On Life and Words

Are you where you are in your life due to chances or choices? If you have to stop and think too hard about the answer to this question, perhaps you are not ready to live a life of authenticity with light and love. I'm not intending to sound harsh or as if I know everything, because I certainly don't know everything, but there is a certain level of self-awareness and self-honesty that is required to admit that a lot of things in our lives is due to choices of our own making. When we can stop and be truly honest with ourselves and admit that we've made some not-so-great, even BAD, choices, then we can stop blaming chance and blaming others for our problems and the struggles in our lives and move forward. There is a certain amount of chance in life, chance can sometimes cause some degree of difficulty in our lives. But when it comes to chance, even when we cannot control our circumstances, we still can control our reactions or choices that result from chance events. So, a...

Life is funny. One minute you're on the straight and narrow path and you've got a plan, the next you've come upon a giant tree in the road and one side of the road has a cliff on it and the other is water. So what do you do then? Jump off in the water and hope you can swim? Do you dive off the cliff and hope you magically learn how to fly? Or do you try to find a way to go over that tree in the road? What if I told you that, sometimes, it's a combination of the three? Sometimes you have to swim, sometimes you have to fly... other times you have to figure out a way over or through your obstacles. Life is full of changes. Indeed, in a single moment, things can change in the blink of an eye and it can seem that all of your well-made plans evaporate right before your eyes. It's really easy to get discouraged and frustrated when things happen to mess up your plans, especially when it seems like you'll never get out from underneath the current crisis or stress. I...

Are we true to ourselves, our hopes, our dreams? Do we live within our proclaimed values and morals? Do we feel like we can be our true selves or do we feel the need to wear a mask or to be someone we are not? A life lived in disguise, lived based on what others think we should do, is a life wasted. I wish someone had told me that years ago, instead of learning it the hard way. For too many years, I lived within the ideals of what I believed was best, simply because it was what everyone expected of me. I attempted to hide my true self and attempted to avoid confrontation or doing anything to "rock the boat" in attempts to make others happy. I found myself hiding my true thoughts, feelings, beliefs and ideas. I wore a mask that I never took off, even with those who were supposed to be closest to me. That's absolutely no way to live. I found that in trying to please others, I pleased no one and I made myself absolutely miserable. It's like I kept waiting for pe...

Wow, this has been a crazy few years. Starting in 2010, when my marriage began to crumble right after my youngest child was born, then meeting my new love, whom I've now been with for 3 years, to starting college and now being a year away from graduating with my Associate's degree in Psychology, it's been a rough ride. Finally, last year, the May 20th tornado of Moore, Oklahoma took out our life as we knew it. Then, a month ago, my boyfriend had a massive heart attack. I had an epiphany this morning. Even when life is at it's lowest point and even when you seemingly can't go anywhere, the only option becomes to move forward and go up from there. So, even though I've been down for the last few years, it's all UP from here. Our life path is our choice, we CHOOSE the direction we move in. Starting today, I'm choosing to go forward and up. While I haven't been writing much the last several months (obviously, I've been horrible at keeping a blog!...

Negativity is one of the many pitfalls of life. Too often, we allow that negativity to consume us and ruin our day, we find ourselves dwelling on the negatives and forget all about anything that might actually be positive. I'm here to remind you that it doesn't have to be that way. If you find yourself dwelling on the negative, you'll find yourself living in a bubble of darkness, you'll find that you have no enjoyment in life. Focusing on the positive will balance out the negativity in your life, it can even help to minimize it. All you need to do is simply find one thing each morning to be thankful for in your life. If you can find one positive thing to focus on, then this helps to keep negativity at bay and you won't drown in the waves of negativity. Negativity will always be there, it's a natural part of life, but you needn't feel like that is all there is in your life. Simply choose to focus on the positive and you will find that life doesn't se...