#ExcerptWeek – Words We Carry by D. G. Kaye

/ Marcia Meara

 

Thanks for your generous invitation to share an excerpt of our books here on your blog Marcia. This excerpt is from my nonfiction-self-help book, Words We Carry – Essays of Obsession and Self-Esteem.

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Book Blurb

“I have been a great critic of myself for most of my life, and I was darned good at it, deflating my own ego without the help of anyone else.”

What do our shopping habits, high-heeled shoes, and big hair have to do with how we perceive ourselves? Do the slights we endured when we were young affect how we choose our relationships now?

D.G. takes us on a journey, unlocking the hurts of the past by identifying situations that hindered her own self-esteem. Her anecdotes and confessions demonstrate how the hurtful events in our lives linger and set the tone for how we value our own self-worth.

Words We Carry is a raw, personal accounting of how the author overcame the demons of low self-esteem with the determination to learn to love herself.

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Words We Carry – Excerpt
NEGATIVITY AND JEALOUSY

It’s a fact that negativity underlies our fears, and our guilt can play a big part in lowering our self-esteem. All of these traits connect with our levels of confidence, our strength of character, and our wellbeing. When we’re constantly berated and not placing ourselves in positive circumstances, our energies are drained, which can hinder our ability to maintain a positive outlook on life.

Our fears can cripple us, holding us back from living our lives to the fullest. If we can take a moment to assess the things in our lives that aren’t fulfilling us, and acknowledge what we feel is holding us back from what we wish to attain, we can begin to do some damage control. But if we choose to live our lives in the same unhappy patterns we’ve grown accustomed to without bothering to figure out the root cause of our problems, those problems become nearly impossible to overcome.

Sometimes facing our demons is hard, but that’s the only way we can grow and become stronger. If we choose to remain complacent in our unhappiness, we become trapped there, and many people’s lives remain stagnant because they fail to recognize why they’re unsatisfied. It’s all about taking the time to stop and listen, paying attention to the things that bother us instead of surrendering to them. If we can learn to take charge of ourselves and dig deep within to confront our fears and the injustices we face, we’ve made a great start, and we can then begin taking action to resolve our issues. We have to make a positive out of the negatives in order to become happy and emit our positivity, attracting similarly positive people into our lives.

Many women tend to surround themselves with negative people, resulting in damaging effects to their state of mind. We not only have the ability to inflict our own negativities, we sometimes find ourselves existing in negative surroundings because of the people we allow into our lives.

Take our moods, for example. Have you been in a great mood but found yourself in a conversation with someone who complained about everything, unable to show any happiness for any of the good things you share with them about your life? This type of negative force sucks out our enthusiasm like a leech.

This negative power can also linger from childhood. As children, we experience negative forces from incidents such as being reprimanded by a parent. In those moments when a parent is disciplining us, we immediately recoil and begin to feel inadequate about ourselves. If our actions are not explained to us with kindness, we’re inclined to shrivel back in fear, a fear created by the negative approach used to rectify our wrongdoing. Incidents such as these are the beginnings of allowing negativity to steer our emotions.

The critics, naysayers, and unhappy people we allow into our lives have the ability to drain our good energy, leaving us feeling unoptimistic, as though they have let the air out of our enthusiasm. The influence of negativity becomes the barometer for our moods. People who constantly live under this umbrella of negativity get so used to it that they may not even realize where their happiness has gone. They’ve simply adjusted to living that way.

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D. G. Kaye,  Author

D.G. Kaye is a Canadian nonfiction/ memoir writer who writes about life, matters of the heart and women’s issues. She writes to inspire others by sharing her stories about events she’s encountered, and the lessons that came along with them. D.G. loves to laugh, and self-medicate with a daily dose of humor. When not writing intimate memoirs, you’ll find D.G. writing with humor in some of her other works and blog posts.

Buy D. G.’s books here:

Words We Carry
Conflicted Hearts
MenoWhat? A Memoir
P. S. I Forgive You: A Broken Legacy
Have Bags, Will Travel

Reach D. G. Here:

My Website
Author Page
Goodreads
About me
LinkedIn
Facebook 
Google 
Instagram 
Pinterest

Twitter:   https://twitter.com/@pokercubster  (Yes, there’s a story)

 

61 thoughts on “#ExcerptWeek – Words We Carry by D. G. Kaye”

  3. Yeah, Deb . . . what Darlene said! This is good stuff, straight from your heart, as are all your books. I’m so glad you are taking part in #ExcerptWeek, and I really hope it helps get even more eyes on your work. There’s so much we can learn from your books, and I’m now going to share everywhere I can think of. Thank you for joining us this week! 😀 ❤

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  5. A great excerpt. I completely agree about the influence of negativity. I always marvel how some people can be so consistently negative at times. It has to take energy to be that miserable. It would be so much better to turn that effort to the positive and make a difference in their own life and the lives of others!

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    • I couldn’t agree more, Mae. While I can vent with the best of them, I’m over it pretty quickly, and back to thinking about the things I love. And I don’t love anything more than making people laugh. I always think of a line from Dudley Moore in “Arthur,” wherein he asks, “Isn’t fun just the BEST thing to have?” Yes, it is. Laughing, and thinking about beauty and friendship and love and nature makes life better in every way. 🙂 ❤

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    • Thanks Mae, so true. Negativity can become a dark web we get caught up in, often without finding a way out. I dug myself out many times and hoped by writing this book it would help others. 🙂 x

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  11. Pingback: Excerpt week at The Write Stuff with Marcia Meara

  16. Thanks for sharing this powerful excerpt Deb…some words that we carry within our hearts could be as detrimental as you have expostulated. There is no doubt that negativity hurts, demeans and drains our energy but negative emotions have an amazing positive influence as play a meaningful role in molding our personality. They unlatch the doors of understanding and learning. They enhance our confidence, give us a wide exposure, impel us towards introspection, help us in developing resilience and assist us in building better relationships. They carry profound prudence, which we pick up unconsciously.
    Thanks Marcia for providing this wonderful opportunity of sharing our thoughts and work. Stay blessed!

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  22. It’s true, negative people like that suck away all your energy. They’re like vampires feeding off your positivity, or black holes. A very spiritual person I know taught me how to create a little ‘bubble’ for myself when I am around people like That, or even when you’re just in a crowd, and it really helps. Lovely writing and wise words, Debby. Xxx

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  24. Great to see you being spread around the ‘net – lol – and loved reading the excerpt. What struck me most was how easily negativity can seem so “normal” that we don’t take steps to feel better when we could. Often that means changing the crowd with which we surround ourselves, which is always tricky, but always worth it.

    Great job, both of you.
    xx,
    mgh
    (Madelyn Griffith-Haynie – ADDandSoMuchMORE dot com)
    ADD/EFD Coach Training Field founder; ADD Coaching co-founder
    “It takes a village to transform a world!”

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