Wednesday, November 14, 2007

Waiting For The Rug To Be Pulled Out From Under Your Fee Is No Way To Go Through Life

Once you reach a certain place in your life and you have had to face adversity on a regular basis, you begin to expect only the negative to happen.

Up until about two years ago I was the same way. No matter how good things seemed to be going, I was always waiting and expecting the "rug to be pulled out from under my feet." Why wouldn't I expect that, it always seemed to happen to me. If I things were going well for me, someone in my family would have something horrible happen to them. Weather it was my mother getting diagnosed w/ breast cancer as I got my first job out of college or something on a smaller scale.

I always seemed to look for the negative in every situation. I was the ultimate "the glass is half empty" personality. I could get offered a million dollars from the lottery and all I would be thinking was "how long before they realize this isn't supposed to go to me." I could always find a way to turn something positive into a negative moment. All because I was used to negative things happening to me.

Then I started to realize that the only way my outlook was going to change was if I did something about it myself. I stopped feeling sorry for myself when bad things would happen and started to realize that I can't control everything. I am not the center point of the universe, in fact I am only a part of it's overall process of life. Once I realized that only I could take responsibility for my actions and that it was OK to enjoy positives in my life and interesting thing happened. More positive things started taking place in my life.

If you allow yourself to truly enjoy your high moments and stop worrying about the low moments, you will quickly realize a change in your overall mood and quality of life. You will also realize that a lot of the things that you lost sleep over due to worrying actually were not problems at all and actually worked themselves out on their own.

Enjoy you life, celebrate yourself and everything will work out!

Tuesday, November 13, 2007

Every Day Offers A New Opportunity

With each day, comes a new opportunity; an opportunity for us to take the steps necessary to better our lives. Weather that step needs to be as small as sending in a bill or calling an old friend to say your sorry, these little steps are necessary in the "process" we call our lives.

We cannot expect to reach our goals or better our lives over night. You must take every step in the process in order to make this happen. No one will tell you what these steps are and there is not a "Ten Step Program." The process that is our lives has only one map and only you know the key.

It is always easy to feel sorry for ourselves and dwell on the mis-fortunes dealt to us in our lives. For most, we will spend more time complaining to others about the problems in our lives than we will spend trying to fix these problems.

The bottom line is that no one, not our friends, not our families, not our coaches, teachers, or religious leaders can make things better for us. We are the ones who must take control of the situation, have faith in ourselves, pick up the pieces and take the step.

Be strong today and take that first step in your "process."

Monday, November 12, 2007

Mission Statement

The first thing that we should get out of the way is that I am not a licensed professional. I am not a doctor nor a pyschiatrist.

I am however an individual who has experienced many things that you have. I have never met my real father, I don't speak to my adopted father nor my step father. I have 7 siblings including an adopted baby sister born addicted crack. I was raised in poverty and have had to work for everything I have in my life. I am not rich financially, however I live an extremely rich life by virtue of my personal goals and achievements.

I am only the second in my family to graduate high school and first to graduate college. I have lived and supported my self since I was in the 9th grade. My youngest brother, was attacked by a Liger. Yes, a Liger. I have had to sleep with a gun under my pillow while still in Jr. High in order to survive the night and I have never been addicted to drugs or in a gang. I have dealt with the the diagnosis of my mother with breast cancer and then the mysterious result of it's complete disappearance in her body.

I tell you this only to offer a small insight into the topics and motivation I wish to share on this blog. I have gone through life and have dealt with many struggles, but have always realized along the way that it could always be worse. There are many out there who would read this and would trade places with me in a heart beat. I have never by dis illusioned enough to believe that I have had a difficult life to some or even most.

In my opinion, my greatest accomplishment is that I have grown up normal. Normal in spite of abnormal situations. I have never let something stand in the way of what I have wanted or needed to do in an effort to advance my life and better the lives of those in my family.

Throughout this blog I wish to share my life experiences with you and in the process speak about things that I have never spoken to anyone about. I will be completely free with my self and allow you a look into the deepest parts of my soul. I only hope that it can help someone somewhere to push themselves through what ever adversities they have at the time.

Thank you.