What is stopping you from being exactly who you are?
Who you think you are
What is the image you have of yourself? Who and what do you think you are?
If your self-image is in conflict with your goals, the self-image will win out and the goals will fall by the wayside. Yet when your image of yourself is in agreement with your goals, those goals will be achieved in ways that seem almost effortless.
Who you think you are has a tremendous impact on the person you actually become. And fortunately, you can choose precisely who you think you are.
Others will often try to tell you who you are, but you don't need to pay any attention to them. Instead, decide to see yourself as the person you would most truly like to be.
The way you choose to see yourself exerts a steady and substantial influence on all the other choices you make. And those choices add together to build the reality of your life.
Truly see yourself as the person who can live the life you most sincerely desire to live. Who you think you are is precisely who you will come to be.
-- Ralph Marston
Sometimes it is easy to get caught up in the trap of wearing masks of what you want other people to think of you or being who they want you to be. But really is that being real? Is that being true to who you are as a person inside? No...not really. If we go around being everything everybody else wants us to be, we end up cheating ourselves of a great joy. We cheat ourselves of being authentic and letting others get to know the true us. The truth is, you are a wonderful person inside and so many times fear stands in the way of being who you really are. I know for me, there were times growing up that I was shuffled from home to home and everywhere I went I didn't know what was expected of me. I tried to be whatever it was that would keep me the safest and the least noticed. When I was with a rowdy bunch, I acted rowdy. I tried to fit in so I wouldn't stand out in the crowd and somebody would think I was different than them and therefore defective in some way. When I was in homes that were over the top religious, I did what was expected of me in order to fit in. In school, I fit in the best way I could, never really letting anyone get close to me for fear that they would see the real me. My fear was that I would be rejected and they wouldn't like what they saw. As I got older and became my own person and began to really discover and ask questions of myself, I was able to define who I was as a person. I began to look at the things that were important to me. I began to define my own beliefs of how I wanted to live my life and who I was inside. It was scary to me being real sometimes but I found the more I expressed my realness to others the more they truly got to know me and guess what? They didn't reject me as I feared. The next time I let others into my world and into my life, it want as scary the more I did it. Soon it became comfortable and I began to realize that if somebody does not like me for who I am, it really has nothing to do with me. It is their own issue. I feel better when I am real and donned wear the masks. It allows me to be authentic and real. It allows me to not have to feel on guard all of the time and it gives me the freedom to be all that I can be. It is like a bird inside of a egg. You know there's a bird in there but you cant see it quite yet. As it breaks and cracks the egg, you get glimpses of the precious life inside. But only until it breaks completely free from the shell and steps outside to stand on it own two feet can you see that it is a wonderful feathered bird. As it cleans all the muck off of it's wings and spreads it's wing to fly, that's when you truly see it's full elegance and the beauty of it soaring across the sky.
Be who you are and let your light shine for all the world to see.
Sunday morning, I heard the preacher say Thou shall not kill I don't wanna, hear nothin' else, about killin' And that it's God's will Cuz our children are watching us They put their trust in us They're gonna be like us So let's learn from our history And do it differently
CHORUS: I hope For more love, more joy and laughter I hope We'll have more than we'll ever need I hope We'll have more happy ever afters I hope We can all live more fearlessly And we can lose all the pain and misery I hope, I hope
Oh Rosie, her man he gets too rough And all she can say, is he's a good man He don't mean no harm He was just brought up that way But our children are watching us They put their trust in us They're gonna be like us It's okay for us to disagree We can work it out lovingly
For I hope For more love, more joy and laughter I hope You'll have more than you'll ever need I hope You'll have more happy ever afters I hope And you can all live more fearlessly And you can lose all your pain and misery I hope, I hope
There must be a way to change what's going on No, I don't have all the answers
I hope For more love, more joy and laughter I hope you'll have more than you'll ever need I hope There'll be more happy ever afters I hope We can all live more fearlessly And we can lose all the pain and misery I hope, I hope
I hope I hope I hope
I hope you all have a great Easter Sunday and know how truly blessed you all are!
How do you keep yourself positive when the people around you are so negative? How can you maintain a positive approach when the situations and events around you are so troublesome? A sincerely positive attitude is not a reaction to the way things are. Rather, it is an expression of the way you choose for things to be.
Being positive is not an unrealistic or naive view of a negative world. It provides you with a solid foundation for making real improvements in the world and creating meaningful value.
Being positively focused enables you to see, and to make the most of, opportunities that would otherwise be invisible. Being positive gives you the energy to move forward no matter what the obstacles may be.
When you focus on the positive aspects of a situation, there will be plenty of people who disagree with you. But that is their problem, not yours.
Look beyond those who argue for defeat, and find the path to victory. Whatever the current situation may be, you can always choose a positive way forward.
This is for Saturday Night BlogStream Blog Hopping!
I hope you enjoy this piece of music. It has been a longtime standing favorite of mine partly because it has a Native American feel to it and I like the words to it. Let's return to the Age of Innocence...
I often wish we could return to the age of innocence. It was a kinder and gentler time back then. Less crime, less violence, less greed, less hatred and intolerances of others. Wouldn't it be nice if neighbors helped one another again, lending a helping hand to everyone they meet and strangers were kind and thoughtful to one another on the streets, customer service really meant something and you knew you were getting excellent quality and a good value for your hard earned dollars.
Ahhh... I wonder if we will ever get back to times like that? Maybe that's what heaven is like. Peace and loving kindness, caring and nurturing for one another. Yes... it will be a much better place.
Soon people soon... if you only knew what was waiting for you on the other side, I dont think there would be fear anymore. We would embrace it and pass through that portal to a wonderful place.
Until then, I will bid my time here making a positive difference in whatever small way I can. Will you join me?
Inflicting pain on someone else cannot do anything to ease your own
pain. When you have been hurt, there is nothing to be gained by passing
the hurt on to another.
When others have caused you pain, give forgiveness. Sincere forgiveness
is the fastest way to begin moving positively forward again.
Forgiveness does not mean that you agree with or condone whatever has
been done. It means that you no longer choose to let those past actions
hold you back.
Your willingness to forgive does not mean that you are willing to be
hurt again. In fact, forgiveness frees you to take positive steps that
will make you stronger and much less vulnerable.
When you feel the desire for revenge, stop and remind yourself that
there is a much more powerful response. Forgiveness is the way to put
yourself in the best possible position.
Can you find the strength to forgive? Forgive, and you will surely grow
stronger.
-- Ralph Marston
This is one I have constantly had a struggle with when it comes to my abuse issues. I think Ralph said some powerful things here for me to have a better understanding of what forgiveness truly is. To me I have always thought of forgiveness as something you do when you are ready to forgive and forget what an individual did that hurt you. To me that has always meant that you are going to let it pass whatever they did to you that hurt you and you are going to be okay with having a relationship with that person again, like it never happened. In other words you start fresh and forgive their transgressions. To me I have never been able to do that with my father or with the other people in the church where I was hurt. I dont know if I've even been able to truly forgive my birth mother for abandoning me and not taking care of me and protecting me.
I have been able to forgive other people like friends or Lovie with no problem when I have been wronged and been perfectly fine with letting it go and starting fresh but with the abuse stuff...that's a whole other ballgame...those are the things that have given me deep scars and wounds on my soul... I somehow have just not been able to forgive. I cant say that I have wanted revenge on the people who have hurt me, however I do want justice and know that they should be punished and locked up behind bars for what they did to me and to many other children.
When I think about my own father, there is a mixture of feelings I go through regarding him. There are times I feel sadness for him for what his life became. He made choices in life that he had to live with. There are times I have hated him with a passion for what he did. There are times that I wanted him to feel the same type of pain and fear he made me feel. But really what purpose does that serve? As an adult I have been able to look at a bigger picture and to question really what caused this man to do the things he did in his life? Was it because somebody did this same thing to him at some point in his life? Was it because he felt powerless as a man and the only way he could feel powerful was to exert the wrong type of power over his own child? I will never know the answers to those questions.
In some ways, the Great Spirit and the Universal energy came back to him and gave him what he put out. Like karma. When he died, he died alone. He was found on the kitchen floor of the little run down shack he was living in down by the river. He was dead by the time they found him. He was surrounded by beer cans and medicine bottles and there was questions as to wether he had committed suicide. They found he had a massive heart attack that killed him. When I knew him in my younger years, he was not an acoholic, however in later years, I gathered that he had became one. He was not an old man. He was in his early 50's. He had already had open heart surgery from previous heart attacks. His leg was eaten up with a gangren inflection and he did not have good circulation. The doctors told him he would most likely lose both of his legs to the infection.
My stepmother who was put into a nursing home the year prior to my father's death, told me in a moment of lucidness that he would sit on the porch and cry while looking at pictures of me when I was a little girl. I dont know if itwas remorse, guilt or the fact that he knew he would never see me again in his lifetime. I had not seen my father since I was 17 years old when I was able to get away from him. Maybe I would prefer to think he was remorseful for the things he did in his lifetime. I will never know. I am okay with that. In some small way, I feel a smidgeon of compassion for how his life ended up. It makes me sad to know that the choices people make in their lives sometimes end up destroying their lives. I do believe this was the case.
When he died, I felt his spirit around me for about a week. I felt what I believe was remorse. I told him it was okay to go and that I understood. I have not felt him since. Am I still angry at times? Yes. Am I still saddened? Yes. Do I want revenge? No- because the Great Spirit will handle that part. Will I forget it? No, never. Have I learned great lessons in the whole situation and circumstances? Yes I think I have. Do I forgive him? If my feelings are what you consider forgiveness and being okay with where I am with what happened and I am able to not let it affect me anymore...if that is what is called forgiveness then maybe I have forgiven him.
Ralph's words mean a lot to me. He says:
Forgiveness does not mean that you agree with or condone whatever has
been done. It means that you no longer choose to let those past actions
hold you back.
Your willingness to forgive does not mean that you are willing to be
hurt again. In fact, forgiveness frees you to take positive steps that
will make you stronger and much less vulnerable.
If this is what forgiveness is... then maybe I am ready to forgive and maybe, just maybe, I already have.
They say that forgiveness is not really for the person who has wronged you, but for you personally and your own peace of mind. I do believe that is true.
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