"Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact." – William James

Sunday, December 30, 2012

New Year....the Real Me

Life is more then merely waking up, going to work, dreadfully eating each meal, trudging along until my head again hits the pillow. Life is full. I never dreamed that life, at least MY life, would be more then the previously mentioned. I was used to living by the clock. Alarm goes off. Wake up. 7:00 Breakfast. 9:00 snack (if I felt like it). 12:00 lunch. 3:00 snack. 5:00ish leave work. Then fit in dinner, meeting, a snack (ok let's be serious, sometimes a snack) before 10:00. It was as if an alarm would go off at each time, on the dot, and my robotic self would make its way toward the desired destination.  But that isn't the case any more. Yes, I still need an alarm, or two, or three, to wake me up, followed by a caffeinated beverage, but the rest of my day is so much more open, yet so much more full.
Freedom from self, freedom from bondage, freedom from the every day torture that I put on myself and thought I deserved. Freedom. Something I had only dreamed of, yet I never dreamed would be possible for me. I didn't deserve it, or so I thought. But this is far from true. I am worthy of love, worthy of compassion, worthy of a full life. I had to let myself experience this though to believe that I was worthy of it, to see that bad things wouldn't happen to me if I tried it. I learned who I was, who I wanted to be, what I enjoyed, what made me happy. Then I had to set aside the fear and actually be that person. Yes, setting aside the fear was and still is hard, but the freedom that comes from it is worth it. I no longer feel encapsulated by the strings that were trying to hold together the person I thought I should be. The person that society says is "normal."
As the new year approaches, I am striving to continue to learn more about the person I really am and growing to love that person. Instead of making resolutions that in the past have never been healthy, or have set me up for failure, I made a list of 10 things I want to accomplish/do by the end of the year (ex: go on a random weekend trip, go back to TK and speak, continue to learn to love myself, etc). Why should we make resolutions to change ourselves? Why not make goals to become more of who we really are?
What do you want to do in the next year to learn more about yourself and grow to love who you really are?