You mad bro?

Have you ever been approached by a stranger in the street saying:” smile!” or by a coworker, family member, friend to ask you “Why are you mad?”, only for you to respond that you are fine and that there is nothing wrong? If yes, you already know what this is about. If you don’t then you are about to find out.

Pretty sure it's just my face... But thanks for asking

Ladies and gentlemen today we are talking about the resting Bitch face or RBF (or Bitchy Resting Face; BRF). I am going to be totally honest with you: until recently I didn’t even know it was a thing or that there even was a name for unintentionally frowning your face and looking like you're about to punch somebody in the face. Yes that’s exactly what it is. And if you are "suffering" from that too I bet you find it very annoying when people walk to you a millions times a day to ask you what’s wrong with you, only to realize that your face is the only thing wrong. And I didn’t know how concerning it was until recently when I saw a picture of myself and my facial expression made me gasp.

Pretty accurate

I wanted to understand what the root cause of it was and also raise some awareness (not sure what I am raising awareness for but oh well...). So I looking up some stuff and it turns out that RBF is a “syndrome” (lol whatever that means). According to some of the findings I stumbled onto it is not people just throwing shades, it is not some angry girl being mad at you or some random guy trying to break you in half: it is a real thing. A real thing that Behavioral researchers Jason Rogers and Abbe Macbeth tried to explain using a face reader program. All in all, the software compares the face of a “normal” person and the face of someone with RBF using 500 points on theirs faces to analyze their expressions and detect signs of various emotions (expressed and hidden). According to the results published by the two researchers and mentioned in the Huffington Post “ The typical facial expression is mostly neutral with just 3 percent of different emotions hidden in it, including just a drop of contempt. In RBF, however, the level of emotion nearly doubles to 5.76 percent — with most of that increase in the form of contempt.”

                         

Stranger: Why so mad? * Me: No... really I'm not... mad... it's just my face 😩

And if you have ever seen Kanye’s, Kristen Stewart’s  or even Anna Kendrick’s faces at rest you can kind of sense that note of contempt. However, Macbetch noted that “the FaceReader is not detecting enough contempt to reflect true contempt because these faces are not actually displaying contempt” before adding that   “It just looks like contempt to the viewer. Thus, it is the perception of that unconscious, subtle contempt expression that defines RBF” [More information about the study here]

Anna Kendrick on twitter: "Is there a filter on Instagram that fixes Bitchy Resting Face? Asking for a friend"

The study also mentioned that even though RBF is more commonly associated to women, it also affects men. So next time you are tempted to ask somebody if the person is mad or pick a fight because you feel like the person is throwing shades, consider that it might only be the person’s face that is wrong and nothing else. For having RBF and knowing people who have that too (ndlr my dad and my mother), you just have to learn to work with it and know the difference between their “I am pissed off” face and  their "regular" face (replace regular by RBF)

I hope this article was helpful and don’t be scared of us people with RBF, we are [sometimes] great people with a freaking messed up face. So next time you see me say hi and I’m pretty sure you’ll see me smile ;)

Until next time,
xo

Common Happiness Killers/ Joy Stealers and How To Shut Them Down

I don’t really remember how I got to that point where the idea about that article came up, but one thing I know is that I was browsing for a journal to keep track of a project I have been working on and planning since last year (and which hopefully I will be able to see come true this year). One thought leading to another, as I was looking at the journals and stationary articles available, I suddenly found myself comparing myself to some other people, undermining my potential, being bitter about who I was and somewhat about how my life had turned out and wondering what would have come of me if it had turned another way. This went on for a good 5 min before I caught myself and start correcting my train of thoughts– I know... You might be tempted to say that it is not much but believe me it was enough to make me go from happy and skipping in the street to give-me-a-Xanax 😩 in matter of seconds . What made me decide to write that article wasn’t how harsh I was in the way I was judging/criticizing myself or my life, but rather, how quickly I caught what was going on in my mind before those poisonous thoughts destroyed my happiness garden. So today, I decided to talk about the most common happiness killers/ joy stealers and how counter the poisonous darts they throw at us to bring us down while we are on our happiness journey.

1- Compare yourself to others

 Comparing ourselves to others is the biggest disservice we can do to ourselves when it comes to being happy. See when people compare you to other people they might have some power on what is external and that they can see but you have power over what is internal and is the most important. But when you compare yourself to other people, you are literally tearing yourself apart from the inside out. What is left if people break you down externally and you are tearing yourself out internally? That’s right nothing! So you want to be careful about your train of thoughts and the image you have of your own self. Instead of comparing my life to other people’s life, I have learned to understand that I cannot compare where I stand now to the place in life where other people stand because our stories are different. Our struggles are different. The paths we have chosen to walk are different. But most importantly, the amount of time they have been walking their paths is different than the amount of time I have been walking mine. So comparing myself/ my life to other people is a luxury I cannot afford. I can guarantee you that if one of the reasons aforementioned rings a bell to you, you will get over your habit of comparing yourself to others.

2- Not being appreciative of what you have/ complaining too much

I think this one is a no brainer. The more you complain, the less you appreciate what you have and the only thing you see is what you do not have. And because you do not have those thing you want so much and think will make you happy, you turn out being unhappy. But one thing you need to understand is that linking your happiness to material things will have two directly related effects : a) a temporary happiness that is only present whenever you get one of those things you cross out of your wishlist and b) a vicious cycle that is rooted in a). Being happy starts with being content with what you have. Being happy and content with what you have doesn’t mean that you do not aspire to have better things in life or that you don’t want things that would make you "happier". It just means that you understand that those things are not essential to your happiness or in another word, your happiness is independent of whether or not your get those things. Learn to be content, and you are halfway there on living a happy life.

3- Let people's criticism, opinion and ugly words get to you

I always find it amusing when I see some people paying so much attention to the criticism of persons who do so little for them. I’m just like… why though? Granted sometimes people make some criticisms because they know you can be a better person, you can do better. But honestly, we all know that out of 10 people making criticisms, 3 of them are doing it for your good and the rest just want to tear you down and drag you into the mud. They know that if they can’t get to you physically, their words will just tear you down and do the work their fists can’t do. Whenever someone I’m not close to or don’t even know makes comments or tries to get to me through criticism I’m like: who are you? oh... That’s right! It's irrelevant and honestly I couldn't care less 😒.

Whatever people say about you/ think of you is NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS! And whatever negative comments they make about you,  Don't let it get to you and honestly here is my advice below...

Do you booboo... Do you.💁🏾

4- Allowing the “what ifs” to take up way too much space

This one is the sneakiest, dirtiest and cruelest (is that even a word? Nevermind… don’t answer that) one. You just have to let life be what it is. The past is gone, the future is not here yet. All you have is the present: make the most out of it! Don’t let anything that is not part of now ruin your happiness and bring you more sorrows than you need. You already (I assume) have a plate full of it, don’t make it harder for you. Don't let those two words haunt you: you have a life to live.

5- Overthinking too much

A.k.a the torture weapon. It will keep you up at night by sending your mind in overdrive, make you tired and paranoid during the day, induce emotional breakdowns and turn you into one of those people who are totally disconnected from reality. How do I know? I have been there. There is only so much you can deal with at a given moment. Don’t try to overdo it. Why? Because you will create issues that didn’t even exist in the first place. It will make you worry sick about things you shouldn’t even worry about and suck every ounce of life and happiness out of you. There is a say in my dad’s village that goes by: “One does not need to rise on the tip of the toes to see what will eventually come”. Granted you have to be prepared for situations but you need to understand that what will happen is what is meant to happen. And no matter how much overthinking you do and your degree of preparedness, what needs to happen will happen. So instead of stressing yourself out, maybe you should try to turn down the overdrive a notch and enjoy life a little.

I am sure there are many more happiness killers/ joy stealers out there, but those are the ones I could come up with at the moment. Let me know if you can think of some and/or if you have more tips to counter them.

Until next time,
xo 

S.W.A.G

This was the article I had originally scheduled to post on Valentines day and even though my article is all about love, it is an atypical one. I had wanted to post this but as soon as I finished writing it seemed like all hell broke loose in my life and my house and the devil mandated some of his special agents after me LOL. But the one who is in me is greater than the one who is in the world (1 john 4:4) and I will share my testimony about God’s love and God’s grace. Ament? Ament. Valentines day being outdated (at least for another year), I thought posting this article around Easter would give this content an added value as it is being released in a context that is perfectly in phase with it. Now before I go further and get into the business of today's topic let me warn you: if you ain't got no Jesus business, God business, spiritual business going on or if you cannot read this without respecting my point of view, stop reading and go back to what you were doing before being curious and clicking read more. This is serious stuff ... It's God's stuff *gasp*. But if you want to keep reading don't worry.. I ain't gonna throw some concentrated Jesus juice at your face, threatening you about going to hell if you don't repent... Nah... I'll save that for another day 😂😂 I am just kidding!

Today I want to talk about the love of God: the truest, purest, deepest, selfless, and most unconditional form of love. It's so weird how people can take a day to celebrate love but forget about how amazing the love of God is... A love that was manifested to us through his son Jesus. And now that I know the true meaning of swag, I can talk about it because God has been good to me. I am not talking about swag as in "that dude/girl is fiiiiine! He/she has gotten some serious swag going on". I am talking about the obashanda SWAG that makes your eyes filled with tears of gratitude: I’m talking about being Saved With Amazing Grace.

I grew up with religion but I was never really a christian per say. Of course I believed in God. I prayed because I was told I had to. I did what I had to do. Then life got complicated and that is when my Journey about finding God and getting closer to him started. I started seeking him and developing a relationship with him. It's at that time of my life that I truly became a Christian. But being a christian doesn't mean you are immune to sin. The Bible says that you will be tempted. But God also says in his world that he has vanquished the world and since he has we have too. Being a Christian means that you have better weapons to fight sin and have victory over it. During my walk with God I had highs and I had lows. And my lows were very low. As a matter of fact, my lows were highly similar to rock bottom. It all started with being sneaky, thinking I was fooling other people and the spiritual authority established over my life. But truly the only person I was fooling was myself. The only person I was hurting was myself. As life got harder, I started drifting away from faith, from the presence of God. Sure I was in the house of the Lord but not in his presence anymore.

Things only went down from there until the day I finally realized how miserable I was from not being in the presence of God and how I had messed up. I wanted to come back to Him but I didn't know how. I felt like I didn't deserve God's love and trust anymore but then I remembered that through everything God's love forever endures. I remembered that God loves us unconditionally and that He is ready to welcome us back like He did for the prodigal son as long as we come back to Him and admit that we messed up big time. I remembered that the grace of God was there to help me off the ground and find my way back to the presence of the Lord. All this time I was away from my Heavenly father I felt lost, miserable and empty. I was looking for ways to give my life a new meanings and for things to fill a void that only God could fill. I thought I had nothing and that maybe, because I had been such a horrible child to my Father, I wasn’t worth being loved. But through all that, when I came back to Him he said to me “My grace is enough”. And it truly was. I just couldn’t see it because of the raging storms in my heart and in my life. But hitting rock bottom made me realize it. Now… you may feel like you have it all. And it’s fine; To each one its own experience in life. But for me, I know I didn’t have it all back then but now I do and I have never been so much at peace and happy in my life, even in times of trials and battles.

It doesn’t matter how bad you’ve messed up, what matters is finding the courage to get back to your heavenly father and say: “Lord…. I messed up big time and I regret it. I am so sorry about it. Please forgive me and help me get back on my feet and be a better person. Wash away my sins and make me a better person. I surrender to you and to your grace and I pray that you do your work in me”. That’s it… that’s all you have to do but you really have to mean it because there is no point in saying you’re sorry if you’re going to do that again. the grace is about finding a way back to good not a free pass to present whenever you mess up intentionally and wave it in god’s face and be like “here God… here is the grace free pass. Can I get in now?” no… it doesn’t work that way.
So no matter where you are in life… Remember that the love of God is bigger, deeper and better than anything you could ever envision and that His grace is enough. Enough to forgive you, to reintroduce you back into his presence, enough to justify you with His word, enough to go from sinner to being part of those understanding the true meaning of SWAG and using their story as a testimony of God’s love, grace and mercy.

I hope this post edified you. I am not forcing my opinion or beliefs on you. Just sharing my story in hope that it will help someone, somewhere reading this. God Bless you.