I posed the following question in my Instagram stories the other week: “How did the first half of 2019 treat you?”

I got a good amount of responses, including:

“Blah”

“Heart wrenching”

“Gracefully”

“Slightly rough around edges but overall smoothly”

“Crazy, but came out stronger! Now time to tackle the other half!!!”

Then someone asked me about how my first half of 2019 went, and I figured this would be a good topic to dedicate a blog post to.

In case you missed the small portion of my life story that I shared recently, you can read about how I lost my job not too long ago and how I’m handling it now.

So I started thinking about my year so far and how I would go about summarizing how it’s gone. And I came to a stark realization.

Now before I share this realization, let me preface it by sharing a bit about myself and the frame of mind I try to live in.

Life is shitty sometimes. That’s just the way it is. Things don’t always play out fairly, and sometimes we don’t understand why certain things are happening to us. There are periods we go through where it feels like life is just stacking everything against us all at the same time. I’ve been in those spaces before.

BUT I firmly believe in working to avoid the pitfalls of living in a space of negativity. I never want to be that person who believes life is against me all the time. I’m not the type to wear rose-colored glasses and ignore that life straight up sucks sometimes, but I also don’t want to walk around with an attitude of “woe is me” either.

Gratefulness is something I strive to continually express because I do believe that the more grateful you are for what you already have, the more you receive in return.

So imagine my surprise when I came to the realization that I actually do NOT express gratefulness for the things I already have as often as I should. When I really took a moment to think about it, I express my discontent much more than I’d like to admit.

I speak about my life so negatively sometimes, it’s no wonder it seems like I can’t attract better things into my situation.

I’m gonna be real here, because I feel like this is a safe space. And if you’re judging me right now, do me a favor and keep the judgements to yourself and continue to let me believe that this space is safe, please. And thank you.

I speak negatively about my relationship status.
I speak negatively about my past career choices.
I speak negatively about my body.
I speak negatively about others’ perception of me.
I speak negatively about my finances.
I speak negatively about so many things, it doesn’t make any sense.

I even initially started to speak negatively about my year thus far when someone asked me how it had been treating me. Instead of saying something along the lines of “It’s taught me MANY lessons that I’ll carry with me moving forward in life”, my first reaction was to say something more like “it’s treated me like poo” or “it’s been whooping my ass”.

If I were God or the universe (or WHOEVER you believe in), I wouldn’t give me another ghatdamn thing either. FOR WHAT!? I don’t even appreciate all the many blessings I already have. Yet I expect more blessings to just be rained down onto my life willy nilly.

How, Sway??

This way of thinking sounds crazy when I spell it all out here for both you and I to read, doesn’t it?

So now that I’ve come to this realization, how do I plan to change it? GOOD QUESTION! Because it’s not enough to just recognize your shortcomings in life, you have to actually want to change them. (Shocker, right!? What do you mean I can’t just continue going through life in the same manner while still expecting major shifts to happen on their own? Whaaat!?)

I’ll be honest, I don’t exactly have a game plan just yet. I may work to journal my way through this and focus on planting seeds of gratitude in my mind on a daily basis. Or maybe I’ll come up with a statement of gratitude that I can state every morning to get me in the right space. I’m not sure yet. But I will be sure to share whatever I come up with if you guys are interested (if you are, drop a comment here on or my Instagram).

I do know one small change I can make starting now. And that is whenever anyone asks me how my year has been or how things are going or how I feel about the rest of the year to come, I can make the effort to speak positively about it.

No more scrunching up my face and starting off with an “ehhh” or “welllllllll”. Nah. We off that. Ain’t nobody got time for that type of negativity. I need to manifest some new things into my atmosphere. I’m ready to be taken to new levels of blessings and understanding.

And that means leaving all the negativity behind.

And I’m ready.