Use Your Inside Voice

...for good that is!!!

Today I'm not talking about the inside voice I remind my kids to use each and every day (realistically several times each and every day). Today I'm talking about that voice inside each of us. The voice that seems to be a mixture of what our parents told us, what our friends said, our experiences, all our exes, and our own self image. You know the one...

"You are more of a book smart person 
than one with common sense"

"Too bad you aren't more mechanically inclined"

"You never were very good at 
putting things together; you didn't 
even like puzzles as a kid"

"Let someone else do that so it works and looks nice"

"Big girls look so awkward dancing"

...etc...

I can usually shut down that stinkin' thinkin' pretty quick, but it's still in there. It's amazing what you can do when you manage to squash those negative inside voices and use the positive ones instead. This weekend was one of those times when I told my inside Negative Nellie to take a long walk off a short pier and I channeled my inner Maya Angelou instead, and it felt oh so good!

I'm still the nerdy girl with the glasses and braces. I've aged, but inside I'm still the "walking encyclopedia" who couldn't find a date for prom. I'm still the awkward girl who got good grades but doesn't even like puzzles or legos (or anything with more instructions than a cheesecake recipe). So...when our dryer broke this weekend I felt pretty helpless. Those inside voices were telling me there's no way I'd be able to fix it, and my husband was busy working on a building project and doing farmer stuff. It doesn't seem like the end of the world, but we cloth diaper and with a family of 7, we do a LOT of laundry (even without diapers). Taking all the laundry and children to the laundromat didn't seem like an option either...so I looked in the mirror and told myself:

"I love to see a young girl go out and grab the world by the lapels.

 Life’s a bitch. You’ve got to go out and kick ass." 

~Maya Angelou

I grabbed my pretty pink tool kit my mama got me for Christmas in 2015, I tied my hair up and put on my ripped jeans, and I prepared mentally for a bad ass battle with my laundry room appliance. I was feeling pretty tough girl, but just in case...I started it up just once more to make sure it hadn't mysteriously fixed itself (because when I was growing up, I watched Bewitched and even tough girls can dream). Still sounded like I was running a chain link fence through a garbage disposal...

I'll save you the details and give you the same version I gave my bestie via Facebook messenger:

Cathy: Sorry I missed your message, we weren't home but you could have used our dryer.

Me: No worries, I fixed it myself!!!

Cathy: Woo hoo! What was wrong?

Me: Some little human washed and dried a pencil that fell out of the lint trap and was trapped in the fan motor. I actually found about 15 of them, but just the one was the culprit. I took off the back, took it all apart, cleaned it all out, removed all foreign objects, put it back together with 1 screw missing...because I dropped it & it was the last of 15, so I clearly figure it's optional?

Yes, I unplugged it first by the way.

Cathy: LOL, I love your description and it sounds like a great blog...


So, I'm not feeling bad ass enough to try and change my oil or anything, but that inside voice that told me I'm not mechanical is more of a whisper today. I'm going to attempt to channel that same Maya Angelou badass girl and finish up my novel from NaNoWriMo too! Today, I am unstoppable!

Here we are the 2nd day of the New Year and the only resolution I'm making is I'm going to be kinder to myself. 
What about you? 
What has your inside voice stopped you from doing? 
What has that voice helped you achieve? 
If you could be someone else's inside voice, what would you say? Have you ever given that much thought? 

If you compliment someone, there's a chance you'll become one of their inside voices - not sure what you can do to change the world this year? 

How about making it your mission to say something kind and encouraging to someone else? 

Do it each and every day and I guarantee you'll change someone's world!

Thanks for listening and make it a great day by encouraging someone today!

xoxox
~Crystal


Crystal is a secretary, council secretary, and musician at her church, birth mother, babywearing cloth
diapering mama (aka crunchy mama), business owner, active journaler, writer and blogger, Blog Tour Manager with WOW! Women on Writing, Publicist with Dream of Things Publishing, Press Corp teammate for the DairyGirl Network, Unicorn Mom Ambassador, as well as a dairy farmer. She lives in Wisconsin with her husband and their five youngest children (Carmen 11, Andre 10, Breccan 5, Delphine 3, and baby Eudora who somehow turned 1 a few months ago), two dogs, four little piggies, a handful of cats and kittens, and over 230 Holsteins.

You can find Crystal riding unicorns, taking the ordinary and giving it a little extra (making it extraordinary), blogging and reviewing books, baby carriers, cloth diapers, and all sorts of other stuff here, and at her personal blog - Crystal is dedicated to turning life's lemons into lemonade!