Tag: self improvement

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Feeling Good: The Best Way To Find Love

Alex Iby its not hard FB blog
Photo: Alex Iby

Make a habit of feeling good. It’s a sure way to find love. Especially if you’re transgender, or transamorous.

Feeling good eliminates drama too. It also makes improving your life easy.

Finding trouble finding love? Finding it difficult to accept your transamory? Or maybe you’ve accepted it privately. Now you want to “go public”. But something is stopping you.

Feeling good can help with all that. And a lot more.

We are all meant to be happy.

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Feeling good is happiness. Happiness includes prosperity and freedom, including financial freedom, time freedom and freedom of an easy love relationship. Everything you think as necessary to being happy, you can have.

You don’t have to deprive yourself. Or compromise. Especially in relationship.

You’re meant to be continually happy. If you’re not doing that, you’re making life harder than it needs to be.

It’s funny how we sometimes say “If I have that guy or girl I’m looking for as a partner I’ll be happy.” Or “He makes me happy.” Relationships don’t make a person happy.

Having that perfect partner in your life doesn’t make you happy. That relationship, no matter how wonderful, comes with button pushing, unmet expectations, and lots of growth opportunities.

Can you be happy in a relationship? Yes.

But not because of the relationship. You’re happy because you’re happy.

Happiness doesn’t come from having that new job, or that car or house you want, or that money you’re wanting either.

When you satisfy a want, you feel the satisfaction, sure. But notice: over time, that satisfaction fades as new wants come up and old satisfied ones get…well…old. 🙄

Relationships are like satisfied wants. They are meant to be fulfilled. And, just like you have satisfied wants, you’re supposed to have satisfying relationships.

GOTTA BE HAPPY BLOG
If it seems like “no duh”, then why are so many not happy?

It takes a while to get to lasting happiness. Not because it’s hard – it’s easy.

It takes a while though because you have to slow your old way of living’s influence. Thinking life is hard, that you must work hard, that relationships are hard, that “you don’t always get what you want”, that men are all X and women are all Y, these kinds of thoughts act against your happiness. You have to replace those stories with new ones. Then you have to make them as automatic as the stories you now tell yourself.

Once that happens….oh my.

So the trip is worth it.

So here’s how to start the journey to feeling good:

Step one: Appreciate, appreciate, appreciate. Write down how much you appreciate. Try expressing appreciation for things you take for granted, such as the device you’re reading this on, the shoes on your feet, soap, toothpaste. Start with simple things.

Step two: Pay attention to what you’re feeling. Your feelings tell you what kind of story you’re telling. Develop a habit of checking in with yourself throughout the day. We can help you develop these powerful habits. We’re really good at it.

Step three: Stop listening to the news. We know this is difficult for some people. But the more you listen to the news, particularly negative news about the transgender community, the more unhelpful stories you create and the more you reinforce your old stories. It’s hard being happy and listen to the news.

Besides, very little – actually almost nothing – in the news pertains to you.

Step four. Get out more. Take more walks. While you’re out there, practice step one above and notice things in the world you take for granted. Getting out in nature has huge mood enhancing benefits.

Step five. At the end of each day, acknowledge all the good that happened, including your success in doing these five steps.

Practice these five steps daily. Before you know it, you’ll find yourself well on the way to unshakeable happiness and freedom. Then, and only then you’ll get all you’re wanting. Including that relationship. And you’ll get it all with little effort. We guarantee it.

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Can Trans People Oppress The Majority?

Andrei Lazarev Opression FB blog
Photo: Andrei Lazarev

It can sure feel that way. But when the majority feels oppression, you’re winning.

Hear them:

“Seriously, what’s going on? Where are all these people coming from claiming there is something more than “man” and “woman”? Don’t they realize they sound delusional?”

So go the thoughts of those whose world view depends on immutable “Laws” about “reality”.

“Immutable” means “unchanging over time. Fixed, carved in stone, permanent or rigid”.

None of those words can be applied to life or being human. Both are forever changing and evolving for the better. Diversity is the norm. The more the better

And there’s no limit on what that diversity will look like.

People who need a “rigid” “unchanging” reality are deeply ensconced in fear and insecurity. They have lost the flexibility of their childhood, where reality was much less “hardened” than the adult world.

When something from outside that hardened world view meets that hardened-ness head on, the jarring feeling, the discomfort people who don’t understand being transgender feel, triggers reactions remarkably similar to those attributable to racist behaviors triggered from white fragility.

White fragility is defined in an excellent 2011 research paper written by Robin DiAngelo for the International Journal Of Critical Pedagogy, aptly titled “White Fragility”.

White Fragility is a state in which even a minimum amount of racial stress becomes intolerable, triggering a range of defensive moves. These moves include the outward display of emotions such as anger, fear, and guilt, and behaviors such as argumentation, silence, and leaving the stress-inducing situation. These behaviors, in turn, function to reinstate white racial equilibrium. Racial stress results from an interruption to what is racially familiar.

This would be a great definition for “Anti-Gender-fluidity Fragility”. Something I just made up 🙂

Replace “racial” with “gender”:

“Anti-Gender-fluidity Fragility is a state in which even a minimum amount of gender stress becomes intolerable, triggering a range of defensive moves. These moves include the outward display of emotions such as anger, fear, and guilt, and behaviors such as argumentation, silence, and leaving the stress-inducing situation. These behaviors, in turn, function to reinstate cis gender equilibrium. Gender stress results from an interruption to what is with regard to gender, familiar.”

Interesting, isn’t it?

We could even go so far as to say Anti-Gender-fluidity Fragility, in extreme cases, results in attempts to coerce and control: humiliating, threatening, being aggressive towards and even waging violence against those perceived to threatened a hardened world view, i.e. transgender people.

Isn’t that what we’re seeing today?

What this means is, there is nothing personal about a non-trans person becoming hostile or trying to censure transgender people’s rights. They’re just acting out of extreme insecurity as they are confronted with circumstances outside their comfortable world views or stories.

In other words, they are scared.

And when a person who is used to being in control feels scared long enough, they find ways to ameliorate that fear. In most people unaware of their stories, “control” means trying to manipulate things (situations, laws, who can use which bathroom) and people (kicking them out of the family, for example).

But it can also including appropriating the victim role even though they enjoy privilege of [gender] acceptance.

A lot of people have said it: “When you’re used to privilege, equality feels like oppression.”

The cool thing is, as history has always shown, actual oppression waged by the majority on a minority usually causes the cause of the minority to win.

Are you prepared to win? Don’t worry, when you do, they will too. But not in the way they think.

HT to this guy’s experience

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Transgender Women Perpetuate Toxic Masculinity? Some Do, Yes

Dating choices FB blog
The type of men you go after says a lot more about you than anything else. But it also can perpetuate exactly what you’d like to see less of in the world.

Yes, it’s true: some transgender women are as complicit in perpetuating toxic masculinity as men. But those transgender women doing it aren’t aware they’re doing it.

Frankly, we’re not even sure the men are aware. But that’s another story.

We’ve offered many times a unique perspective on cis-trans dynamics – ways both parties in seeking partners behave – which perpetuate toxic masculinity.

Recently we discussed this from the trans-attracted male’s perspective. No doubt, these men sometimes do their part to perpetuate toxic masculine attitudes and behaviors. Particularly the “alpha male” variety – those men some transgender women desire most.

That post was a promo for our recently-released YouTube and Podcast episode. We featured Tommy Matt, an activist in many areas and a strong proponent for transgender rights. Particularly transgender women and transgender women of color.

Tommy also is a self-declared, trans-attracted man.

Tommy speaks definitively, clearly describing the role toxic masculinity plays in cis-trans relationships and potential relationships. While Tommy focuses on the men, Remy, our show co-host, does an outstanding job highlighting transgender women’s role in perpetuating toxic masculinity saying “…it takes two. Every relationship is a dance between two people’s stories.”

The conversation struck a chord for one transgender female viewer who felt strongly enough to share her opinion. It’s powerful enough to repeat here:

“…trans women are sometimes just as guilty as cis men of perpetuating toxic standards of masculinity. But, because gender is a construct and because it’s how we communicate beyond words, toxically masculine men are a cheap way to highlight (if not affirm) a trans woman’s femininity. In other words, a cis man’s perhaps extreme or exaggerated concept of his own masculinity can be attractive, soothing, and/or satisfying to an albeit insecure trans woman because she believes she looks even more feminine around him than she does around a cis man generally perceived as less masculine. I think this phenomenon exists between insecure cis folk too. But, consider that that insecurity is pronounced for those who suffer from gender dysphoria.”

There’s a lot of truth to be explored in this.

Watch the entire interview: