Hi there! My name is Jamie Rae Wright! I am a small-town girl born and bred in the rural parts of Northeast Oklahoma. I have one beautiful and tenacious big Sister and two beautiful and tenacious adult daughters!
Like many of you, I have experienced life’s ups and downs. Refusing to succumb to downs, such as teen pregnancy poverty statistics of receiving $238 a month in welfare and food stamps, homelessness as a result of domestic violence, the list goes on; I made the decision to push. I made the decision not to give up. And I intentionally focus on life’s up’s and I am committed to helping you intentionally focus on life’s up’s, to not give up, and to encourage you to make the decision to PUSH too!
We must remember that life’s ups and downs will happen. However, we can choose to use our ups to sustain us when life’s downs happen and use life’s downs to strengthen our resiliency, perseverance and remind us of our strength.
To help encourage you, I have free online content through my YouTube channel, where I highlight various steps and beliefs that you can integrate into your life. I am also diligently working on two lifechanging books coming up- “The Power of Overcoming Shame and Learning to Love Yourself Again” and “Finding Purpose Through Pain”. These books explore steps that you can take to take back control of your life and loving yourself throughout the process! To read more on my story, click on the about page for more in-depth information.
In the meantime, here are some powerful and practical tools you can I’ve gained along my journey that I hope will help you, like they helped me!
Practice Mindfulness – You’ll find when you’re Present in the moment, elevate your Prospective (i.e., look at life as a glass half-full; not half-empty, choose to see adversity and opposition as an opportunity to grow, staying away from negative people to ensure you maintain a positive outlook on life), you’ll experience Peace, no matter what may be happening around you. You’ll experience a sense of acceptance and resolve that is hard to articulate to others, the peace will begin to come through your energy and how you show-up in the world! It’s truly a beautiful feeling, truly beautiful.
“The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be”
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
Invest in Yourself – It has been my experience that investing in yourself provides the greatest return on investment (in the accounting world we refer to it as the “ROI”). What I mean by investing in yourself is practicing Self-Care, in that you find something that YOU like, something that takes the stress away in that moment. For example, I meditate, I have a Therapist (to ensure my mental health is just as ‘healthy’ as my physical health), and I get massages pretty regularly! As for Self-Development, please know, we as humans are much like plants, in that, if we’re not growing, we’re dying. So, consider developing yourself through attending workshops, reading self-help books, or even taking that photography class you always dreamed of! When you make prioritize your self-care, continue growing by developing yourself, this is what I know to be certain, you’ll experience Success. You’ll experience the kind of success YOU designed for your life, YOU, not the ‘success’ of the world or that others have designed for you. It’s a beautiful thing! Truly beautiful!
“Feel the fear. Do it anyway!”
~ Jillian Michaels
Develop Courage – The quote by Jillian Michaels, ‘feel the fear and do it anyway’ resonates 100 percent with me. Often times people ask me how did I accomplish the level of education I have despite becoming mother at 14, how (and why) did I go to Afghanistan to support the brave Men and Women of our Nation, not once, but twice? How, why, how, how, how? It’s because I felt the fear; however, I did not let the fear stop me. I Pushed. I made up in my mind that I was not going to let the feeling of fear paralyze me and I did what I made up in my mind to do in the very FACE OF FEAR. I also Persevered. There were times I got tired, I wanted to give-up, I thought to myself ‘Jamie, girl, you done did it now’; but I persevered. I kept (and continue to keep) going. I kept (and continue to) go, I just simply go. This is so important I must mention it again, please STAY away from Pessimistic People, please. Pessimistic (or negative people) are simply detrimental to us, and more importantly, or SMILE. So, please consider always to love and regard pessimistic people but just from a distance!
“Be like the flower that gives fragrance even to the hand that crushes it”
~ Ali Ibn Abi Talib
Practice Recovery – As I mentioned early in the book, my childhood was ravaged with trauma. For a very long time, as a result of it, I made decisions and choices consistent with the trauma and unhealed wounds I had. Along my journey to healing because I was just tired of being tired, I discovered a tool that has radically transformed my life! I learned this simple and practical, but powerful, exercise from my Therapist that I hope will help you in a radical way too! The fundamental goal of the exercise is the ability to control our thoughts. The ability to shift negative self-talk that many of us have, however, we don’t even realize/recognize we have it. It’s simply Catching, Checking, and Changing negative and disempowering thinking and self-talk. Practicing this powerful exercise has personally helped me recover my thoughts in ways that’s allowed me to forgive the people who have abused and hurt me the most in my life.
So, for example, I use to often think that I wasn’t smart enough to do ‘this’ or ‘that’ right. Now, when I think those thoughts, I have the ability/tools to catch them, check them (in that I quickly check to see where the thought is coming from, is it from my childhood, etc.). I then change the thought by thinking of something positive, thinking of the things and evidence I have to disprove that thought, such as my education or the awards and accolades I’ve achieved. It’s a beautiful and powerful feeling; absolutely beautiful!
I want you to put a big smile on your face. I want you to think about anything that makes you smile, seeing someone you love dearly for the first time in months (or even years), or maybe it’s you setting by the beach or looking out of the window at the snow-capped mounts. I want you to think about anything (or anyone) that will put a big-fat-bright smile on your face. Okay, you got your smile?!? Good! Now, I want you to keep smiling but think about something unhappy or negative, but make sure you keep holding that big-fat-bright smile. Okay, stop! Did you find it a bit hard to hold that unhappy or negative thought? I hope it helped to put a smile on your face and remember, “Smiles help make the world a happier place”!