Private.

It's been an interesting leap around here and I've made the descision to take the blog private. If you'd like access, please email me and I will get you an invitation.

This is a time for me to grow. Learn a lot and put the words of my new journey down.

It's time I become true to myself again.

Somewhere in life, we all are told to stop being who we naturally were. Don’t do this and don’t do that. Bad girl. Many more limitations were put on us than were encouragement and explanations. Our curiosity got squelched and sometimes we were punished, severely.

Eventually we stopped wanting to learn and grow as our brains became cluttered with all those messages, pain becoming a frequent consequence for normal expression. Then as we grew older, other negative experiences added to these bad feelings about ourselves. We are so unaware of the sheer volume of negative messages in our subconscious. Only a small percentage makes it into our consciousness. And you wonder why one can feel so emotionally overwhelmed?

This is a deeply emotional, psychological, and physiological transition.

I must take the risks, face the fears, be creative, and ultimately learn how to stay focused on what I want to achieve and even to have fun.

I guess you can say I'm taking a break that distracts my mind. I am waking myself up. I am slowly taking off that which has been weighing me down and keeping me feeling dark. I am opening myself up.

All that I think is important is respect and clear boundaries along the way.

Ultimately we all must follow our own Truth.

Pretending it doesn't exist doesn't make it any less real.

For so many, it's easy to tell me to do this and that when you're not the one living my life. It's so easy for them to judge me. It's so easy for them to make false assumptions. Choosing to believe in something otherwise doesn't change the reality of the situation. But most don't even ask me or know what the reality of the situation is. And because at the end of the day, regardless of what they say or do, they keep forgetting that they don't want to understand how I live my life. They stopped trying to put themselves in my shoes because all they can see is how their own life has worked for them. They're looking at the same elephant through different eyes. I could never be happy if I subscribed to their ideals of walking away when the going gets rough. And most of them have chosen to walk away.

So you know what?

It doesn't matter at all.

You know they're not responsible for my happiness.

But I am.

Feel the Fear And Do It Anyway

We change our circumstances and how we are treated by others when we change what WE say and do and how we see ourselves.

We change these things when we ask ourselves new questions and take new actions.

As they say: Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting to get a different result.

Even when what we do does not work out the way we hoped or thought it would, something changes when we push ourselves outside our comfort zones and try new things.

IF we choose to see what happens as information, we grow, we learn, we recognize new possibilities.

If one set of actions did not work, perhaps another will.

IF we make the choice to keep trying.

We alter relationships in our lives when we begin to ask about others, especially those who are thorns in our sides: What are THEIR hopes and dreams and fears?

The thing is that it’s in our hands, how we live our lives.

The possibilities are there but we need to find a way to see them.

Over the past few months I have made a great many changes in my life.

NOW I see possibilities I could not grasp even a year ago and far more I could not see 5 years ago.

Only by taking action and being willing to face my fears and honestly look at the outcome, accepting my own responsibility for my life, could I LEARN to see these new possibilities.

I had to be willing to challenge old assumptions I hadn’t known I was allowing to control my actions and reactions.

Why is a sense of purpose so important? Because it gives us something to focus on beyond our own fears and self-doubts and past hurts.

It’s important because we feel better when we are closer to being the kind of person we believe we ought to be.

It’s important because while we may not be able to find the courage to do the things we fear if it’s just for ourselves, odds are much better we will when we know we are doing so to achieve something we believe matters.

And make no mistake—there is no way past fear except to walk through it and do the very things we think we cannot do.

What we gain is priceless. And we cannot fail.

Either we succeed or we gain new knowledge and insight and information—even if it’s that we may want to try something a little different next time.

Inherent in every situation is a gift—the gift of new possibilities, new ways of looking at things—if I choose to accept it.

We have choices.

We can stay exactly as we are and we will have exactly what we have now—until the universe comes along and yanks the rug out from under our feet!

Or we can choose to go forward, embracing change and new possibilities.

I believe that we can use everything that happens to help us move toward a life that is rich and fulfilling and filled with a sense of purpose.

It’s our choice.

And once we choose, it’s up to us to take the steps to achieve that life we want to have.