. Why has America gone crazy? It is a question many of you doubtless have asked over the past few years. It is one I have struggled to come up with the right answer other than we have fundamentally come unglued.

We have barely laid to rest those that were going to church one early Saturday morning and shot to death in their pews, and in these last handful of days there are more people, merely children, that are going to have to be laid to rest because we are complacent. 

I know this is a different world from the one in which I grew up. It is not necessarily better in my perspective but here is what I know now where I was spoiled:  had and read real books, a phone or watch that did not need charging, water that came from a spring, home cooked meals (as bad as they were), and we knew how to have real conversations and talk, not text. We could collectively come together and actually do something about the world we live in and become one voice screaming stop instead of spewing hatred. Let us stop trying to be right and come up with logical solutions. If it is not your problem today, one day it could very well be your problem.

Life changes with one phone call. If we do not change what is happening, who is next?

Remember to keep the circle positive, peaceful and loving. ©

Written with love.

#joymmillsIwishdeathwouldtakeavacationmystory #joymmillssundaysoullutions #instagood #happy #love #knowgodnoglory #nogodnoglory #ithastostop #wakeup #knowledgeispower #nomore #think

Joy M. Mills (IP)

Copyright © 2018 & 2019

MJM ®

*This article is not intended to provide and does not constitute medical, legal or other professional advice. This article was written to support, not replace medical or psychiatric treatment. Please seek professional care if you feel you have a condition.

Storms can be sudden and fierce raging until they suck the life out of us. If you give away all of your power, people will take it. When did we decide we could not have power? When did we determine we were powerless at the whim of everyone else? 

Communicating is the key to train and stand up for yourself and not get walked all over. You have to muster up the courage and be able to say what you want. It is the hardest part but possibly the most important.

Our beliefs and fears are important because, until that shifts, your life is going to be pretty crappy. When did you learn you had to please others to be safe? So many of us are guilty of this. We stop ourselves from speaking out to keep the peace. Sure, there are times when it makes sense to let it slide. Not everything is worth causing a ruckus over but too often we choose to pass the opportunity to be assertive, stand up for ourselves and use our voice.

If someone else is devaluing you, there is a good chance you are doing the same thing. So, change has to start with you. Whatever you do, as Dylan Thomas wrote, “Do not go gentle into that good night.”

Remember to keep the circle positive, peaceful and loving. ©

Written with love.

#instagood #love #happy #gentleintothatgoodnight #power #notyourtoy #selfrespect #youareworthy #joymmillsiwishdeathwouldtakeavacationmystory #buythebook #joymmillssundaysoullutions

Joy M. Mills (IP)

Copyright © 2018 & 2019

MJM ®

*This article is not intended to provide and does not constitute medical, legal or other professional advice. This article was written to support, not replace medical or psychiatric treatment. Please seek professional care if you feel you have a condition.