The first time someone shows you who they are, believe them!

One of the most oft-quoted sayings from the great Maya Angelou is this one: “The first time someone shows you who they are, believe them.” It is a very critical lesson of life. Unfortunately, many of us don’t necessarily apply this statement the very first time we meet someone.

It’s apparent that Angelou’s lesson can be applied to all types of relationships and situations, but it most clearly resonated with me in the case of friendships. Looking back, I can see how certain disappointing friends actually revealed their character to me, only for me to ignore them. Nonetheless, those same friends continued to show me who they were, causing a rift between us.

Why, when a person shows us or even tells us in their own words who they are, do we choose not to believe them?  Don’t you know you better than anyone else?

After a few relationships gone bad and more than one night waiting by the phone, Oprah learned the hard way that if a man shows you he’s untrustworthy, believe him the first time.

This quote/thought is a great way to direct your life. If you pay attention to someone’s actions, and not their words, you will see the real person.

How many times have you heard someone say, in one form or another, “I’m not good”, and you quickly dismiss it, and you start telling the person that they are good. Well, in some instances you may be talking to someone who has low self esteem and they need a boost, but most likely you are talking to someone that knows themselves far better than you do and they are ALERTING you. Pay attention! Reg flag, folks.  This doesn’t mean automatically, that you should let a person go. You have to evaluate their actions.

Especially the ones who are saying “I love you” yet there actions are screaming they do not. The man who says “I love you” then hits you, hmm that person does not love you.

A girl at my school was telling us a story about how she and her boyfriend got together, and she was bragging about how she got the guy to leave his last girlfriend. I warned my friend that was hanging out with her, and told her, that could have been your man.

Whatever your friend has done to their other friends they will most certainly do to you as well. My friend blew me off…what do I know, right? Months go by and these two girls were inseparable, very close. One day they went to a party together and the girl got drunk and kissed my friends boyfriends, and of course she blamed it on the aaaalcoohol ( Jamie Foxx, that was a good song).

Our ego’s refuse to believe that such things will happen to us. We’re smarter, aren’t we? We’re different than the others, right? Yes, we are. But…THEY are the same person with us as they were with the others and we cannot change their behaviour.

If you are dating a man who has cheated repeatedly on his girlfriends, do not be blind to this. This is who he is, and he will, inevitably cheat on you. If you are with a woman who is talking smack about all her girlfriends, in time she will and probably already is talking smack about you. If you’re with someone who steals from their job or family, they ARE going to steal from you.

If someone says, “oh, that’s just who I am”, they are telling you the truth!

Believe it when a person shows you who they are.  Stop with the excuses and stories and justifications for bad behavior.  It’s them, not YOU!

There are three kinds of people in this world. The first being, people who only want to see the GOOD in everyone and turn a blind eye to the bad. The second being the people who only see the bad in others and never see the good, they are always doubting, always suspicious. And the third being people who see others with a open eyes and open ears and see the reality of who the person is. Choose to be the latter. See things for what they are and listen to what others say.

When Oprah was in her 20s, she says, she went looking for love in all the wrong places. Watch as she looks back at past relationships and explains how low self-esteem led to bad choices. Plus, Oprah reveals the moment she got the message that love doesn’t hurt.

What If Money Was No Object – What Would You Do? – Time To Unslave Humanity

What do you desire? What makes you itch? What sort of a situation would you like?

Let’s suppose, I do this often in vocational guidance of students, they come to me and say, well, we’re getting out of college and we have the faintest idea what we want to do. So I always ask the question, what would you like to do if money were no object? How would you really enjoy spending your life?

Well, it’s so amazing as a result of our kind of educational system, crowds of students say well, we’d like to be painters, we’d like to be poets, we’d like to be writers, but as everybody knows you can’t earn any money that way. Or another person says well, I’d like to live an out-of-doors life and ride horses. I said you want to teach in a riding school? Let’s go through with it. What do you want to do?

When we finally got down to something, which the individual says he really wants to do, I will say to him, you do that and forget the money, because, if you say that getting the money is the most important thing, you will spend your life completely wasting your time. You’ll be doing things you don’t like doing in order to go on living, that is to go on doing things you don’t like doing, which is stupid. Better to have a short life that is full of what you like doing than a long life spent in a miserable way.

And after all, if you do really like what you’re doing, it doesn’t matter what it is, you can eventually turn it – you could eventually become a master of it. It’s the only way to become a master of something, to be really with it. And then you’ll be able to get a good fee for whatever it is. So don’t worry too much. That’s everybody is – somebody is interested in everything, anything you can be interested in, you will find others will. But it’s absolutely stupid to spend your time doing things you don’t like, in order to go on spending things you don’t like, doing things you don’t like and to teach our children to follow in the same track.

See what we are doing, is we’re bringing up children and educating to live the same sort of lifes we are living. In order that they may justify themselves and find satisfaction in life by bringing up their children to bring up their children to do the same thing, so it’s all retch, and no vomit it never gets there. And so, therefore, it’s so important to consider this question,

What do I desire?

Alan Wilson Watts (6 January 1915 – 16 November 1973)]

What is Fashion for you?

I was happier when I chose and created my own fashion. I have lived in this body all my life and know it much better than any fashion designer. I think I know what looks good on me, and I certainly know what feels good in me.  I am only willing to purchase the item which becomes me and to wear that which enhances my images of myself to myself.

Maya angelou

A piece of me

A piece of art, that I have dear to my heart, a poem written by my dear friend describing me, one of those presents you will find with me when I’m 80!