Nicole Pesta Psychological Services
316 - 1167 Kensington Crescent NW Calgary, AB, Canada

PLEASURE AFFIRMATION (heard at ConvergeCon this weekend from Keynote Speaker Shadeen Francis LMFT) I am deserving of pleasure. The possibilities for pleasure in my life are endless. I do not need to earn my right to pleasure.... I can create pleasure for myself. My problems are real but do not change my right to pleasure. My pleasure is the pathway to my power. I will build from my power. My dreams create my reality. The world needs what I have to offer. I am enough. I am enough. I am enough. See more

31. Healing is a Lifelong Journey Experiences can hurt us, move us, change us, scar us, heal us. Life will ebb and flow, and just as learning is a spiral journey, so too is our healing. As we learn deeper truths, so too do we build our propensity to heal more deeply. We are all healers.

30. Healing Needs to be Holistic The greatest healing takes place through the sum of many parts. Trauma touches us in all forms physiologically, psychologically, emotionally, spiritually, and collectively. Thus, we cannot expect to fully heal a wound through any one means or mechanism. It’s important to compassionately identify all the places in ourselves where we hold our wounds: in our mind as mistaken beliefs about ourselves or the world; in our body as protective posture, tension, or pain; in our emotional selves, by avoiding certain feelings through numbing or denial; in our spiritual selves, by shielding ourselves with jadedness; in the collective, through ongoing discrimination or indifference; etc.

Had so much fun chatting with Kirstin on Virgin Radio about simple selfcare tips! Tune in to her show now to learn more about the 3 pillars of self-care: https://www.iheart.com/live/985-virgin-radio-7492/

29. Your Emotions are Valid/There are No Bad Emotions Emotions can be uncomfortable. Expressing our emotions can make others uncomfortable too. Though we have a choice for how to express our feelings, it’s important to not try to label them as good or bad. Emotions are simply data, energy. If you are feeling something, let yourself. The sooner you feel it, the sooner you can heal it. What we avoid expands, so instead turn towards, identify the feeling, sit with it, try to understand why it is there and what it is asking from you, express it in a healthy non-offensive manner and notice how it transforms.

28. Trust Your Intuition, Trust Yourself Listen to your body when it speaks. Feeling a knot in your stomach? Why is it there? Noticing a lump in your throat? What are you not feeling able to share? Our physiology tries to warn us, to get our attention, to ask for what it needs, but we often have learned over the course of lives to ignore, suppress, or label those parts as wrong. Often we’ve misunderstood these messages, and have conditioned ourselves away from trusting self, perhaps preferring to rationalize our feelings away. Start to turn towards your body, towards yourself, and find the wisdom within.

27. We Accept the Love we Think we Deserve, and Block the Love we’re Not Ready For I tried to get the love I desperately wanted from the wrong people who couldn’t love me like that because they hadn’t yet found that love for themselves. When I’d date people who gave me the right kind of love, I couldn’t accept it because I hadn’t yet met myself with that love and it was incredibly unfamiliar and uncomfortable. Through years of self-sabotage and relationship sabotage I gradually learned (with the help of friends and family) to love myself and thus believed my innate worth of being loved and loveable, attracting more of that from others who were ready to love me just right.

26. You Only Regret the Chances you Didn’t Take I decided on the motto to only regret the chances I didn’t take many years ago. I recognized that taking a chance will always provide data of some kind. We can learn about ourselves and life through the choices we make, and if we are learning, then there really isn’t a ‘wrong’ choice. I rarely meet someone who regrets a choice they’ve made in the long run. Sure, the grief process can include feelings of regret initially, however, hindsight and meaning making often allow someone to see choices as a part of the journey that led them to their present moment.

25. There are Many Paths to a Given Destination Sometimes it may feel like we’ve missed an opportunity. However, it has been my experience that opportunities are not so much missed as perhaps delayed. If you have an intended destination, you will find alternate routes that lead you there, just not always on the exact timeline or path that you envisioned.

24. Holding Space is an Important Skill Not taking on what others’ emotional experiences are will allow you to create safety for them to process and heal without becoming triggered in your own wounding. Sometimes someone else’s pain has nothing to do with you. Notice what comes up for you when someone starts to feel into their emotion can you get curious and help them navigate their healing?

23. Know your Values and Let Them Guide you Many of the above lessons became clear and more accessible after recognizing what my core values were. It’s easier to choose which people you want in your life, which experiences you wish to engage in, which career to pursue, and what to do with your time when you know what’s most important to you.

22. Honoring your Truth is Greater than FOMO Tuning in to yourself and your needs and in turn acting in your own best interest is a type of integrity that is greatly underutilized. Shifting from FOMO (fear-of-missing-out) to JOMO (joy-of-missing-out) is an ongoing practice for me, but I have found that I have never regretted honouring my needs, communicating them, and taking care of myself. This may mean cancelling plans because you feel burnt-out from your week, or hitting snooze when there are things waiting for you on a to-do list. That said, it’s important to ensure that you really are honouring your truth and not straddling the fine-line of avoidance or isolation.

21. It Gets Better No matter how trying life gets, how alone you feel, how dark the days get it gets better. Looking back to some of my most difficult times, I used to read quotes like this and think that they were written for someone else and that life didn’t really work that way. Now I chuckle to myself as I look at my life and see how truly wonderful it has become. If you can get through those hard days, life WILL get better, and you will be grateful that you stayed the course.

20. The World has a Materialism Problem There is so much stuff, too much stuff in this world of ours. It’s hard to not get caught up in the materialism of our society with the constant exposure to advertisements, peer pressure, and normalization. Minimalism is equal parts inspiring and overwhelming. I have found that it’s helpful to tune in to what sorts of material things you’re drawn to and why. Are you using stuff to fill the void of meaning in your life? Engaging in retail therapy for an easy hit of dopamine? Is that thing you’re lusting after a want or a need? Name it as such.