improvement Archives - The Baby Carrot Thug

The balls of life

Hitting walls and falling right down the ditch. Curve balls, and all other kinds of hard nasty balls are coming at you at all directions and you just can’t avoid them. Splashing up all over your face, and knocking you the fuck out. That’s what balls can do. They’re not as innocent as they look, my friends.

The “the road to success” picture that shows a line full of twists, turns, and knots is a picture that I think most of us are familiar with. The same picture should be applied to the road of life. Potatoooe, potato, if it’s basically the same thing I’m not sure, but you get what I’m coming at.

Life throws balls at us all the time. I guess even life gets bored sometimes, and needs to knock us out with some hard balls once in a while to stay entertained. Yea man, life can sure be a little bitch sometimes. The choices we make, the people we meet all takes us towards different paths. Sometimes we’re in sync with our lines and roads. We are on top of the world, with all this vibrant energy, knowing we are walking the right road with the wind in our hair and the sun on our face. But, even California experiences rainy days, and so will your life. A rainy day here and there is natural, but sometimes the rain just keeps pouring, and all of a sudden we have thunder and lightning, and snow storms, and a frikkin ice age all around us. Nothing makes sense anymore, and our joyful road has turned into a long, dark, bumpy, shit of an experience, and if we don’t watch ourselves it might takes us straight down a cliff.

“We need to die a little to learn how to live”. We do. Hurting is an essential part of life, but hurt becomes dangerous when we never stop to reflect on the pain, and let it take over our lives.

Comfort – Comfort is one of the greatest killers of all time. Okay, a knife and a gun are pretty extreme as well, but when it comes to self destruction, comfort definitely is on top of the list. The feeling of being can a lot of times be because of comfort. We can feel fear to make a new move, or to change our job, or do something completely out of our comfort zone. “Life happens at the end of our comfort zone”. We hear this all the time, but yet it can be so hard to make the leap and create a new reality. Start small by doing activities that you’ve always wanted to do, but are afraid not to. Go sing karaoke, go skydiving, prepare a speech, put on a full blown dance show in the middle of the street, cut off all your hair. Do something crazy you’ve always wanted to do (nothing illegal though! Young homies, don’t get it twisted!!).

When you start to do small things to challenges yourself it can be easier to change the bigger things about your life.

Not pleasing yourself – If you don’t love something, leave it, don’t stick around because of the hype everyone else has over it. Don’t believe illusions. Sometime people will tell you that you need to be doing certain things because it’s what they feel is the best for them. From your perspective, and for your life it might not be at all anything like what you’re supposed to be doing. Nobody can tell you what’s right and wrong for you, better than yourself.

Shake up your routine – Sometimes it doesn’t need to be big major life decisions that are bringing us down. It can be the simple fact of feeling that you’re stuck in a boring routine. Honestly, most of us will feel like this at some parts (or plenty of parts) of our lives. You can change this simply by shaking up your routine like a deluxe milkshake with extra extra errthaang!!! Have a spontaneous dinner party in the middle of the week, change the route you take to work, try a new café to get your morning coffee. Shaking things up will make you see new things, meet new people, and just have completely new experiences and interactions in a small, yet very effective way.

Stop hearing what you want to hear – We tend to lean on our friends and family for support when it comes to talking about what we feel, and the things we are going through. This is great! But it isn’t great when the people you choose to talk to tell you exactly what you want to hear, opposed to the things you need to hear. Don’t put your problems in the hands of “word pleasers”. You need people who will give you the straight up, raw advice. It might sting to hear things you don’t want to hear, especially in a time of weakness, but it’s necessary if you want to pull yourself out of the dumpster.

Write that shit down – Journaling is always such a magic way to figure shit out. By writing down everything you’re going through it will be easier to figure out what you need to do, to get on the right path. Maybe you’re realizing that you have to switch the direction completely! When you know what to do, it is so much easier to take the action needed.

Life, this crazy thing we just happened to end up in is a mysterious place. We have no idea what the fuck it really is, and somehow we are forced to figure it out. Life can be hard and it can smack us across the face plenty of times, and boy, it sure does! But it’s because of these smacks we can appreciate how truly beautiful it is to be alive. YOU are alive on this earth right now. Dude, that’s freaking amazing! You will never be alive on this earth in the shape or form you are now, who knows if you’ll ever be alive on this earth ever again!? The beauty of you and your life is a unique little thing that won’t ever happen again. So despite balls in your face, you have to live your best life, being the greatest you there will ever be! Make life proud, and grab it back by its balls!

May 24, 2018

Linnéa KindstromLeave a comment

I'm a jealous know it all

Loud, annoying, bragging douches, know it all’s, narcissistic, mean – These are just a few traits we categorize as negative.

We can all fit ourselves into someones annoying list, even though we don’t want to admit it. That we have some bad traits and flaws here and there, we can accept. But no one really wants to see the worst of the worst in ourselves. We are perfect, it’s usually other people who’ve got shit twisted. Pointing the finger at other peoples flaws are easy, but how easy can we turn that finger around and point it at ourselves?

So, first of all, here I am writing a list about acknowledging your negatives. Why, woman, why?! In a world where we are pushing positivity to the maxed out level, here I come and tell you to think about what makes you suck. Well, to strengthen your positives you need to be aware of your negatives. Let’s make it clear that we are not talking about your appearance!! We are focusing on our personality traits.

Our reactions to everything around us is something we do unconsciously. We get mad at other cars in traffic, we get mad when a person is taking forever at the check out at Trader Joe’s, we get jealous when we see someone we feel is more successful or beautiful than we are. These are things we “just do”. And I want you to know when you do it, and why you do it.

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I love to be right, and hate to be wrong (duh). I’m a terrible loser (even thought I’ve learned to hide it pretty well over the years). I can be jealous, I don’t open up about emotions easy, I can zone out very often. Not sure if zoning out is such bad of a trait, I guess it depends on the situation. These are just a few traits that I know I have. How other people see me, I might not even know.

Let your friends roast you – You need to get roosted, hard and crispy over an open flame and feel the burn. Okay, not really, but have your friends and family, whoever you truly trust and you know will be honest, tell you about your negative traits. What do you do that makes them sad, angry, pissed off, feeling taken for granted?

Why do you do them – If you want to go deep into why you behave this way, you can pull out a pen and a paper, and write down all the negative traits of your family and friends. We get effected by the world around us, and our upbringing might hold the answer to where your bad traits developed from. Identify the root of the problem and become aware of it. Let’s say you have a hard time opening up to people, and can be perceived as distant or cold. Maybe, you didn’t get that much word love from your parents? Break the inherited chain of bad habits!

Slap your hand when it reaches for the cookie jar – Track your shit! Write down every time you slip up. Track your bad habits in a journal, or in your phone. Whatever works for you. Become aware of them. Own them, not in the sense that they are awesome, but something you want to change. Change only happens when you’ve determined the problem. By writing them down, you will catch yourself red handed, and have you think about what triggered you behavior.

How does it effect others – Bad traits and habits goes beyond you. It usually effects others, and puts the whole “good energy balance” out of order. If the things you are doing are effecting people in a really bad way, you need to make a change. When it goes beyond yourself, you are almost required to do something about the problem.

Make others point at you – Tell the people around you, that every time you do something nasty, they should call you out out it. Bluntly. Have them explain why, and what you did exactly, so you can start seeing the type of scenarios that triggers your habit.

Perfection, there is no such a thing. Bad days are a thing! And they can effect us, and our decision making. But, if we can do our best to improve the way we react to certain situations, we can create better energies all around us, affecting the world and ourselves for the better.

April 18, 2018

Linnéa KindstromLeave a comment

Take Pride in Being Childish

Earth has been molded by oceans, volcanoes, and ice. Landscapes have moved, new inhabitants have settled in, and changes is happening at all times. But, underneath all these layers of molds , and changes, there is a center. The core center of our earth is untouched, and has remained the same since its creation.

We are just like our beloved earth. When our ugly, wrinkled faces see the sunlight for the first time, we are this core center. We are untouched, un molded, and the purest form of self we will ever be.

There’s a bunch of psychological theories about if we are born with a clean slate, and shaped by our environment, or if we are already born with our personalities and traits. I believe it’s a mix of both. We all have certain predisposed abilities, and survival instincts, just as any other mammal, and we might even have some personality down there in our newly born little souls. But, environment is a certain factor of change! How can we even argue about that!? The way we are raised will effect us, the people we meet when we start school will effect us. Things we hear, see, smell, taste – everything will set its mark on us. And in a technological evolving world, where things are fast paced, and new things are popping at us form all directions, we end up becoming these energy drained, routine robots. Centering ourselves, and finding our inner child is nothing we really do, and we look at this robotic changes as a part of “growing up”.

“Enjoy your life right now, kid, when you grow up it will be harder” – Isn’t this some shit almost all of us been told when we were younger? When did life and growing up turn into a long hard misery?

Kids see and live in a way that is different from us. We do set examples for the younger people, but we to, have a whole lot to learn from children.

The pretty awesome thing children do, that we somewhere along the line forget:

Brutally honest – The worlds toughest critics are children, yup, they are indeed. They speak their minds whenever, and about whatever. If they don’t like something, you will know, and if they love something, you’ll also know. It might not be the most appropriate to spit out someones food at a dinner party, but there’s other ways, in which we can be honest about the food. We can let the hostess know that they might’ve put a little bit too much salt in the soup, instead of smiling in delight while forcing down salty soup down your throat.

They wear their hearts on their sleeve – They show their emotions – hard core. Ever lost in a game, and being such a sore looser that you threw yourself on the ground, crying and screaming as if you were dying? Yup, been there, done that. From soccer games, to monopoly. If someone were mean to you, you made sure they knew how bad they did you. As we grow up we learn to put on the “I’m fine” mask. And boy, isn’t that something we wear on our sleeves? We are so fine all the time, but deep down our inner child is yelling in terror, punching our insides like a boxing bag.

They have fresh eyes – Kids wake up super early in the morning and they are ready to seize the day, for no apparent reason at all. They bounce around with these exploring eyes and they just make every day its own, despite routines like school. A new day means new adventures. Everything is exciting. They live in the present moment all the time. Remember how weeks felt like months? You were living in the present, homie.

Going out is what’s up – Children loves to go out – in nature. They are outside as often as they can, and they make up own worlds in our existing world. A leaf is now a pizza slice, and the big stone is now a five star restaurant, with some twigs being the new luxury utensils. We might not have the same time to go out in nature, with a 1 hour break at work, but we can make our hour count, or you can make your pencil at your desk, your own kind of new luxury utensil.

(Shout out to my amazing friend Savannah, we knew how to keep ourselves more than entertained, and we had some serious editing skills in Paint.)

They get bored – Well, now days with smart phones, I guess our young kiddos doesn’t get as bored anymore, but hey, they still get bored. Getting bored is, despite its bad rep, pretty awesome. Boredom forces us to do something. Even if we’re just sitting right up side down, our mind starts to wonder , and we spark some creativity. Boredom is the best little guy for creativity. The times you were bored as a kid, were the times where your best new games got created, or when you decided to come up with that killer dance routine with your friend. Boredom gave you the freedom to do exactly what you wanted to do, in your own way.

They are curious – If you’ve ever played the “why game” with a child, you know what I mean. They ask questions on questions, and follow up questions on follow up questions. They can never ask to much, and they never feel bad for wanting to suck out all the possible information they can. Be curious. Seek answers in random shit, that you never really though about. Learn as much as you can, because, why the hell not? Kids trial and error all the time, while we don’t even get to the trial part, because we fear the error.

They see things for what they are – As we grow up, we have a tendency of over complicating things. Things are always kinda in that grey area. For kids, it’s black and white. What is, is. Simple. No time to dwell upon it, they move on to the next. Sarah is not your friend anymore, okay, cool, now I’ll play with Betty. I’m not saying we should throw away our relationships like this, but you get the point. If an issue occurs, you deal with it, and you move on. They don’t hold grudges, and next week I’m best friends with Sarah again.

Right now, I want you to close your eyes and remember something, or certain things, that you used to do as a child, and time just seemed to fly by. Thinking about it? Are you seeing little you being in tune with yourself and just enjoying life for what it is? Do you today, make time for these things that made you feel this way? If not, we have to start.

The more we tune in with our inner child, the more we can find out what makes us awesome, and what abilities only you can bring to the world. We “de-child” ourselves as we grow up, and we set age restrictions on when we have to stop behaving like children, and suddenly just become all adulty and serious. Don’t get me wrong, growing up is amazing, and we learn a lot of life skills we never knew as children. But, what’s even more powerful is an adult that can do both. Be the child, within the adult.

April 4, 2018

Linnéa KindstromLeave a comment